She didn’t answer because she was busy stitching the room. Threads anchored at twelve points as if she’d been born in cathedrals. She threw a pulse—barely a pulse—but the dust-snow I’d watched up top exploded outward across the nave in a glitter wave that settled on everything and started to glow—faint blue on stone, brighter on Jax, brightest on . The Grief-Singer stayed invisible to it—no glimr on the cloth, none on the staff—but the air around him... thickened. The dust refused to land there.
"There," she said. "Any place the thread can’t sit is false or—"
The wall to her right closed in and beca a mouth.
She fell through it.
For a second my stomach fell into a different elevator shaft.
I Transit-jumped without looking.
[ Lightning Transit — Jump 2/7 ]
[ Pulse: 2 m • Stun: 0.25 s ]
I ca out inside the mouth. Not a taphor; a corridor that had decided it was throat. The walls flexed with a swallow reflex. Hana stood waist-deep in stone up to her stomach in a way that should not have allowed living. Her filants flashed panic white.
Darkharness turned into a wedge on my left side and a pry bar on my right. My ribs scread. I jamd Fangpiercer into a seam that pretended it was tongue and cut.
[ Fangpiercer Critical ]
[ Armor Penetration: 30% ]
The seam opened like soone rembered physics.
Hana staggered into . Lotus Thread collapsed around us, then hardened.
"Sorry," she said, voice small. "He copied a hallway. It felt like a hallway."
"He is a hallway," I said, managing a not-laugh. "All misdirection."
"Where’s Jax?" she asked.
I Transit-pinged back to the nave.
[ Lightning Transit — Jump 3/7 ]
Jax was where I didn’t want him—flat on his back under the ceiling. The ceiling had decided it was floor and vice versa. He grinned like an idiot who had t gravity in a parking lot. The cleaver stayed glued to his hands because the Grav-Edge preferred loyal relationships.
"Hey boss," he said. "Up is down."
"Get ready to fall," I said.
"Copy that."
I jumped again, grabbed his collar, and yanked us back toward gravity’s good side. The pulse from my Transit staggered three shadow-shapes that were not shadows but sound given edges. They tried to cut Jax anyway. Lotus flared and took so.
"Thanks, Hana!" he yelled into the mic like it was a party.
"Please do not yell in a song mage’s house," Hana hissed.
The Grief-Singer had not moved. He humd in one long syllable. Water climbed pillars against gravity. The cloth folds over his mouth vibrated in waves that felt like numbers inexperienced with rcy.
Jax coughed. "Slls like you fried the air again."
"Works like one," I said.
"Good. ans it’s working." I said.
The Singer shifted. He didn’t smile, but the humidity did.
The air around him brightened like heat ghosts above road tar. Shapes pulled out of the shimr one by one until there were twelve of them, forming a ring.
Faces I knew.Faces I couldn’t afford to.
Mara. Selene. Darius. Varga. Lucien. Elise. Jax. Hana. My parents.
And .
And—Mikey.
Not Mikey now. Mikey before: cocky grin, shield too big, still talking rent like it was a fairy tale.
He lifted a hand. "Yo. You finally made A-rank?"
I hated him for a heartbeat. Then I hated for letting that sting.
Illusion. Illusion. Illusion.
The circle started to hum—not music, just mory turned to noise. Each voice used sothing real.
Mara’s lips moved first. "You really thought I loved you? You were just a project, Ethan. A warm body that healed fast."
Selene smirked. "Small dick, bad pacing, worse stamina. You lasted longer crying than you ever did training."
My father’s voice, calm as a paycheck. "Should’ve stayed in the factory, boy. At least the machines break for a reason."
My mother, soft and sharp in the sa breath. "You don’t even call anymore. You die sowhere every week and can’t bother to say hello?"
Darius next. "You think you’re special because you got lucky once? The Guild eats miracles for breakfast."
Mikey’s grin twisted. "Still pretending you saved anyone, man? You left in that pit."
Each word landed wrong—like punches with the timing of truth.Each voice ca from my own throat first before theirs echoed it back.
Lucien followed, quiet and kind in a way that hurt more than cruelty. "Steady hands, Ethan. You shake when it matters. Always have."He handed a mory like a scalpel, and it fit my palm too well.
Every note hooked just there—behind the sternum, where sha lives.
Lotus shared the hurt through the link. It wasn’t enough. The song wasn’t pain; it was permission to drown. My breathing clocked wrong. My thoughts stepped out for a smoke.
Then another shape walked out of .
. But not now.The F-Rank . The one who died in that dungeon before the System woke.Blood on his jaw, cracked dagger in his hand. His smile was worse than pity.
"You never made it out, trash," he said. "That ogre flattened you. Everything after—Mara, the skills, the power—it’s hell. You’re still rotting in the dark. Just a loser pretending he mattered."
I wanted to say no, but my lungs forgot how.
"You’re still that scared porter begging for rent money. You’ll always be him. You’re not a hero—you’re the punchline."
My knees hit the flooded floor. I didn’t rember falling.
The sound burrowed behind my eyes. It felt right, almost honest."Yes," I said, voice cracking. "I’m trash. I’m nothing. I’m—"
A slap of pain hit through the Heartlink. Not my pain. Hana’s.
"Ethan," she snarled, voice ragged in my ear. "That’s not you. That’s him."
The world staggered. Lotus Thread flared—blue light cutting the illusion clean through my vision.
The sha flipped. Beca heat.Beca anger.
My laugh ca out rough. "You picked the wrong trauma to remix."
Darkharness tightened around my arms, plates locking like a promise. Fangpiercer humd alive in my grip.
"Your song’s off-key," I said, stepping forward. "Let’s fix that."
"Ethan?" Hana’s voice.
"I’m good," I lied. "Don’t move."
"I’m already moving," she said, and the floor shifted two ters left without asking her for an opinion.
Jax roared. He prefers gravity to philosophy. He charged the nearest not-Lucien, and the not-Lucien opened like a door into a hallway that wasn’t there and then was. The Grav-Edge sank into false floor. The pull ate real floor. The Singer tilted his head like a mathematician watching a dog play chess.
Ti to cheat.
"Transit," I whispered, and the world obliged.
[ Lightning Transit — Jump 4/7 ]
[ Pulse: 2 m • Stun: 0.25 s ]
I blinked behind the Singer and he was already behind because he declines participation in rules. The staff swung without wind-up. Darkharness flared across my back in a plate that drank force and spat it into my calves. I flew forward instead of dying where I stood.
I cut through the fake-Varga because disrespect keeps alive. Fangpiercer bit, Fogbite kissed.
[ Fangpiercer Critical ]
[ Fogbite — Chill Pressure Stagger (1 stack) ]
The illusion bled black and then turned into air that slled like old roses and cheap rot. The Singer’s head cocked. The cloth over his mouth wrinkled like maybe this had been impolite.
"Ethan," Mara said behind —my na turned into a soft, warm place. The place I keep on purpose.
"Don’t," I said again to nobody.
The Grief-Singer pushed his staff into the floor. The sound fell out of the world.
Not silence. Silencing.
Hana’s threads drooped with a whimper. Jax’s Grav-Edge went from hum to the bare ugly ring of cheap tal. The entire world went out of tune and flatlined.
Absolute Regeneration responded with clinical indifference.
[ Absolute Regeneration Activated ]
[ Cognitive Drift Detected — Stabilizing. ]
The System poured cold through the at behind my eyes and snapped three false senses like rubber bands. Pain whiplashed in, then vanished as if embarrassed it had knocked.
I could breathe again. The air tasted like damp pennies and a hospital hallway.
"Again," I told myself, and didn’t know if I ant or the trick.
Jump.
[ Lightning Transit — Jump 5/7 ]
[ Pulse: 2 m • Stun: 0.25 s ]
[ Chain Cooldown: ticking... ]
Transit pulse tapped the Singer’s cloth and made it ripple. The illusion ring faltered. Hana’s shawl seized the half-second like a thief and ran with it—her filants surged, stitching anchors across pillars at a speed that should’ve burned. Every point she sealed snapped the room a little truer. Three of the twelve false bodies flickered to bone and fell.
Jax yanked the Grav-Edge free with a grunt, then swung from the hip. The Pull field grabbed half the nave and said "co here." It did. Water, stone dust, mory ghosts—everything went toward the cleaver—then hit the blade and beca a twelve-ter arc of fuck-you that erased a pew and a pillar and a chunk of false floor.
The Singer skated sideways, barely a flex of cloth, then sang a single perfect pitch that made gravity forget itself. Jax’s feet left the ground. He hung in that pitch’s hand like an ornant.
Hana yelled his na and the Lotus Thread tried to share the weight. The pitch did not care about cloth.
"Hey," I said. "That’s mine."
I set my Auto-Recall.
[ Anchor Recall — Ard (First Impact) ]
[ Range: Safe ]
Then I jumped for the sixth ti.
[ Lightning Transit — Jump 6/7 ]
I ca down on the Singer’s shoulder and found purchase where purchase did not want to be found—right under the cloth at the jaw and neck. Fangpiercer dug in. I didn’t stab. I carved, shallow, a disrespect line that said I know your seam now.
[ Fangpiercer Critical ]
[ Armor Penetration: 30% ]
[ Fogbite — Stacks: 2 (Chill Stagger strengthens) ]
The cloth hissed. Not cloth. Skin pretending to be cloth. The sound went sideways into anger.
My chain hit seven whether I wanted it to or not.
[ Lightning Transit — Jump 7/7 ]
[ Chain Cooldown: 5 s ]
I had to land.
The Singer knew it. His staff ca around in the arc every novice is taught and nobody ever uses because it’s too obvious—unless you can bend the air into concrete and the man in front of you has five seconds of slow death.
I braced for a rib-remodel.
Sothing cracked in my ear.
Not static. Not Mara.
A voice. Calm. asured. Too close.
"Ethan Cross."
It didn’t co from the comm.It ca from behind thought—like soone spoke through my spine and the rest of was just along for the ride.
My chest locked up. "Okay. That’s new."
"You level too slowly."
"What—" My tongue caught. "What does that even—who is this?"
"You have power chained by fear. You hold back to feel human. Stop."
Every word vibrated straight through bone. The world went dead silent—the Singer’s hum vanished mid-note like it was afraid to interrupt.
I pressed a palm against my temple. "If this is another hallucination, I swear to God I’m filing a ticket."
"There is a plan for you.""A great wound is opening between worlds.""You will not survive it as you are."
My brain scrambled for a System log, a warning, sothing—but there was nothing. Just that voice. Too deep to be human. Too exact to be anything else.
"Not really a good ti," I hissed. "In the middle of sothing."
"There will be no good tis soon.""Awaken what sleeps. Or everything burns."
The words hit like static under my ribs—hot, cold, too much.
"Wait—who the hell are you?" I tried to yell, but it ca out like a whisper to a thunderstorm.
No answer. Just silence.
Like it had never been there.Like maybe it was never supposed to be.
Then sound slamd back in—the Song, the water, the breath.The Singer’s staff was already halfway down when I realized I’d been standing still too long.
Darkharness blood across my forearm like liquid night.
[ Darkharness — Morphic Fra (Strike-Extension) ]
[ Neural Link: Active ]
I let the plate flow past my knuckles into a hooked gauntlet with an edge like a foundry’s last mistake. The Singer’s staff scythed down. I t it with the wrong hand, not the dagger, and the morphic fra threw sparks like a wedding in a bad neighborhood.
The hit still knocked into a pillar, because the Singer had the decency to be physics and blasphemy. Sothing in my shoulder tried to file a complaint.
[ Absolute Regeneration Activated ][ Major trauma detected: AC joint sprain. Cooldown: 4 s. ]
"Four seconds," I said. "I can not-die four seconds."
"I have two hands," Jax grunted from the air because the pitch still owned him. "Use one?"
Hana saw it before I did. Her thread licked his wrist and heartbeat-latched.
[ Heartlink — Shared Load (15%) ]
Jax dropped ten centiters. Enough to breathe. Not enough to move.
The Singer took a step and his shadow took three. The song shifted from permission to pity. The pity made want to kneel.
"Nah," I said, and spat red. "Knees are rented."
The cool snapped through with Regeneration’s end-ding.
[ Absolute Regeneration Restored ][ Injuries recovered: AC joint sprain. ]
I took my first real breath in six misses. Then I did the only thing that ever works.
I made the fight smaller.
"Mask," I whispered to myself. "Seam at jaw. Spine ten degrees back. Don’t care about the rest."
I walked toward him while the world shouted everything else at —the choir of my dead, the warmth of mory, the aching weight of people stacked under tarp back at Command Row.
The Singer’s pitch wobbled once as if surprised that soone could pick one thread out of an entire knot.
I grinned at him with my worst teeth. "Red flag: you rely on attention."
He sang, full chest, and the pillars groaned like ships. The ceiling said it was a floor again and then forgot how to be either. The nave lted and ca back wrong; pews beca lungs; lungs beca pews with breath.
I jumped without Transit.
Reviews
All reviews (0)