The world spun into a cacophony of pain.
Seyfe's body slammed into a jagged outcropping of corpse-wood, the force snapping the bone-tree like a twig. He didn't even hit the ground—he bounced—rolling and tumbling through thick undergrowth made of limbs and cartilage.
The abomination descended after him with a hiss and a thundering roar, its snake-tail lashing across the trees, uprooting grotesque trunks made of fused torsos and fractured jaws.
Every nerve in Seyfe's body screamed.
His ribs were bruised—possibly cracked—his vision blurred with a mixture of sweat, blood, and the acrid mist hanging in the air.
"Fucking... hell…"
He coughed, his throat raw, lungs burning. Somewhere behind him, the echoform's massive clawed foot hit the earth, shaking the forest floor and stirring another chorus of moans from the embedded mouths in the soil.
Its remaining single glowing green eye locked onto him as if reading every escape route he even considered. Its intelligence now undeniable.
"Rift loops, malformed forests, and now this damned nightmare beast gets smarter every time I cut it."
Seyfe stumbled to his feet, his glove weapon system flickering, damaged from the last impact. He flexed his fingers, trying to stabilize the interface.
Silver Line 1 – Dagger: Functional.Silver Line 2 – Sword: Functional.Silver Line 3 – Spear: Offline.Silver Line 4 – Pistol: Damaged.Silver Line 5 – Sniper: Offline.Back Circle – Shield: Recharging.Palm Plate – Veiler Coating: 63% Integrity.
"Guess we'll have to improvise again…"
The abomination shrieked—a slurry of words stitched together from the dead it had absorbed. Its voice was cracked glass and bile:
"Run, little Veiler. Your breath… is borrowed."
Then it charged.
Seyfe dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the impact of the beast's massive claws, which tore open a trench behind him. The echoform's black tongue slithered out, attempting to coil around his ankle.
He slashed it with the dagger mode, earning a howl.
"Yeah? I borrowed time. But I'm the one who pays it back."
He sprinted across the forest, weaving between twisted trunks. The abomination gave chase—faster than before, more calculated, smarter. Each movement was now a learned counter from the last encounter.
Seyfe reached a clearing of corpse-grass, and behind him, the sky cracked—a glimpse of the rift still holding, flickering above like a scar in the sky. He needed to find his momentum, find the opening.
Even as his body throbbed in agony, he muttered through gritted teeth, "This bastard's evolving. But so do I."
He turned, sliding into the stance—Veiler Coating now at 75%.
The echoform paused, then grinned with its maw of shark teeth and hissed:
"Show me."
And Seyfe did. He activated the sword line, the weapon shimmering to life in his hand as he launched forward—
A new round began.
Seyfe gripped the sword line as the silver blade extended from his glove with a fluid shimmer. The air hummed with pressure, the kind you only felt before lightning struck.
The abomination's three-story form loomed ahead, now leaner, faster—its arms stitched from a dozen beasts twitching with tension. Its green eye dilated, tracking every flex in Seyfe's footwork.
Then it moved.
It lunged, tail of writhing serpents lashing forward like spears. Seyfe twisted beneath the first strike, ducking just as a black-mouthed snake hissed past him, grazing his shoulder and melting part of the Veiler Coating with acidic venom.
He responded by kicking off a fleshy trunk, twisting mid-air and slashing downward—cleaving two serpents clean off. The creature reeled, shrieking.
"Learn faster, then," Seyfe muttered.
The abomination adapted immediately.
Its tongue snapped outward like a whip, this time wide, coated in glistening black ooze. Seyfe pivoted, but the tongue grazed his side, launching him into a chunk of collapsed organ-stone wall. Ribs screamed again.
He rolled as the echoform crashed where he once stood, a shockwave of meat and rot erupting from its impact.
Shield mode: active.
Seyfe threw up the back-circle interface on instinct. A shimmering barrier formed just as the creature stomped, its massive hind legs crushing the ground and sending a wave of force that cracked the earth like porcelain.
The shield fractured, but held.
Seyfe roared and launched himself upward, riding the rebound force. Mid-air, he flicked his fingers—
Silver Line 3 – Spear mode: Restored.
The blade extended down his arm as he plunged it into the creature's shoulder, driving the tip through a cluster of green pipes pumping fluid.
The abomination screamed again—this time in words:
"HURT… YOU LEARNED TOO."
It swatted him away with its beast-arm—slam—and Seyfe landed hard, skidding across a field of skulls and bone fragments.
He coughed blood. One knee buckled. "I'm not done."
Palm Plate – Veiler Coating: 89%.
He pressed his palm to the ground—rerouting energy. His coating surged, sealing wounds, boosting reflexes. The suit shimmered silver across his form.
The beast charged again, and Seyfe ran straight toward it.
Final tactic.
He dashed past the echoform, dragging his sword across its thigh, slicing deep, then slid beneath it. As he passed under, he activated Silver Line 4 – Pistol and fired straight up, three rounds into the exposed belly.
The beast roared and dropped to a knee.
Seyfe jumped onto its back, scaling the writhing pipes, dodging the snapping heads of the snake-tail. He reached the upper spine.
"Third time's the charm, you bastard!"
With both hands, he stabbed the spear directly into the back of its skull, twisting—
—green fluid exploded upward in a burst of acidic mist.
The creature screamed, every voice it ever consumed wailing in chorus, until the echoform buckled, collapsed onto its side, and shuddered violently.
Its green eye dimmed.
But Seyfe didn't move. He stood atop the corpse, panting, every muscle aching.
"You stay dead."
The ground rumbled. Not from the echoform.
From beneath.
Seyfe staggered off its body just as the earth gave way, a rift portal tearing open, drawing in chunks of dead forest, twisted roots, and—
his body.
"No—shit—no, no—!"
He clawed at the ground, but the pull was immense.
And then the void took him.
The crimson sky cracked.
The moment the earth beneath them trembled, Jerome spun around, eyes narrowing behind his visor. Beside him, Saline steadied herself, her rifle already aimed upward.
The twisted, corpse-laden forest they had spent minutes navigating was beginning to ripple—as if the entire world were convulsing.
Then came the rift.
It opened without grace—a jagged tear of dark emerald light, arcs of lightning shooting out and disintegrating nearby trees. The screaming roots shriveled at its presence, as though even they feared what was coming.
"The rift's destabilizing!" Saline called out, her voice sharp. "Something's wrong!"
Jerome gritted his teeth. "Back out—now. HQ won't be able to extract us if it collapses."
They sprinted, their boots crunching over bone grass and twitching vines as they made for the tear. The distortion around the portal pulsed erratically—the space twisted like molten glass. One misstep, and they'd be ripped into layers unknown.
Jerome leapt through first, rolling out onto the sandstone cliffs of the Grand Canyon's overlook, the desert air biting cold in contrast to the festering heat they had escaped.
Saline landed beside him, panting. "We're out!"
And then they both looked up.
A shadow was falling.
At first, they couldn't make it out—but it grew clearer.
A body.
Arms limp, legs ragged.
Then a flash of silver glinting under the sun.
"Seyfe!" Jerome shouted, dashing toward the fall site.
Saline's eyes widened. "He's coming in hot!"
Seyfe was spiraling through the sky, smoke trailing behind his scorched Veiler coating, pieces of his glove interface fractured, the silver cracks glowing faintly. He had clearly been through hell.
He hit the ground hard—a sickening thud across the brittle rock, rolling several meters before slamming into a boulder. Dust exploded on impact.
Jerome was already kneeling beside him.
"Seyfe—can you hear me?"
Seyfe coughed blood, blinking open one eye.
"…Fuck that thing," he muttered.
Saline came over, checking his vitals quickly. "He's alive. Weak, but breathing."
Jerome looked at the still-glowing rift behind them, then down at Seyfe. "What the hell were you even fighting in there?"
Seyfe's head lolled slightly. A half-laugh escaped his mouth.
"…It learned how to speak."
They both looked at each other. That was all the confirmation they needed.
A new echoform threat had evolved—and it nearly dragged Seyfe into oblivion.
Jerome activated his comms. "Aki, we have Seyfe. Extraction needed. Now."
The skies above them crackled once more—but this time, the rift began to close.
The lights in Overseer HQ's Command Chamber buzzed under the strain of a full-alert status. Holographic projections filled the center table — layer maps overlapping, rift readings fluctuating, personnel tags blinking yellow or red.
Aki Varess stood tall amidst the chaos, her hands folded behind her back, coat still sharp despite the heat of tension around her.
"Update," she ordered.
A junior analyst stammered, "The rift at the Grand Canyon has destabilized twice. We lost visual feeds within the last sixty seconds, but Jerome and Saline successfully extracted with Seyfe."
"Status on the anomaly?" Aki asked, turning toward the circular display projecting the rift's most recent pulse signature.
"Unknown. The signal inside the rift is shifting... almost like it's mimicking data patterns," the analyst replied, confusion on his face.
Aki's jaw clenched. She tapped a control node, bringing up the combat logs from Seyfe's gloves, transmitted the moment he breached the outer veil.
The readings were erratic: environmental distortions, inconsistent gravitational zones, emotional resonance spikes—and one abnormal phrase written in bold Veiler red:
"ECHOFORM: STAGE 3 INTELLIGENCE — VOCAL CONFIRMATION"
Her eyes narrowed. "It spoke."
Another handler near the console muttered, "That's not just evolution… that's cognition."
Aki spun around, addressing the room. "Seal all access around the Grand Canyon Rift site. I want a full environmental quarantine established. Get me a Mobile Containment Unit on standby and initiate Black Layer Protocol."
There was a pause—some of the cadets hesitated.
"Now!" she barked, snapping the silence.
Everyone moved.
She opened her private comms. "Seyfe's survival confirms contact with a high-grade anomaly. I want his full memory thread extracted and reviewed in the Recollection Bay. Medical can stabilize him on the way."
"Yes, Handler Varess," the comms tech confirmed.
Aki stared again at the pulsing echoform signature that still blinked faintly on-screen. An intelligent echoform capable of tracking through unstable realms? That was beyond Veiler documentation.
"Send word to the other Handler Units," she said, her tone calm but cold. "This isn't isolated. I want all Realm Traversal Cadets flagged for psychological review and location syncing. If one evolved, there could be more."
A long silence passed.
Then Aki added, almost under her breath:"...And if Seyfe made it out—we're going to need him back in the field."