The transport was considerably smaller than Cale expected. He had pictured the heavily armored convoy of black tactical vehicles he was used to. Instead, they were met by a solitary Warden shuttle. Its exterior was deeply corroded and chewed up from long-term exposure to the Void's abrasive climate, and its engines sang with a low frequency that vibrated uncomfortably against Cale's ribs. He took a seat by the vehicle's viewport, watching the obsidian spires of the Citadel shrink into a microscopic speck before vanishing completely into the haze.
Val sat directly across from him, her hands clamped tightly together in her lap, her gaze was fixed firmly onto the metal floor plating of the moving vehicle.
They had not exchanged a single word since after the briefing with Commandant Voss.
The shuttle hummed aggressively. The featureless grey expanse of the outer waste of the void pressed hard against the thick glass, and completely vacant. Cale's reflection stared straight back at him from the dark pane. He was noticeably thinner than he had been seventeen days ago. The dark shadows beneath his eyes had become hollow, and the lines of his face had set into something far harder. He almost didn't recognise himself, to think that his family...
Seventeen days in the dark felt like a godforsaken lifetime.
His mind drifted back to the afternoon they fell through the portal. He remembered the violent collapse of the Nest, and the crushing desperation of Val's hand locked in his grip. He rummaged through the brutal sequence of the days that followed; the starvation, the terrifying cold, and the precise moment he had located her standing at the edge of his fading perimeter light.
Most of all, he remembered the Terror's voice. It had been smooth, detached, and entirely terrible, accompanied by a completely gold, pupil-less eyes that pinned them to the stone like insects under a microscope.
"You're stressing over that freak bastard," Val said quietly, breaking the silence in the cabin.
Cale did not turn his head away from the glass. "Yes."
"He could've wiped us off the map," she muttered. "Whenever he wanted, for no godsdamn reason."
"I know."
"Then why the hell didn't we sing it to Voss?"
He finally broke his gaze from the viewport to look at her. Her face was deathly pale, her eyes bloodshot and dark with absolute exhaustion. She had not permitted herself to sleep since they arrived at the Citadel outpost.
"What the hell are we supposed to tell them, Val?" Cale's tone was dry, stripped of emotion. "That a high-tier S-rank freak chose to keep us alive for his own amusement? That he was chilling with us, handing over rations, and dropping ancient history lore? The Wardens would've locked us in a box and run interrogation scripts until our brains fried. Eventually, we would have leaked everything. They'd find out about Revenant. They'd find out my system parameters are completely glitched. They would find out about everything. Or it could go the other way, they'd think we've been crazed by the void and we'll get sent to a psychiatric facility. Nothing good comes out of telling them."
He cut himself off, his jaw tightening.
"They'd figure out you're a straight-up freak, I don't think I have a problem here." Val finished flatly, meeting his eyes without a hint of hesitation.
The heavy silence returned, stretching across the narrow cabin. The vehicle's engines made a rumbling sound as they adjusted orientation. Somewhere directly ahead of their flight path was the spatial rift back to the human world was waiting.
Cale had spent over two wire-to-wire weeks fighting for his life in the wastes, and during that entire duration, he had not once opened his user interface. He summoned the system parameters now, the interface igniting directly within his field of vision.
User: Caelan Ashford
Status / Stage: Awakened / Awakened
Rank: A
Sign: Scorpio
Aspect: Soul Reaper
Element: Water / Ice
Affinities (2): Scorpio, Capricorn
Mauri: 78 / 100
Experience: 412 / 400 [Ceiling Bypassed]
Soul Cores: 2
PA Status: Active (Upgrade: 50 / 200)
Flaw: —
| Category | Inventory / Active Attributes |
| ---- | ---- |
Special Abilities | Frostbite, Regenesis, Death Sense (Evolved), Scorpion's Grip, Necrotic Touch, Reaper's Mark, Frostgrave |
Memory | Ogreian Dagger, Soul Drinker, Void Fang |
Echo | Revenant (Unique – Reaper's Soul) |
Experience stood at four hundred and twelve out of a four-hundred threshold. He had gone passed the threshold. A systemic adaptation was locked and waiting in a queue, but he could not discern its nature. He didn't know why his instincts had warned him away from touching it until now.
"Because your are not yet stable enough to absorb the transition," Iris's voice murmured coldly within the deep, locked sub-routines of his system data. "You are fully aware of this limitation."
He had almost forgotten about Iris. In the past few weeks she has gone AWOL on him.
He wanted to scream at her and demand why she or it, ghosted him when he might have needed her the most. He gave a hard pass on that thought, due to the fact Val was sitting right next to him. And she'd already thought of him as weird enough.
He dismissed the interface with a sharp thought, the screen cutting to black. Val was tracking his eyes.
"You're doing that shit again," she noted, her voice steady. "Staring right through the bulkhead."
"Just looking through my system."
"And?"
He hesitated, calculating how much to share. "I cleared the experience threshold. There's a modification waiting in the queue. I don't know what it'll do to my core structure yet."
"Then keep your hands off it until we're out of military airspace." She leaned her spine back against the rigid seat cushion. "Sort your system when we hit solid ground. Until then, I've got your back."
His lips twitched slightly, but he suppressed the urge to smile. It wasn't the time for it.
The Warden shuttle hit it's coordinates of the portal with a violent, structural shudder. They escaped the featureless grey density of the Void, giving way to the intense, blinding downpour of natural light that made Cale's eyes water instantly. He blinked through the irritation, and the environment rapidly resolved into a vibrant blue sky, dense white cloud formations, and the rolling green ridges of distant hills.
The human world.
He had not fully comprehended the sheer psychological toll of the dark until his eyes locked onto actual color.
Val was already leaning across her seat, her face pressed flat against the thick glass of the viewport, her rapid breath leaving a small circle of condensation on the surface. "It's real," she whispered, her voice rough with emotion. "We're actually back to the real world."
The shuttle began its rapid, banking descent, the high, fortified stone towers of the academy campus rising up through the clouds to meet them. Cale observed the training grounds, the administrative complexes, and the dense crowd of figures actively assembling at the perimeter of the designated landing strip. He could distinguish blocks of students, tactical instructors, and faces he recognized from the combat tracks mixed with personnel he had never seen before.
His stomach twisted into a tight, defensive knot.
"They're gonna dissect us with questions," he muttered.
"Let those bastards try. Screw 'em. Home sweet home."
"Val, you know exactly what I mean. The story won't line up."
She turned her head, looking him dead in the eye with absolute finality. "We'll just stick to the script, Cale. We dropped through a corrupted portal, used standard survival protocols, found a Warden trail, and marched the hell out. That's the only story on record."
"And the freak?"
Her expression went entirely cold. " Forget the godsdamned freak!"
Cale gave a single, firm nod of agreement as the shuttle's landing gear engaged, the vessel touching down on the tarmac with a heavy hydraulic hiss.
The automated pressurized doors slid open, and the direct sunlight was completely blinding. Cale stepped out onto the metal ramp, Val moving in lockstep right at his shoulder, and the sheer volume of the world rushed over them like a wave. Voices, shouting, faces, and footsteps converged on their position.
He spotted Ethan breaking through the front of the student line that has gathered just outside the main building, his face was incredibly pale. Riker stood directly behind him, with Rel, expressionless stood behind the duo. Even Mira, the girl who had led his scraped up secondary team during the tournament finals, was standing near the barrier.
At the far edge of the tarmac, away from the noise, Rourke stood in the shadow of a hangar. An unlit cigarette was clamped between his fingers, his scarred face completely unreadable as he supervised their arrival.
Val was immediately pulled into a frantic, crushing embrace by an academy student Cale didn't recognize. He deliberately stepped away from the cluster, keeping his back to the transport, letting the chaotic noise wash over his senses without engaging.
Then, a heavy, familiar hand dropped onto his left shoulder.
He turned his torso. Ethan stood there, his jaw locked tight, his eyes red and bloodshot from lack of sleep.
"You total dumbass," Ethan said, his voice cracking under the strain. "You absolute, brainless idiot."
Cale looked at his friend's face and found he lacked the vocabulary to answer. So, he chose to say nothing at all. He simply stood his ground on the concrete, permitting Ethan's hand to anchor him to the deck, allowing the absolute reality of his return to finally settle into his mind.
Val cut through the crowd a minute later, her face showing faint streaks of moisture that she was actively trying to wipe away with the back of her dirty hand. "The desk clerks are already setting up the second debriefing," she stated, her tone shifting back to business. "More paperwork, more nonsense, more bureaucratic bullshit."
"I expected nothing less."
"But once we clear this stuff," she paused, a sharp, calculating focus igniting in her dark eyes, "we figure out what our next move is."
Cale looked past her toward the assembling crowd, then up at the sky that was blue, solid, and undeniably alive.
"Absolutely," he said, his voice flat and resolute.
They turned away from the shuttle and walked directly into the light of the campus.