The air reeked of ozone and old ash.
Ethan Kael Vire crouched behind a fractured concrete pillar, rifle tight against his shoulder, heart beating like a war drum muffled beneath layers of kevlar.
His helmet's HUD flickered every few seconds, losing signal, then rebooting, then crashing again in a loop. There was no oxygen readout, no satellite uplink, no squad signatures—just static humming in his ears.
He had been part of a special operations unit tasked with investigating an area known as Sector 17-Delta, a quarantined section of the city abandoned after a series of disappearances.
It was supposed to be a routine recon and evac mission. They were briefed on electromagnetic interference, possible biohazards, and structural collapse risks.
No one mentioned what actually lived here.
Instead, his entire squad had vanished in less than five minutes. They were all gone one by one, lost in the mist and Ethan couldn't contact them anymore.
He was alone here by himself and the only thing that calmed him down was a rifle in his hands.
'They just lost,' he thought, 'I couldn't hear their scream or smell their blood so they must be alive.'
The strange thing about that mist was it looked alive, eating his squad one by one in silence. He didn't realize it until he was the only one left.
But even more strange, the mist left with them.
"Bojack, can you hear? Anyone, answer me?!"
But all he got was a low-pitched hum and bursts of distorted voices, like a broken recording playing in reverse.
Not even the emergency distress loop from Merek. And Merek never forgot protocol.
Ethan's breath condensed behind his visor. The temperature here dropped the moment they entered this part of the city. No wind, no even birds flying, or any sound could be heard.
Just dead cars frozen mid-traffic and rusted metal that hadn't aged until now.
Then something happened.
From the shadow of a half-collapsed office building, the wall shimmered. Not like heat-haze or mist—no, this was something worse.
The bricks themselves rippled outward, geometry bending as though reality had forgotten how to stay solid.
A figure stepped through, but he couldn't hear their footsteps, as if the figure was flying or a literal ghost.
"What the hell..." Ethan's body tensed. "Stop right there or I will start shooting!" he screamed, as he pointed his rifle.
Just a human-shaped silhouette made of fractured static, flickering between frames like it couldn't decide how many limbs it needed.
"Fuck this!" Ethan didn't hesitate. He started to shoot, three times—center mass.
Each bullet passed through, evaporating into particles.
"Shit!" he keeps shooting and stepping back, but the figure keeps following him, as if challenging him.
It was enough to make drops of sweat falling from his temple. He was just a normal soldier, from Vipers Titan squad. He didn't train to fight whatever this thing was!
The thing tilted its head—no face, but Ethan could feel its focus.
The world bent.
Concrete trembled beneath his boots as a sound, like a dial-up modem screaming from the underworld, punched through his skull. He stumbled backward, vision flickering.
And then the floor gave away.
"WH-WHAT?! ARGGHH!!!"
One second he was watching the distorted creature, and the next he was falling, weightless, as debris and shattered asphalt followed him into the darkness below.
His body crashed through rusted support beams and broken rebar, the impact knocking the wind out of him before everything turned black.
---
When Ethan woke up, it was hard to tell how much time had passed.
"Ahh fuck..." he tried to raise his body, but his back ached, his legs were sore, and a steady pressure throbbed at the base of his skull.
"What is that thing?!" he murmured. "Is that monster behind the disappearance of the death town? Is higher up know about this?"
The questions preoccupied him for a while before he realized he was also in a dangerous situation.
When he focused his eyes, he realized that his helmet's HUD was completely dark—no readouts, no tracking, nothing. Just a black screen with a single, flickering word hovering faintly in the center.
[BOOTING PROTOCOL…]
He blinked at it, confused. This wasn't GDN software. It didn't look like anything military-issued. It wasn't even part of his armor's firmware.
"Must be malfunctioning from the fall." he made a concussion.
Ethan forced himself to sit up slowly, hand reaching for his sidearm on instinct.
Then the pain hit—not from broken ribs or twisted muscle, but something else. Something deeper. His skin crawled, his vision twisted, and the world around him… didn't make sense.
He was no longer inside a collapsed basement. This wasn't a subway tunnel or a bunker.
The walls bent in unnatural angles, smooth stone surfaces melted into metal, then flickered like holograms trying to hold shape.
Floating shapes, like glowing glyphs, circled above him in the air. He didn't recognize any of the symbols, but somehow, his eyes followed their motion as curiously.
"What the hell is this place…?" he muttered, voice hoarse and shaky. "Hallucination? Must be from concussion," he held his head that was in so much pain.
A few feet away, suspended just above the ground, was something that made his breath catch. A floating sphere the size of a basketball hung in the air.
Its surface was dark. Not black, but the absence of light, like looking into a hole carved out of existence. Faint patterns shimmered across its skin, flickering like distant stars caught beneath ice.
The air around it bent, like heat waves over pavement, except this distortion pulled inward instead of out.
Ethan's instincts screamed at him to move, to call for evac, to do something. But his radio was dead. No signal. He was cut off from command, alone in a space that should not exist.
And then the sphere pulsed.
He didn't hear it, but he felt it—deep in his chest and spine like someone had just struck a bell inside his skull.
"Arrgghh!!!" he groaned in pain.
The room shook, though nothing physically moved. The floating glyphs around him sped up. Then came the voice.
Not a real voice. It wasn't coming from speakers or his helmet. It just appeared inside his mind, precise and emotionless, like code being read aloud by something not human.
[ASCENSION PROTOCOL: INITIALIZING.]
Ethan gritted his teeth and stood up fully, every nerve in his body screaming at once. A cold sweat broke over his skin as the voice continued.
[Neural integrity confirmed.]
[Candidate viability: 0.004%... recalibrating.]
[New Sovereign Selected.]
"What the hell is talking?" he growled, backing away from the sphere.
In the corner of his vision, a new display appeared. Faint, but visible—an interface like a combat HUD, but sleeker, more fluid. It labeled him with unfamiliar words.
[You have been chosen: Sovereign Unit 07.]
[Void Sync: 0.0%]
[Reality Integrity: 91%]
[Main Quest Activated – Riftborn Genesis]
[Objective: Survive the Rift Core Exposure]
[Reward: System Awakening]
[Failure: Subject Disintegration]