Sarina's body skidded across the asphalt, the friction tearing through her tactical gear. She let out a sharp, ragged screech as she finally came to a halt.
Get up, she said to herself, her vision swimming. Move or die.
She tried to push herself up, but a sharp pain shot through her spine. Gritting her teeth, she managed to sit upright, her hands trembling as they reached behind her back. She felt a warmth that wasn't energy. When she pulled her hand away, her palm was slick with deep, crimson blood.
The shock hit her harder than the blow. She stared at the red on her fingers—the same color that had haunted her dreams for years. Without thinking, her Soul Energy flared, her hand pressing against the wound as she began a desperate, localized healing process.
She looked up, her breath coming in shallow gasps. In the distance, Kenzo was a blur of motion, his blade trailing jagged purple sparks as he swung at empty air.
I know I can count on you, she thought, her eyes fixed on his back. I have to believe that. Please, Kenzo... just hold on a little longer.
***
Kenzo swung his blade in a wide arc, the Purple Distortion hissing as it sliced through the space where the Weaver had been a millisecond before.
"Again?" Kenzo roared, his voice echoing off the glass towers. "How am I supposed to track something that isn't even there?!"
He spun around, his eyes scanning the vertical landscape. He found it. The Weaver wasn't on the ground anymore; it was three stories up, its limbs digging into the side of a business complex. It moved with a sickening, fluid grace, climbing toward the top.
What is it doing? Kenzo thought, his heart hammering. If it gets back up there, it'll just keep sniping at us. I have to lure it back down.
He remembered the white orbs Sarina had used. They were the only thing that had successfully grounded the monster.
Kenzo turned and bolted back toward Sarina. He leaped over a pile of shattered masonry and a crushed streetlamp, skidding to a halt beside her. She looked worse than he had feared. The glow around her hand was erratic, and the gash across her back was a jagged, bloody line that seemed to mock her healing efforts.
"Sarina! Are you okay?" Kenzo asked, kneeling beside her. "I need to get you out of here. This area is a kill zone."
"Are you out of your mind?" Sarina snapped, though her voice was weak, strained by the effort of the heal. She looked him in the eye, her gaze fierce despite the pain. "I can do this. I'm not some bystander, Kenzo. Just give me a bit more time to close the wound."
Kenzo hesitated, his grip tightening on his blade. He didn't want to leave her, but the Weaver was still up there. "Fine. Do you have any more of those white orbs? I need to knock it out of the sky."
Sarina shook her head, a stray tear of frustration escaping. "No. I had three. The other two were... they were crushed when I hit the ground."
As she spoke, her eyes drifted past Kenzo's shoulder. Her pupils dilated in terror. High above them, the Weaver had stopped climbing. It was perched on a balcony, its remaining limbs coiled like a massive, glass spring. Its chest began to glow with a blinding, concentrated violet light.
"Kenzo!" Sarina screamed, her voice cracking. "You need to move NOW! It's charging! It's coming straight for us!"
Kenzo snapped his head back. The Weaver launched. It propelled itself like a railgun, a blurred spear of glass and static aiming directly at the spot where Sarina lay helpless.
Kenzo didn't think. He dropped his blade, the steel clattering on the asphalt, and scooped Sarina up in both arms. He felt the warmth of her blood soak into his sleeves, but he didn't care.
"Hold on!"
He pivoted on his heel as he forced a burst of raw energy into his legs. He dived behind the corner of a heavy concrete bank building just as a deafening BOOM echoed through the intersection.
The Weaver hit the spot they had occupied a second ago with the force of a meteorite. The shockwave shattered the remaining windows for two blocks, raining glass down like diamonds.
"I can't leave you out there," Kenzo said, his voice dropping into a low, protective growl. "You're already badly injured. If I lose you, this mission is over."
Outside in the intersection, the sound of glass limbs clicking against the pavement began to move toward the alley. The Weaver was hunting by scent now—the scent of blood and Distortion.
The world didn't just go quiet; it began to stutter.
Kenzo dropped to his knees, the alleyway walls flickering like a dying holographic display. The pain in his skull was no longer a headache—it was an invasion. High-pitched noise and the sound of a thousand distorted radio stations screamed inside his mind.
"Not… right… now…" Kenzo said through gritted teeth, clutching his head. "Get… out!"
But the Weaver didn't wait for the static to clear. It loomed at the entrance of the alley, its glass-spun torso glowing. It was charging again.
Kenzo forced himself up. His blade was gone, lying somewhere in the shattered glass of the intersection, but he had finally stopped running. He stepped in front of the slumped, bleeding form of Sarina and threw a desperate, raw jab at the Weaver's chest.
It was like punching a wall of jagged diamonds.
The glass-like structure of the Weaver didn't break; it acted like a thousand microscopic razors. Kenzo's hand was instantly shredded, the skin and muscle torn apart in a sickening spray of red. He shrieked, a sound of agony, as his hand became stuck, snagged on the creature's crystalline ribs.
"No… how…" Kenzo gasped, his white training attire quickly soaking in a deep, dark crimson. The creature didn't move; it simply stared at him with its multi-faceted void eyes, as if studying a specimen.
"Kenzo!"
Sarina's voice was a ragged gasp. Despite the wound in her back, she forced herself up. Every step she took left a smear of blood on the brick wall, but her Soul Energy flared one last time. She lunged forward, grabbing the Weaver's arm and twisting it with a desperate, bone-snapping force.
The Weaver let out a metallic screech and released Kenzo's hand. He collapsed back, staring in horror at his mangled fingers.
"You're hurt, Kenzo… broken. What will you do now?"
The voice was clearer this time, echoing with a chilling, familiar cadence.
"You're not me," Kenzo thought, his vision beginning to blur at the edges. "What are you?!"
The Weaver's retaliation was instantaneous. Its arm deformed, turning into a flexible, glass-ribbon that coiled tightly around Sarina's and arm.
"No!" she choked out, her feet leaving the ground as the creature hoisted her into the air.
Kenzo tried to move. He tried to scream. But his body was a statue. The Purple Distortion had locked his joints, acting as a cage rather than a power. He could only watch as the Weaver extended its limb fully, holding Sarina like a discarded doll, before slamming her into the pavement with a sickening thud.
"Sarina…" his lips didn't move. No sound came out.
The alley went deathly silent. Sarina didn't move. The light of her soul had vanished, leaving her small frame still and broken in the shadows.
Then, the Weaver turned its attention back to the primary target. It manifested directly in front of Kenzo. Up close, the creature's presence was so intense that reality itself seemed to warp; Kenzo's own limbs looked jagged and pixelated, his body being unmade by the creature's proximity.
The Weaver opened its chest cavity, a blinding vortex of violet energy swirling at point-blank range.
BOOM.
The blast wasn't a sound—it was an erasure.
Kenzo felt his ribs shatter. He felt the heat of the energy sear through his lungs. His frame was tossed like a ragdoll against the far wall of the alley, his limbs landing at unnatural, impossible angles. He lay in a pooling sea of his own blood, staring up at the bruised, fractured sky of Alinar.
I can't… die. Not yet. Just… a little… strength…
***
It was darkness. Not the darkness of a closed room or a moonless night, but a heavy, absolute void.
It was too quiet. Not a single sound. The screaming of the city had been cut off.
Kenzo blinked. He didn't feel the cold of the alleyway anymore. He didn't feel the hot, sticky weight of the blood soaking his shirt. He lifted his right hand—the one that had been shredded to the bone by the Weaver's glass chest.
It was whole. Perfectly normal. No scars, no blood, not even a tremble.
"Surprising, isn't it?"
the voice rang out from his right, cutting through the silence like a gunshot.
Kenzo whipped his head around. His heart, which had just stopped in the physical world, began to thump with a new kind of dread. A few paces away, a figure stood in the gloom. It had the posture and frame of a human, wearing clothes that flickered like a corrupted video, but its face... its face was the jagged mask of a Remnant.
"Where did you take me?" Kenzo asked, his voice echoing in the infinite space. "And what are you? Are you one of them? A Remnant?"
The figure didn't respond at first. It began to step closer, its movements stuttering—moving ten feet in a single frame, then standing perfectly still.
Kenzo stumbled back, his boots hitting a surface that felt as hard as diamond. He lost his balance and fell. As he looked down, he saw that the floor wasn't solid; it was a dark, infinite mirror. His own reflection stared back at him, but in the reflection, he was still covered in blood.
The figure walked up to him, stopping just inches away. It looked down at Kenzo with its shifting, monstrous face.
"Was a Remnant," the voice said.