"You are not ready. And yet... you survived."
Darkness. But not the comforting kind.
This one breathed.
It shifted like velvet smoke, pressing in on all sides, endless and suffocating. There was no sky. No ground. No sound but a low, static hum—like a signal struggling to reach a destination long abandoned.
Eryn floated in it. Or maybe he was falling.
He couldn't tell.
His bare fit dangles in the nothing. His body was shirtless, skin pale under an unseen light, dressed in only black pants torn near the ankle. The bruises and blood from before were gone—but a dull ache lingered in his bones, a memory of pain that refuse to fade.
He tried to move.
Nothing.
Tried again.
Still nothing. His limbs didn't respond. As if his mind had been disconnected from the body it once controlled.
A deep, chilling voice echoed in the void. Not loud. Not angry. Just... precise.
"Attempting motion: failure. Neural overdrive complete. You are currently stabilized."
Eryn's eyes widened, but no gasp came. His throat wouldn't cooperate. His breath didn't quicken. Emotion fluttered like a bird in a cage, unable to fly free.
"You were supposed to die."
The voice returned—crisp, flat, and inhuman. Yet eerily calm. Like a machine that had learned to speak but not to care.
"Survival rate: 0.34%."
"Variable altered. Outcome... Corrected."
The void pulsed faintly, and from above him, something moved.
A shape—not a body. Not flesh. It was too vast for that. Like translucent wings stretching out from the fabric of the darkness itself. Their edges shimmered like cracked glass reflecting starlight, flickering with circuitry and dust. They hovered. Observing.
Then they vanished —gone in an instant like a mirage swallowed by static.
Eryn's heartbeat should've spiked. But it didn't.
Instead, his mind floated on cold logic. Emotions came slow—detached, distant.
He remembered Selene.
His Sister.
Her smile. The cheap hair ties she always wore. The way she scolded him when he skipped breakfast.
But now... even those memories felt like watching glass. Transparent. Fragile. Distant.
"Your are experiencing early-stage detachment," the voice noted flatly. An unavailable side effect of my intervention."
"Emotion is inefficient in life-critical sequence. It was suspended to maximize survival."
"You may find it... difficult to cry. That is acceptable.",
Eryn wanted to scream. He wanted to panic. But instead, he just started. Silent.
"Possession Overdrive was not scheduled for activation," the voice continued, slightly quieter now. "You are not ready."
"And yet..."
The voice cracked slightly —a spiderweb of pale light spreading around him, fragile and cold.
"You survived."
"Adapt. Or die next time."
The voice fell silent. The hum returned.
Eryn tried to speak. To whisper Selene's name.
But only a strained breath came out, no sound. His fingers twitched. A single tremor.
Then—
A jolt.
Pain returned like a storm, and the void shattered.
——
A fluorescent light hummed faintly overhead.
Eryn lay in narrow bed, hooked up to cheap monitoring equipment. His breathing was shallow, chest rising and falling with quiet effort. Sweat clung to his brow despite the cold air.
His eyes were shut—but his fingers trembled, twitching faintly.
His mouth moved once.
No words came out.
Across the room, a girl sat in chair beside him. Shoulders stiff. Hair messy from panic. Still wearing her work uniform —creased, stained with a faint trace of something red.
Selene Kade.
She hadn't left the room for hours.
The report from the local responders had confirmed it.
"Aberrant activity — C-Tier threat neutralize. Civilian casualty: 1. Status: Critical."
The words still echoed in her mind. A C-Tier Aberrant. That wasn't supposed to happen in the lower sectors.
"H-How did a Riftspawn get that close to Zone Eight?" she had shouted at the responders.
But no one gave her an answer. Just apologies. Just protocol.
Her eyes were locked on his face, searching for any sign, any twitch, any breath that might mean something. He looked like he was burning from the inside —his skin cold but his body slick with sweat. His chest rose unevenly, breath caught in ragged pulse like he was fighting something even now.
"He's not just hurt," she whispered to herself. "He's voice cracked. "Something's wrong inside him."
No amount of medical scans explained why his nervous system kept spiking, why the monitors kept glitching out when he twitched. He'd jolt suddenly in his sleep—violently, then fall still again, like something invisible was clawing at him from within.
"Y-you're strong," she whispered gently placing her hand over his. "But you don't have to fight this alone. I'm here, Eryn... I've always been here."
Eryn didn't respond.
But inside his comatose mind, the whisper of static still echoed.
"You are not ready.",
"You survived,"
"But not without cost."
——
A cold blue light washed over the sleek chamber walls as the holoscreeb flickered to life, displaying rotating scans of a dismembered Aberrant corpse.
"Missing core," Captain Darius Vale muttered, dragging a gloved hand through his ash-bloned hair as the next feed loaded. "Clean extraction. No residuals. Like it was never there."
Across the obsidian table stood a taller figure —Commander Halbrecht, a high-ranking officer of Breaker Command, arms acrossed behind his back, gaze sharp as a blade.
"Explain," Halbrecht said, voice clipped. Authoritative.
Darius straightened. "Spinehowler. C-Class. Kill zone was already secure when my team arrived. No active threat. Just the corpse... and one civilian."
He gestured toward the holo, which shifted to a paused frame: a bloodied teenage boy, unconscious, lying amid cracked pavement and Aberrant gore.
Halbrecht's brow lifted. "And the boy?"
"ID's as Eryn Kade. Seventeen. Aurelis Vanguard Institute, Section 9-D. No known combat certificatations. Barely passed physical evaluations. Civilian -level stats. Currently ranked D-Tier."
Halbrecht'slips thinned in disdain. "D-Tier. And no skill?"
"None recorded," Darius confirmed. "He was barely breathing when we found him. Trauma consistent with proximity to a mid-tier Aberrant."
"Then he's irrelevant," Halbrecht said coldly, turning slightly. "Unless you're suggesting a cadet reject killed a Spinehowler barehanded."
Darius didn't flinch, but his jaw tightened. "Sir... there were no signs of external interference. No explosive. No elemental burns. No foreign energy residue. The core was extracted from within."
"Implosion?" Halbrecht offered, skeptical.
"Unlikely. Internal organs weren't vaporized. It's as if the core was... consumed."
Halbrecht frowned deeper. "And the Rift Gate?"
Darius exhaled. "That's the other thing, sir. There was no Rift. No breach, no surge, no alert. Our sensors picked up nothing until long after the event. It just... appeared."
A tense silence filled the chamber.
"Another silent incursion," Halbrecht muttered, the words like venom. "That's the third this quarter. Just like the Hollowflame incident. Just like the Gloomhorn case. Aberrant manifesting without gate signatures."
He turned, eyes narrowing."And you're chasing fairy tales about dying boy? You should be more concerned about this."
"I am," Darius said quietly. "But the timing lack of gate... the core extraction... and this kid surviving in the middle of it all—it's too clean."
Halbrecht scoffed. "Coincidence. Statistical anomaly."
Darius hesitated, then spoke, softer. "Or someone protect him. Something we don't understand yet "
Halbrecht gave him a long, unreadable look.
"Focus on cadets with real potential, Captain. We don't waste time on nameless flukes. This Kade boy?" He sneered. "He's a statistical error. And errors are not worth our resources." Then...
"He'll probably wash out by next quarter —if he even wakes up. "
He turned to leave.
But Darius glanced once more at the holo—at the bruised, unconscious figure of Eryn Kade.
"... Errors can change the outcome, sir," he murmured under his breath.
Halbrecht didn't reply.
The door, hissed closed behind him, leaving Darius alone with the silent hum of the holoscreen, and the flickering image of the boy no one believed in.
———————————————————
KADE HOUSEHOLD | 11:45 PM
All was quite.
The bedroom was dim, untouched since the incident. On the floor sat a cracked bag. A blood stained uniform hung over a chair.
Inside the closet, nestled beneath a layer of blankets and dust—
—a pulse Aberrant Core, shifting slowly with a faint, unnatural light.
It throbbed once, releasing a barely audible hiss. Not mechanical. Not biological.
Something else.
From the shadowed corners of the room, a single whisper stirred.
Old. Cold. Gentle.
"Calculation complete. Preservation successful."
Then, silence.
- END OF CHAPTER 3