The air inside the Federation's Rift Command Chamber felt unnaturally still, as if the entire room were holding its breath.
Arc-shaped runic screens floated above the central platform, projecting the jagged tear of Rift 7-3C—now stable enough for entry, yet pulsing with faint distortions. Every few seconds, the readings trembled, like a heartbeat echoing through stone.
"Spatial anchors steady. Energy turbulence within operational limits," the sealing specialist reported, though his voice betrayed little confidence.
The lights dimmed to emergency amber.
Veterans in the chamber stiffened.
A rift only reacted like that when something on the other side pushed back.
Grandmaster Hale, the strike team's leader, stepped forward as the runic circle beneath his boots flared to life. Broad-shouldered and weathered by decades on the front lines, he carried the calm weight of a man who had walked into nightmares and returned.
"Final checks," he said.
His team moved with practiced precision—no wasted gestures, no chatter.
Two Rune Masters, emitter-frames strapped along their arms, took their positions at the rear. Their task was the most thankless: maintain the stabilization array once inside, even though their bodies were not meant for direct combat. Sweat already glistened along one man's brow.
The sealing specialist—older, thin, and sharp-eyed behind his spectacles—adjusted the crystal veins running along his staff. He was responsible for reinforcing the dimensional layer if the cult's corruption had spread deeper.
Up front, several Grandmaster-level combatants shifted their weight, silent and focused. Nobody underestimated a rift that had already swallowed three reconnaissance squads and returned only scrambled fragments of footage.
Hale glanced at the flickering internal feed: fog, darkness, and the faint impression of something breathing through the mist.
He touched the comm in his ear. "Taurus. Strike team ready."
Taurus's voice came back steady."Proceed. And keep the channel open. We're getting… interference on our end."
Hale's jaw tightened.
Interference. From where?
He didn't have time to ask. The runes surged outward, weaving into a spiraling halo of argent light.
"Team," Hale said quietly. "Step."
They stepped.
The world folded.
The Other Side
Cold hit first—sharp, invasive, sinking straight through armor and into bone.
The Grandmasters exhaled slowly, adjusting their bodies to the foreign chill. The Rune Masters nearly staggered, activating their emitter-frames so the warm, stabilizing flow of uniform energy could push back the void-like cold.
"Array integrity… twenty percent below projections," one Rune Master whispered.
"Make do," Hale murmured.
Mist swirled along the ground like pale, restless fingers. The environment was wrong—no wind, yet the fog crept along the earth. No visible light, yet everything appeared washed-out grey.
The stone beneath them was uneven and fractured like the ruins of some ancient structure. But the cracks faintly pulsed… like veins carrying corrupted light.
"Where are the previous squads' markers?" a front scout asked.
A second Grandmaster knelt and brushed gloved fingers along the stone—then froze.
"They were here," he said softly. "Their anchor-stakes are gone."
Not broken.Not decayed.Gone.
Erased.
The team closed ranks instinctively.
"Movement ahead," someone whispered.
Shapes stirred in the fog—slow, unhurried, confident.
Hale lifted a hand. Silence.
It wasn't beasts.
It was… sound.
A faint chanting.
No—whispering. Multiple voices layered on top of one another, tones shifting in ways no human throat could produce.
The sealing specialist paled. "That's not ambient Rift resonance. Something is channeling through the dimensional seams."
The Rune Masters exchanged a worried glance.
"Direction?" Hale asked.
The chanting deepened, brushing against their ears like cold fingers.
One Rune Master pointed with a shaking hand. "There. Something is drawing the rift inward—compressing it."
They moved.
The mist peeled back in clinging strands like cobwebs dragged unwillingly from their path.
Across a broken stone ridge, the ground dipped into a hollowed clearing.
And in its center, lit by sickly violet glow, stood a structure.
Circular.Too clean.Rising from the stone like a surgical incision.
A ritual dais, carved with symbols that shifted as if alive.
Seven robed figures knelt on it, humming in a deep, rhythmic cadence.
Cultists.
Chains of flowing black mist tethered them to the dais.
But that wasn't what froze the strike team.
Above the dais, suspended like an opened eyelid, hovered a second rift—thin, unstable, bleeding gold and violet strands that writhed like living tendrils.
The chanting surged.
The ground trembled beneath their boots.
The suspended rift pulsed—once.A heartbeat.
And an enormous golden iris flickered open inside the tear, slit pupil contracting sharply.
The same eye that had stared through the first rift days earlier.
Every Grandmaster stiffened.
The Rune Masters stumbled backward, struggling to breathe under the sheer pressure radiating from the gaze.
The golden eye widened. A thin, reverberating hum resonated through the stone, through the air, through their skulls.
It recognizes us.
That collective realization struck them all at once.
Hale steadied his breath. "Prepare to—"
The eye blinked.
The chanting stopped.The cultists' mouths fell open—not in agony, but in worship.
The golden iris narrowed—
And the world convulsed.
The First Strike
"MOVE!" Hale roared.
A shockwave exploded from the suspended rift—silent, invisible, crushing.
Frontline Grandmasters slammed their boots into the stone, barriers flaring and cracking under the enormous pressure.
The Rune Masters screamed as their emitter-frames overloaded with unstable energy.
The sealing specialist drove his staff into the ground, activating a seal—Spatial layers buckled violently around them.
"Taurus!" Hale shouted. "Something is opening a secondary—"
Static shredded the connection.
"…—ke… Ha—e… pull… ba—"
The comm died.
The golden eye brightened, flooding the clearing with oppressive radiance.
Something vast, ancient, and awake pressed against the boundary.
Not trying to emerge.Not yet.
Testing the door.
The cultists' chains snapped one by one, the black mist sinking into their flesh. Their bodies convulsed as violet energy flooded their veins—bones twisting, limbs elongating, flesh reforming.
Hale didn't hesitate.
"Engage!"
They moved like thunder.
A Grandmaster sliced through a mutated torso—only for the flesh to seal itself instantly with a wet hiss.
Another cultist lunged, jaw unhinging toward a Rune Master—Hale intercepted, gauntlet blazing. His punch shattered its skull.
It reformed.Twisting.Smiling through an impossibly warped face.
"Regeneration like this isn't cult modification!" the sealing specialist shouted. "Something is directly empowering them!"
The golden eye blinked.
The air thickened until it felt like moving through syrup.
Rune Masters collapsed to their knees, arrays flickering wildly.
"We can't stabilize—Hale, we can't—!"
The rift above the dais split further.
A soft crack echoed through the clearing—as if something massive were stretching inside too small a space.
They fought with everything they had—discipline, skill, raw strength—but the very world around them vibrated with the rhythm of something breathing.
A slow… ancient… breath.
Then—
The golden eye twitched.
Everything stopped.
Mist froze mid-sway.Cultists halted mid-lunge.Even the corrupted light dimmed.
A voice—not heard, but felt—slid into their minds.
"…Found you."
One Grandmaster staggered, blood running from his nose.
Hale grit his teeth.
Something inside the rift had spoken.
To whom?
To what?
Before anyone could react, the suspended tear convulsed—and a tendril of pure golden energy lashed downward, vaporizing a section of the stone ridge in a burst of molten light.
Several operatives were thrown back, armor cracking.
The strike team was beginning to break.
Hale forced himself upright, vision spinning.
"Fall back—NOW!"
But the suspended rift pulsed again, expanding—
—preparing to open further.
The World Holds Its Breath
Somewhere deep within the rift, a low, resonant sound rolled like distant thunder.
The cultists bowed lower, trembling with fanatic devotion.
The golden eye narrowed one final time.
And the rift… smiled.
Not in shape.Not in expression.
But in intent.
A cold, undeniable message slid into every consciousness present:
"You cannot leave."
The ground split open.
The clearing erupted in blinding gold.