The first blast rattled Kaito's teeth.
He was already moving before his mind had caught up—closing the notebook, grabbing the combat knife under his pillow. The trembling blade shook in his hand as another explosion rocked the building. People screamed below on the other floors.
Not a drill.
Kaito leaned against the wall next to his door, counting breaths. The corridor outside was a war zone—smashing glass, splintering wood, and a wet crunch that made his stomach turn.
Then quiet.
A shadow crept beneath his door.
The knob turned at a crawling pace.
Kaito's heart pounded in his throat as the door groaned open—
"SWIFT! GET YOUR ASS MOVING!"
Lena Solara burst in shouting, her golden eyes wild. Her left arm was smeared with blood where her Aegis uniform had been torn to pieces.
"What the—"
"Rogue powered," she panted, yanking him out into the fire escape. "Level 4 threat. Ragged through six Celestia cadets like tissue paper."
A second blast rocked the building. The window shattered as something massive crashed the alley below.
Kaito risked a glance—and froze.
The creature was at least eight feet tall, its body shifting from molten rock to liquid metal. Wherever it moved, the pavement melted and warped. One of its arms had a blade-like protrusion that poured steaming fluid onto the concrete.
"Phase-shifter," Lena whispered. "Military-grade."
Kaito's mind flashed back through his notebook notations. Phase-shifters: unstable matter manipulation. Weakness—
The top of the thing jerked back.
There were no eyes—just smooth, featureless metal where one would have been.
And it was looking right at them.
They sprinted down from the street, the fire escape behind them melting away into slag.
"Celestia's creating a perimeter three blocks east," Lena panted, dodging around a overturned delivery drone. "We just need to—"
A fist of molten metal exploded through the wall of bricks beside them.
Kaito just got Lena out of the way in time as the phase-shifter exploded out, its shape oscillating between liquid and solid. The heat distortion glimmered about it.
"Run!"
They sprinted through a passageway thick with steam from burst pipes. Kaito's lungs burned, his ribs aching from the last bout with Rin. In the distance behind, the creature's footsteps sounded like a garbage compactor masticating scrap metal.
Lena skidded to a stop at a dead end. "Oh you've got to be—"
Kaito turned as the phase-shifter appeared around the turn.
Observe. Adapt.
The monster's blade-arm recoiled—
A purple flash severed it in two during the backswing.
Seraphina Vexis dropped into a crouch, kinetic energy arcing around her outstretched hand. The phase-shifter's blow froze inches from her nose, quivering against an invisible barrier.
"Took you long enough," she growled, then pushed.
The monster was catapulted through two walls of concrete.
Kaito's mouth went dry. Up close, Seraphina was just shy of being touchable—the air around her hummed with contained power. Her purple eyes snapped to him, and for a moment he could have sworn they burned.
"You."
She spoke before she could, when the rubble exploded outwards.
The phase-shifter materialized—changed. Its shape had redesigned itself into a spiked, armoured form, the blade-arm now separated into three segmented whips.
Seraphina's self-satisfied smile faltered. "That's. new."
The monster sped up much quicker than anything of its size could possibly move. A whip snapped out, wrapping around Seraphina's ankle and hauling her off the ground before she could react.
"VAXIS!" Kaito jumped without thinking, his knife flashing. The blade cracked against the searing whip.
Pain erupted down his arm as the backhand forced him sliding across the pavement. His eyes went dim, but he saw it—the center of the phase-shifter throbbed where he had struck, revealing to him a momentary sequence of shifting color.
Weak spot.
Seraphina leapt to her feet, kinetic power surging in her fists. "Lena! Get the Null out of—"
The beast's whips lashed out together. One cracked Seraphina across the ribcage, and she crumpled into a dumpster. The other wrapped around Lena's throat, holding her off the ground.
Kaito's field of view contracted to Lena's kicking legs, the blue flush growing on her lips—
His flesh burned.
Not with heat. With something deeper. Something waking up.
The core of the phase-shifter pulsed once again.
This time Kaito saw the pattern.
He acted reflexively—twisting a shattered pipe from the ground, he stormed.
The beast didn't even blink as it swung from the shoulder a relaxed backhand—
Kaito twisted, letting the blow ring off his shoulder as he stabbed the pipe into the smoldering core.
For one impossible instant, time froze.
But then the world exploded in white light.
Kaito slept on his back, gazing at a circle of stunned faces.
Seraphina knelt beside him, her uniform burned and torn. In the distance, a team of Celestia medics worked on Lena. The phase-shifter was gone—there was only a crater of smelted asphalt behind.
"What." Kaito's voice was a croak. His entire body seemed to be compressed with garbage.
Seraphina's fingers dug into his collar. "How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Don't act like you don't know."
Her purple eyes snapped with rage. "That thing adapted to my skills in thirty seconds. But you—" She was close now, the words barely audible. "You adapted to it."
Kaito's breath was caught. He looked down at his hands—normal other than for the faintest glimmer where the pipe had burned his palms.
"Bullshit," hacked Lena from across from her, rubbing her sore throat. "Nulls don't—"
"Shh." Seraphina's gaze snapped toward as a new team of figures materialized—black armor jumpsuits with no insignias. "Military containment."
Kaito had no time before she yanked him to his feet and slid something into his pocket. "Stop by tomorrow. Sixth and Meridian. Noon." And then louder: "This one's clean. Just a lucky hit."
The officer soldier—a woman with a scar that bisected her lip—looked at Kaito with tough eyes. "You. What did you see?"
Kaito's lips went dry. The thing in his pocket weighed more than lead.
"Nothing. just a monster."
The woman looked at him for three heartbeats before bobbing her head. "Get them processed."
As the soldiers dragged them away, Kaito risked a glimpse over his shoulder at the crater.
Where the phase-shifter had fallen, the pavement was reforming—molecular bonds healing themselves in perfect, geometric form.
Just as the scars that now hid under his sleeves.