The sky cracked again.
A tear stretched across the clouds like a wound in reality, bleeding violet lightning and howling winds. Buildings groaned. Glass shattered. The ground itself trembled as if the world wanted to rip itself apart.
Valen Creed stood in the middle of it.
His chest burned. His fingers trembled. Shadows coiled around his arms like smoke, wrapping and pulling. The Echo was awake now — half-formed, wild, and hungry.
He hadn't asked for it.
He didn't understand it.
But it was his.
And he needed it now.
The Rift had opened wider than before.
And from that chasm in the sky came the monsters.
The First Horde
They dropped like stones — misshapen creatures with too many limbs and mouths that split sideways. Black liquid steamed off their bodies as they hit the ground, crawling on all fours before rising like puppets.
There were at least twenty.
Valen could hear survivors screaming from a collapsed bus behind him. Children. Civilians. Trapped.
He could run.
He should.
But the look in Lira's eyes stopped him — a girl he'd just met, but one of the few people who hadn't lost her soul yet.
Valen breathed in once, slow and deep.
The Echo pulsed against his spine, crawling into his chest, his arms, his bones.
A blade formed in his right hand.
Black. Silent. Flickering like dying flame.
His voice was flat. Cold.
"Stay behind me."
The Battle Begins
The monsters lunged — a wave of claws, screeches, and teeth.
Valen moved.
His body didn't feel normal. His legs were faster. His reactions sharper. But it wasn't perfect. The Echo was wild. Unstable.
Still, it was enough.
The first slash carved clean through two monsters. Their bodies split apart, vanishing into ash.
Another lunged from the left.
Valen ducked, spun, drove the blade upward through its chest.
Screams rang in his ears. Blood splashed across his face.
He didn't stop.
Not this time.
He was done being prey.
Back-to-Back With Lira
"Behind you!" Lira shouted.
Valen turned just in time. A four-legged crawler leapt from a broken car. He raised his arm to block.
It bit down.
He screamed — pain lancing through his forearm. The Echo surged in retaliation, sending out a shock of black energy that blasted the creature off.
Lira tossed him a metal rod — snapped from a street sign.
He caught it with his injured hand, stabbing it through the head of another monster trying to crawl over the bus.
More were coming.
They weren't stopping.
Lira was breathing hard now, knuckles white around a broken pipe she'd picked up.
"You fight like you've done this before," she panted.
Valen didn't answer.
How could he explain?
That he'd fought these things in another life. That he'd died at the hands of one far worse. That this was his second chance.
The Echo Evolves
The pain in his arm burned white hot.
Blood spilled.
But the Echo responded.
The blade in his right hand twitched — then changed.
It split into two curved daggers, sleek and vicious, connected by a chain of shadow.
Valen stared at them.
The Echo is evolving.
He didn't question it.
He moved.
Whipping the blades in wide arcs, he became a blur of motion. One dagger slashed, the other followed. He yanked the chain, wrapping it around a monster's neck, pulling hard — snapping bone.
A crawler tried to flee.
Valen launched a dagger through its back, then called it back to his hand like it was alive.
Lira could only stare.
"Who… what are you?"
He didn't answer.
Because right then, the ground split open.
The Greater Spawn
It wasn't over.
The Rift pulsed — and something massive emerged.
It was twice as tall as a man. Thick armored plates covered its body like volcanic rock. Its head was a skull, no eyes, just a hole where sound poured out like static.
A Greater Spawn.
Valen remembered these.
They killed battalions.
They were unstoppable.
Not for me. Not this time.
His heart pounded.
He stepped forward alone.
The blade reformed into a long, jagged sword — humming with a low, deadly sound.
The monster roared.
Valen answered it with silence.
The Fight for the Bus Survivors
The creature charged, slamming into cars and smashing concrete as it came.
Valen ran straight at it.
They collided in the middle of the street — beast against blade.
Valen slid low, slashed across its leg. Sparks. No cut.
He rolled to the side, barely avoiding a crushing arm.
Up close, it was like fighting a wall.
But then…
He saw it.
A crack beneath the chest plate. Faint. Small.
A weak point.
He leapt, blade reversing in his grip, and drove it toward the gap—
—only for the monster to grab him mid-air.
It squeezed.
Ribs cracked. Blood poured from Valen's mouth.
Not yet. Not now. Not again.
The Echo reacted.
A blast of black energy exploded outward, ripping the monster's hand apart.
Valen dropped, hit the ground, rolled, and came up swinging.
This time, he buried the blade into the crack.
All the way in.
The monster froze.
Its scream warped the air.
Then it collapsed in a heap of steaming black goo.
Dead.
For real.
Silence After the Storm
Smoke.
Ash.
Silence.
Valen dropped to his knees, panting.
His body was shaking again.
Not from fear.
But from exhaustion.
Lira ran to his side, helping him up.
He looked at the bus — the people peeking out, terrified.
They'd been saved.
By him.
Someone who shouldn't be here.
Someone from the future.
He turned away.
The Echo faded.
The pain came back full force.
But he didn't cry out.
Didn't stumble.
He walked.
End Scene
Lira spoke quietly behind him.
"You're not normal. You're something else."
Valen paused.
Not turning back.
"I'm something that was supposed to die."
And he walked into the broken city, shadows curling around his shoulders, the Echo sleeping beneath his skin… for now.
But this was only the beginning.
The world hadn't seen anything yet.