The first shot rang out before anyone had time to scream.
There was no warning. No dialogue. No room for heroics.Only sound — a dry, metallic crack — and a body collapsing to the ground as if its power had been cut.
Elias didn't flinch.
He stood exactly where he had been a second earlier. Arms loose at his sides. Breathing steady. Eyes fixed not on the corpse, but on the space behind it.
Where the system had just moved.
— Contact, he thought. Not human. Not monster. Something in between.
[PREDATOR SYSTEM – ALERT]ANOMALY DETECTEDCYCLE DESYNC: 3.4%RECOMMENDED ACTION: ELIMINATE OR OBSERVE
Elias chose the third option.
He always did.
The forest around them was dead in an unnatural way. The trees stood perfectly still. No wind. No rustling leaves. Even the insects were silent. This wasn't a dungeon.
This was what remained after dungeons.
A space that had already been chewed up and spat out by the cycle.
The blood of the fallen still steamed.
— Who fired? — the girl on the left asked quietly. Her voice was tense, but controlled. She was good. Too good for this stage.
Elias didn't answer.
He was watching the shadow.
Not the one cast by the trees — the other one. Too long. Too fluid. It moved independently of the light.
[SCAN FAILED]ENTITY NOT REGISTERED IN CURRENT CYCLE
That was new.
The Predator System didn't fail like that.
— We fall back, — Elias said calmly. Dry. — Three steps. No sudden movements.
— Why? — someone asked.
— Because something just learned that we exist.
The shadow stopped.
Then… split.
Not an explosion. Not teleportation. More like an image tearing. One form remained in place. Another slid a meter to the side, as if space itself had briefly allowed two entities to occupy the same coordinates.
[WARNING]CYCLE BREACH DETECTEDUNKNOWN PREDATOR CLASS
Elias felt something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Not fear.
Interest.
— This isn't a boss, he thought. This is a bug.
The first attack came from nowhere. Not front. Not back. From above — but not through the air.
One of the team was lifted as if grabbed by an invisible hand. His scream cut off halfway as something crushed his chest. The sound of ribs breaking was quiet. Intimate.
Elias moved.
He didn't run. He didn't charge. He stepped aside at the exact moment the space where he should have been collapsed like soft ground.
— Synchronization… — he muttered. — It's moving between cycle frames.
[PREDATOR SYSTEM – ACTIVE OVERRIDE]MODE: HUNTER-LOGICTEMPORARY ACCESS GRANTED
The world slowed.
Not physically. Logically.
Elias saw layers. Rhythm. Micro-gaps between events. This wasn't a fight of strength.
It was a fight of timing.
The shadow struck again.
Elias let it hit.
More precisely — he let it think it hit.
When something without form passed through his shoulder, Elias was already no longer where the system expected him to be. He turned and drove the blade into a point that hadn't existed half a second earlier.
The shadow shuddered.
For the first time.
— Pain response, Elias noted. So it is… a predator.
[NEW DATA ACQUIRED]ENTITY TYPE: PROTO-PREDATORSTATUS: UNSTABLE
The forest reacted.
Not the ground. Not the trees.
The cycle.
Space fractured into geometric cracks. The air shimmered blue, like the system trying to patch something it didn't understand.
— Fall back! — someone shouted.
Too late.
A second proto-predator emerged exactly where Elias had stood moments earlier. A copy? An echo?
No.
A result.
— They reproduce through observation… he realized.
The longer they were watched, the harder the system tried to classify them. And the harder it tried, the more of them appeared.
[CRITICAL WARNING]PREDATOR SYSTEM UNDER ATTACKSOURCE: UNKNOWN
Elias felt pressure at his temples. As if something was trying to peer inside his mind without permission.
— No, — he said quietly.
He stopped.
Shut everything down.
Not the system.
Himself.
He closed his eyes.
The moment he stopped being an observer, the cycle lost its reference point.
The proto-predators hesitated.
One second.
That was enough.
Elias opened his eyes and moved forward — not as a human, not as a player, not as an element of the system.
But as something older.
— If the cycle can't recognize me… he thought, then I'll define the rules.
The first proto-predator collapsed not into pieces, but into information. The second vanished as if it had never existed.
The forest fell into silence.
[PREDATOR SYSTEM – STATUS UNKNOWN]CORE FUNCTION DEGRADEDCYCLE INTEGRITY: FAILING
Elias stood alone.
The team was far away. Too far. Or no longer a team at all.
He looked down at his hands. They trembled slightly.
Not from exhaustion.
From excitement.
— This is only the beginning, — he said to the emptiness.
Then the system spoke one last time.
Not as a notification.Not as an alert.
As a question.
[WHO ARE YOU?]
Elias smiled — for the first time in many cycles.
And didn't answer.