Lance froze, Dario pressed against his legs, ears flat and growling softly. The street outside seemed the same, yet everything shimmered as if reality itself were a mirage. The edges of the pavement stretched, warped subtly, and the cracks in the asphalt throbbed like the pulse of a living thing.
A figure emerged—or rather, flickered into existence. Not fully human. Not fully tangible. Sometimes it mimicked Lance's shape, other times it blurred into jagged angles, shadows forming spikes that didn't belong. The Misfolded Saint. His own reflection warped into a predator.
Lance's stomach clenched. "Is... that... me?"
Kenton's voice was taut with focus. "Don't let it define you. Focus on the anchors. Ignore the rest."
The creature shifted, but it didn't charge. It hovered, a twisted reflection of Lance's fears, stretching reality around him. Every shadow pulsed with an unnatural rhythm, as if it was breathing on its own.
Dani stepped forward, calm as always, opening her briefcase. The compartments spread like a mechanized flower: glowing shards, adhesive sigils, and a small jar pulsing faintly with a slug. "It reads hesitation," she said quietly. "The moment you flinch, it feeds."
Lance gripped Dario tightly. The dog's eyes were steady, grounding him. He realized this wasn't about running—it was about holding still while everything tried to rewrite him.
The air thickened. The asphalt shimmered, and Lance could see fragments of memory flicker across the surface—images of himself as a child, drawing at his piano, small hands clumsy over ivory keys. The symbiote's presence made the memories pulse, twisting them.
"It's pulling at you," Kenton warned. "Mapping what matters most."
Lance's chest tightened. Every instinct screamed to move, to escape. But he stayed, forcing himself to breathe. Dario nudged his hand, an anchor in the chaos.
Dani began placing sigils around the immediate area, but her movements were precise, delicate. "It can't touch what we anchor. Focus on what's real. Anchor yourself."
Lance's mind spun. He realized the figure mirrored not just his body, but his fears, his memories—all the unspoken traumas he had tucked away in drawings and piano melodies. His own life, warped into something alien.
The creature flickered closer. Lance's reflection wavered; the pavement beneath him stretched into impossible angles. Then, it froze mid-motion. The sigils hummed, pulling at the anomaly like tethers.
Kenton's voice was steady, almost gentle for the first time. "You're not it. It isn't you. Hold your line."
Lance realized that each hesitation, every instinct to run, would have strengthened it. He steadied his breathing, letting Dario's presence, Dani's calm, and Kenton's guidance center him.
The anomaly pulsed, reaching outward, testing boundaries. Fragments of memory flickered across the reflective surfaces around him—windows, puddles, the glass in a broken streetlamp. It tried to rewrite each reflection, each fragment of identity.
But Lance didn't flinch. He pressed himself closer to reality. His fingers brushed Dario's fur. The dog's warm presence steadied the flood of distorted memories.
Finally, the creature recoiled slightly, confused by the stability it couldn't grasp. Dani's sigils shimmered, holding it in place. "Not yet. Not today," she murmured.
Kenton stepped closer, voice calm but sharp. "It learns from weakness. And you... are stronger than you know."
For a moment, the street stilled. The flickering figure hovered, trapped between reflection and reality, unable to claim Lance. The world around them throbbed and warped, but a fragile line held.
Lance exhaled slowly, the panic ebbing into exhaustion. He had faced it—not by running, but by standing, by holding his anchor in place. Dario nudged him, tail wagging faintly, as if approval could soothe the chaos.
The anomaly pulsed once, then folded in on itself, fading into the flickering shadows. Lance sank to the pavement, still clutching Dario. His hands felt strange—alien even—like they weren't fully his. For a moment, relief washed over him... and then the silence was broken.
A voice slithered from the shadows, low, fractured, dripping disdain: "Too dependent on your dog to live... pathetic."
Lance froze, heart hammering. This time, there was no piano. No drawings to filter reality through. No comforting rituals to mute the sharp edges of the truth. Everything the creature—or whatever it was—showed him was real. Unflinching. Unrelenting.
Around him, the street remained unchanged: neon signs buzzed lazily, windows glimmered with reflected light, distant chatter hummed in the night air. To anyone passing by, the world was ordinary. But to Lance, it was collapsing from the inside out.
The figure surged forward, warping like corrupted code—shadow fused with malformed flesh, a broken mirror of Lance's own fractured mind. Its jagged mouth emitted a voice, glitching and stuttering, spitting fragments of his past:
"You can't hold on—can't keep them safe."
"Mom's smile was never for you."
"They left because you weren't enough."
"Why try if everything you touch slips through your fingers?"
Each phrase hit like jagged glass, slicing through the thin walls he had built around his memory. The creature didn't shout; it exposed, loud, cruel, unfiltered.
His grip on Dario tightened, nails sinking into fur. Lance's chest ached as if the words were punching his lungs directly. He shook his head, trying to push it all away.
"You fix machines because people break too easily. You joke to hide how scared you are. You're already lost," the voice spat next, a torrent of raw exposure.
The dog whimpered softly, pressing close, warmth and living tether against the suffocating horror. Lance leaned into it, trying to anchor himself.
Dani's voice cut through, sharp, controlled: "Lance! Don't let it in your head! Anchor yourself!" She fired another sigil; the creature shuddered violently, the shadows around it twisting like liquid metal, but the voice did not falter.
Kenton barked from beside him, voice taut: "Ignore it! Focus on reality! Don't give it anything!"
But Lance's mind was a storm. Images flickered unbidden: his mother's eyes not quite meeting him, a hallway darkened as his father's silhouette receded and a child Lance crying milk.
He forced himself upright, jaw tight, breathing shallow but deliberate. Teeth clenched over the tremor in his lips. Dario nudged him again, insistent. He held onto that small warmth like a lifeline.
The creature faltered, confused by his resistance. The sigils shimmered, holding parts of it at bay. But the voice whispered from every shadow, every reflective surface: "You can't hide anymore. This is who you are... pathetic, dependent, weak."
Lance blinked. Stared at the street. Ordinary. Still. Mundane. Pedestrians passed, unaware. And yet, he knew—the truth was beneath the veneer.
He exhaled slowly, finally, forcing the pieces of himself back into something solid. The fear didn't vanish. It lingered, coiled tight in his chest. But he had faced it. For the first time, without distractions. Without the piano, without drawing, without filtering life through some thin veil of normalcy.
He realized something terrifying—and grounding. The symbiote, the creature, the Misfolded Saint... none of it could anchor him unless he allowed it.
Dario pressed closer. Lance closed his eyes. The street continued as if nothing had happened. Neon buzzed. Windows gleamed. Life moved forward.
But for Lance, nothing would ever feel ordinary again.
Lance sank to the cracked pavement, still clutching Dario close. The dog's warmth was the only tether left to anything real. Every muscle in his body felt drained, as if the confrontation had hollowed him out, leaving only a fragile shell of breath and motion.
He didn't speak. He couldn't. Thoughts spun like shattered glass, reflections of everything he had tried to push away for years. His parents' voices, always just out of reach, fractured in his mind. He remembered the arguments he had filtered into a comforting hum, the moments he had chosen to save—the piano, the sketches of worlds where he could control everything—suddenly meaningless in the face of what had just stared him down.
Dani crouched beside him, checking her gear, eyes flicking briefly to his pale, trembling hands. She didn't speak. Words wouldn't reach him yet.
Kenton hovered, voice subdued now, almost hesitant. "We need to move... you're not safe here."
Lance barely nodded, lifting his head slowly. His neck and shoulders ached, his jaw was tight, and every step felt like trudging through concrete. He kept Dario close, pressing the dog against his chest as if holding onto him might keep the rest of himself from spilling out.
The trio moved down a side street, away from the flickering neon, the still-glimmering reflections in the shop windows. Every step felt like dragging a leaden weight through memory and fear. His mind replayed every phrase the creature had hurled at him, every accusation that wasn't accusation, every memory unmasked.
By the time they reached the entrance to an old, abandoned subway station, his legs trembled beneath him. The grates were rusted, paint peeling, the air smelling faintly of damp concrete and machinery long idle. It was cold, dark, and silent—the kind of place where the city above might as well not exist.
Lance collapsed against the wall, Dario curling into the curve of his arms. The echoes of the Misfolded Saint felt distant here, almost muted by the stone and shadows. He closed his eyes, but sleep wasn't coming—not yet. All he could do was feel the weight of everything, the exhaustion, the fear, the emptiness that had followed him since childhood.
Dani set her briefcase down a few feet away, kneeling beside him. She didn't say anything, just watched the flickering light from the lone subway lamp above, her posture alert but patient.
Kenton's eyes, sharp despite the exhaustion radiating from all three of them, flicked to Dani's hands. The briefcase sat open beside her, sigils and shards of metal faintly humming in the low light.
She was methodically checking her rounds, pressing and twisting the pieces with a kind of familiarity that seemed almost instinctive.
Kenton tilted his head, voice low but probing. "Those... the things you use. The sigils. This briefcase—none of this is standard Sector Delta issue. Where did you learn... that?"
Dani paused mid-motion, eyes narrowing slightly as if recalling something half-remembered. She ran her fingers over the engraved metal, turning the small, pulsing sigil over in her palm. "I... I don't know," she admitted quietly, almost to herself. Her voice carried no pride, no explanation. Only the faintest trace of confusion, like a door in her mind that she could see but couldn't quite open.
Kenton's gaze sharpened. "You use them like they're second nature... like you've done this before."
She met his eyes, but didn't answer. Instead, her head tilted slightly, fingers stilling over the sigil as if feeling the memory pulse through her. There was a subtle tension in her posture—instinctive, trained, yet fragmented. Something in her movements betrayed knowledge she didn't consciously own.
"The way you load them... the precision... it isn't instinct from experience," Kenton said carefully, voice almost a whisper. "It's... deeper than training."
Dani's lips pressed together. She didn't speak. Her mind flickered through hazy impressions—flashes of machinery, of lights, of shapes she had moved through and learned to anticipate, memories that felt like hers but weren't entirely. She touched the briefcase again, almost as if it were guiding her, and the smallest hum of recognition passed through her chest.
Kenton watched her quietly, noting the hesitation, the way her hands moved almost on autopilot. He didn't push further. Whatever had trained her was clearly tangled too tightly in her identity to unravel with questions.
Lance let out a shuddering breath, more to release tension than to inhale.
He hugged Dario tighter. The dog whined softly, nudging his head against Lance's chest. It was a tiny lifeline, a reminder that something real and living still existed. For the first time in hours, he let himself feel the hopelessness fully, letting the city's chaos and the Saint's voice fade into a low hum behind him.
Lance's chest ached with grief, shame, and exhaustion. Tears he hadn't realized he was holding stung at the corners of his eyes.
The subway was quiet. Dust motes floated in the dim light, and the distant rumble of a train long gone was the only other sound. It was safe, if only because it was removed from the world above.
Lance didn't speak. He just stayed there, holding Dario, letting the darkness close around him like a heavy blanket.
And for now, that was enough.
Because the world outside—the one that had just bared itself to him—could wait.