Location: The Heart of the Outer Drift Rupture
Time: [Aetherium Core: Suppressed / Vital Sync: Below 30% / Emergency Override: Standby]
Ren's hand left the tower wall.
No reply.
No glyphs.
Nothing.
Just this feeling—
something was wrong.
Not mystery wrong.
Predator wrong.
The kind of wrong that made his spine twitch and his skin feel three seconds behind the rest of his body.
REN (weakly):
"…Something's coming."
The air grew thick.
Heavy.
The floor beneath him rippled — like the whole city exhaled at once.
From above—
A shimmer.
A shadow.
Something fell.
Fast.
Bladed.
Lethal.
REN (blinking):
"…Oh no—"
His legs didn't respond.
He couldn't move.
He was too slow.
Too wrecked from the Gatewatcher's fight.
He tried to roll—
Failed.
A flash of metal streaked toward his chest.
But before it hit—
The world bent.
Reality tilted.
A black-gold sigil roared to life across his body—
And Gravity's voice exploded through him.
GRAVITY (furious):
"IDIOT."
Everything stopped.
Literally.
Ren's vision flickered black.
Then—
His body moved without permission.
Legs twisted.
Arms flared.
The portal ripped open midair — like a black tear in the bones of the world.
REN (inside his own head):
"W-What the hell are you doing?!"
GRAVITY (calm now, cold):
"Saving your stupid ass.
You almost stepped into a multi-layered kill box."
They vanished—
The whole scene collapsing as the portal snapped shut behind them.
They reappeared in a dim, frozen space — somewhere between timelines.
No sky. No stars.
Just a cold nothingness.
Ren's body dropped like dead weight.
He hit the floor, groaning.
REN (panting):
"I… I was close…"
GRAVITY (no mercy):
"You were dead, Ren."
Ren coughed.
Felt the sting of pressure fading from his chest.
The Aetherium Core rebooted slowly.
But everything still felt off.
REN:
"You said it was a trap.
What kind?"
GRAVITY (pacing):
"That city wasn't real.
It was a memory maze — built by something smarter than you, and older than me.
Every answer you wanted was a distraction to keep you still long enough for the death-constructs to finish loading."
GRAVITY:
"That tower you touched? It was a trigger glyph.
A fake memory channel.
It was syncing your neural pathways to a looping reality compression field."
REN (staring):
"You mean… I was about to get erased?"
GRAVITY:
"No.
Worse.
You were about to become a new Gatewatcher."
FROST (suddenly appearing beside them):
"…Holy shit."
BLAZE (flickering into form):
"That whole place was a factory, wasn't it?"
GRAVITY (nodding):
"For Riftborn replacements. Even Space and Time were fooled."
Suddenly, Time appeared — hair tangled, face pale.
TIME (shaking):
"I was still analyzing the tower when you touched it.
I didn't even see the trap in time."
SPACE (appearing in pieces):
"The coordinates weren't real. The entire city was coded like a gravity sinkhole — set to collapse the moment the Core tried to speak again."
Ren sat up.
Still breathing.
Still alive.
But shaken.
REN (quietly):
"…Then where's the real truth?"
A long pause.
Then—
Gravity answered.
GRAVITY (low, steady, brutal):
"There isn't one."
REN (blinking):
"What…?"
GRAVITY:
"There is no truth in the Drift Rupture.
Everything you've seen since entering that place?
Lies.
Fabricated. Layered. Programmed.
The Core couldn't see it because it wasn't built to question it."
FROST (softly):
"We were baited."
SPACE (arms crossed):
"Reality was shaped to look like a mystery — when it was just a loop. A story with no end, meant to trap you inside it."
BLAZE (whispering):
"So we were never supposed to find anything in that city."
GRAVITY:
"Correct.
You were meant to stay there until it remade you."
Ren fell silent.
The weight of it hit harder than the Gatewatcher's final blow.
He clenched his fists.
REN:
"Then who the hell set it up?"
That's when the air shimmered.
A slow ripple of presence — like time turned its head.
And stepping out of a crack in the void—
The Old Man.
Same calm eyes. Same long coat.
Same faint grin like he always knew what was coming.
OLD MAN:
"Good question."
BLAZE (glaring):
"Wait— you."
FROST:
"He's the one who gave you that weird room on Ka'rath'Mar, remember?"
REN (jaw clenched):
"You.
You gave me Arix.
You gave me the glyphs.
The room. The leads."
OLD MAN (nodding):
"And you've used them well.
But you've gotten cocky, Riftborn."
Ren's eye twitched.
REN:
"So what, you're gonna tell me you planned all this?"
OLD MAN (shrugging):
"Planned? No.
Anticipated? Definitely.
You were never meant to reach this far this fast."
He took a step forward.
And suddenly—
Ren felt the weight of him.
Not power.
Control.
The kind that didn't come from magic or Core fragments.
But from knowing things Ren didn't.
OLD MAN:
"You want real answers, Ren?
Then meet me where it started."
He smiled faintly.
OLD MAN (firm):
"Come back to Ka'rath'Mar.
My place. No illusions. No bait.
Just you. Me. And everything you thought you understood."
Then he turned—
and vanished.
No portal. No light.
Just gone, like he walked behind a curtain no one else could see.
REN (after a long beat):
"…Okay.
That just made this personal."
AETHERIUM CORE (softly rebooting):
> LOCATION SHIFT: RECOMMENDED
> 11TH PLANET – KA'RATH'MAR – COORDINATES RESTORED
> USER ALERT: UNKNOWN PROTOCOL ATTACHED TO OLD MAN'S SIGNATURE
FROST:
"You really going back?"
REN (nodding, exhausted but focused):
"Hell yeah I am.
I'm done playing scavenger.
Time to knock on the door of the bastard who started all this."