Ren died.
He felt it happen. He felt the heat of a dying star peel the skin off his bones. He heard the corrupted noise of a world shattering into a billion shards of static. He felt the absolute, crushing silence of the Void swallow him whole.
Then he gasped.
Air. Cold, dry, dusty air filled his lungs.
Ren bolted upright. His hands clawed at his throat, expecting to find burnt flesh. Instead, he felt the rough fabric of a standard military collar.
"I am alive?"
He blinked. His vision swam in a sea of nausea.
The sky above was not burning. It was a bruised violet, streaked with veins of grey clouds. Massive, jagged rock pillars pierced the horizon. They hummed with a low, vibrating drone that rattled his teeth.
He knew this sound. This was the Whispering Canyon.
Ren looked at his hands. They were shaking violently. They were unscarred. Clean. These were the hands of a rookie who had never held a weapon, let alone silenced a god.
"A dream," he whispered. His voice cracked. "It was just a nightmare."
He tried to stand, but his legs felt like jelly. He stumbled and caught himself against a boulder. The rock felt warm, vibrating against his palm like a living thing.
"Initializing..."
The voice did not come from the canyon. It came from inside his skull. It sounded like a corrupted audio file, skipping and distorted.
"User recognized. Timeline error. Memory deleted."
Ren spun around, searching the empty canyon. "Who is there? Show yourself!"
Nothing but the wind howling through the stone arches.
Suddenly, a blue translucent window flickered into existence in front of his eyes. It was glitching, the text bleeding like wet ink on a broken monitor.
[SYSTEM REBOOT]
[CURRENT STATUS: AMNESIAC]
[COMBAT EXPERIENCE: CORRUPTED FILE]
[SYNC RATE: 1%]
"What is this?" Ren swiped at the air. His hand passed through the light. "Am I hallucinating? Did I hit my head?"
Snap.
A twig broke behind him.
Ren did not think. He did not turn to look. He did not assess the threat.
His body moved on its own.
His right hand shot out, snatching a rusted iron rod lying in the sand. His hips twisted, pivoting his weight. He thrust the rod backward, plunging it under his own armpit and stabbing blindly into the empty air behind him.
Without realizing it, he channeled a microscopic vibration into the iron.
Squelch.
The resistance was wet and heavy.
Ren froze. He stared at his own arm extended behind him. He had not told it to do that. It was a reflex as natural as breathing.
He slowly turned his head.
Impaled on the end of the rusted rod was a Screamer.
The beast was a nightmare of biology and static. It looked like a hairless wolf, but its flesh was glitching, phasing in and out of reality. Its jaw was unhinged to reveal rows of vibrating needle-teeth. It had been mid-pounce, silent and invisible, seconds away from tearing his throat out.
Now, it hung limp on the rod and dissolved into grey dust.
Ren released the weapon and scrambled backward. "I did not see it. How did I know?"
He looked at his hands again. They felt alien. They felt dangerous.
[CORRUPTED FILE: PARTIAL RECOVERY]
[SOURCE: MUSCLE MEMORY]
"Muscle memory?" Ren whispered. "I have never fought a monster in my life."
Clap. Clap. Clap.
A slow, rhythmic applause echoed through the canyon.
Ren jerked his head up, scanning the cliffs. "Who is that?"
The applause seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It drifted on the wind, hollow and mocking.
"Draft 101," a voice whispered. It sounded smooth, cultured, and utterly bored. "A bit sloppy on the execution, Conductor. Your tempo is entirely off. You used to be more elegant."
"Show yourself!" Ren shouted, grabbing the rusted rod again. He spun in a circle. "Where are you?"
"Everywhere," the voice crooned. "Nowhere. I am just the critic in the cheap seats. Do not mind me. Focus on your cue."
"Cue?"
"The scout," the voice whispered. "She dies in five seconds. If you miss your entrance, the play ends early, and I will have to start over."
"What scout?" Ren demanded. "Stop playing games!"
"Three. Two. One."
A loud, metallic twang pierced the air, followed immediately by a frustrated curse.
It came from the north, over the ridge. It was not a scream of terror. It was a shout of pure, unfiltered annoyance.
Ren flinched. He did not know who was shouting. He did not know this terrain. He did not know if the voice in his head was real or a symptom of madness.
But his legs knew what to do.
Run.
The command surged through his nervous system and overrode his fear.
Ren took off.
He did not run like a stumbling rookie. He moved like water. He sprinted toward the cliff face, and instead of stopping, he kicked off the stone to vault upward. He landed on a narrow ledge, pivoted, and jumped again.
He was scaling the vertical wall with impossible speed.
[CORRUPTED FILE: PASSIVE SKILL ACTIVATED]
[GHOST STEP: PROFICIENCY UNKNOWN]
Ren watched the ground fall away beneath him, terror gripping his mind. What is happening to me? Why can I do this?
He crested the ridge and saw it.
Below him in a small clearing, a massive Reverb Alpha had a lone cadet cornered. The beast was a bear-sized monstrosity with a biological speaker fused to its face, radiating low-frequency shockwaves.
The cadet was a girl with silver hair, wearing the matte-black uniform of a canyon scout. She was not cowering. She was on one knee, violently trying to force a snapped bowstring back onto her Whisper-String compound bow with her bare hands and teeth, glaring at the monster with absolute disgust.
"Of course," she muttered, dodging a heavy swipe that shattered the rock right next to her. "The one day I do not pack a spare actuator. Fantastic."
Ren felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest. A name surfaced in his mind, unbidden, like a ghost haunting his own brain.
Lin.
He did not know her. But a phantom memory screamed that if she died, he would never forgive himself.
Ren drew a breath. The air around him seemed to shudder. He did not have a high-frequency blade. He did not have a kinetic gauntlet.
He jumped.
As he fell toward the monster, he realized with a terrifying certainty that he did not need a weapon.
He was the weapon.