Gabriel sat up fast, heart racing before his mind caught up. The remnants of sleep clung to his thoughts like fog, thin but suffocating. Something was wrong, deeply wrong. He didn’t remember hearing a sound, but his body had already reacted.

His hand reached for the tablet on instinct, cold fingers brushing across the screen just as a low tremor rattled the floor beneath him.

The vibration was faint at first, like a distant engine or the growl of something buried beneath concrete. But it didn’t fade. It deepened. Thickened. The dust on the cracked ceiling trembled, then began to fall in thin streaks. Somewhere to the east, the walls groaned like a warning.

Beneath their feet, the ground shuddered.

It started faintly, like a deep tremor underground, but the vibrations intensified fast. Loose dust fell from a fractured ceiling beam. The old walls groaned.

Leonardo was already up, armed and alert. He scanned the edges of the room with sharp precision, shoulders tense, flames barely flickering at his fingertips.

A sharp noise followed, one that didn’t belong in any known category. It sliced through the early morning air like metal shearing against bone. Not a roar. Not a scream. Something worse. Something layered and inhuman.

Gabriel flinched.

Kael appeared in the entrance not three seconds later, boots silent, weapon drawn. “Movement. South wall’s down,” he said, voice low and clipped.

A section of the outpost collapsed behind him with a loud crack. From the breach, something emerged, massive, lumbering, partially shrouded in curling mist.

It moved wrong.

The fog rolled in pulses, drifting forward and peeling back just enough to reveal glimpses of the creature’s body, a hulking, bone-pale torso, arms longer than proportion allowed, and fingers that ended in curved, jagged points. When the mist returned, details vanished. The limbs seemed to reset.

It didn’t glitch. It breathed with the fog.

Its face was featureless, save for two hollows where eyes should be, depthless and black. And from it radiated not just noise, but pressure. Psychic static layered with intent.

Hostile.

Gabriel staggered back a step, comm already in hand. He tapped the override and opened the emergency combat interface. The readings were scrambled. No signature match. No class listed. Just red pulses across the sensor array.

Leonardo reacted first, stepping past Gabriel as his body flared with heat. Fire surged to life in his palm. “Gabriel, get cover.”

Gabriel nodded, backing toward the reinforced edge of the room. “Interference is heavy,” he warned, voice steady despite the rising pressure in his chest. “Try to stay in line of sight. I’ll monitor from here.”

The creature lunged.

Leonardo’s flames split the air with a roar, forcing it back. Kael moved next, diving low and striking the ground. The vibrations rippled out like shockwaves, destabilizing the floor just as the creature regained balance. It fell sideways, claws tearing into the dirt.

But it didn’t go down. It recovered fast, too fast, and shifted through the mist again.

Gabriel’s fingers flew across the tablet. “That thing’s adapting. Kael, try higher frequencies. Leonardo, keep it from breaching, containment’s the priority.”

Kael gave a brief nod and adjusted the settings on his gauntlet. A new pulse rang out, sharper this time, causing the creature to jolt. It screamed again, if that distorted howl could even be called that, and reeled back.

Still, it came forward.

“This isn’t a Class-B,” Gabriel said under his breath. “Too fast. Too smart.”

His eyes never left the field. His breath was shallow, but his commands remained clear. He didn’t reach for a weapon, he didn’t need to yet. His job was to keep them moving in sync, and right now, they were holding. Barely.

Leonardo surged forward with sudden speed, his form sharp and fluid as flames licked around his hands. Each movement was precise. Fire arced outward, bright against the thickening fog, slicing the space between them and the creature. The burst forced the monster to veer sideways, breaking its momentum just long enough for Kael to engage.

Kael flanked left, his boots ghosting over the broken tiles without a sound. He moved like water over rock, calculated, fluid, calm. His eyes stayed locked on the monster’s shifting form, but his mind was elsewhere, measuring fault lines, weight displacement, the rhythm of the earth beneath his feet.

He slid behind a fractured column, dropped into a crouch, and placed his bare palm flat against the floor. The stone beneath him hummed in recognition.

A pulse echoed out, not light, not sound, but pure force. It moved under the surface, a concentric wave invisible to the eye but felt in the bones. Gabriel didn’t just see the results, he felt them. The tremor beneath his feet changed tone. Cracks spiderwebbed outward with surgical intent, targeting the creature’s legs.

The monster recoiled, its limbs jolting as the ground betrayed it. Its weight staggered. Its balance shifted. But Kael didn’t move. He was already preparing the next strike.

It shuddered, body flickering between masses of dense fog and something darker underneath. One leg gave way slightly, stumbling across the loose rubble. Its eyes, black and depthless, snapped toward Kael.

“Gabriel, it’s adapting too fast,” Leonardo shouted, already preparing another flame burst. “We need better control zones.”

“I know,” Gabriel said, fingers flying across his tablet. His voice was calm, but inside, he felt the field tilt. “Your energy output is climbing past safe sync. The field is distorting your flame pressure.”

Leonardo exhaled hard through his nose and shifted back. “Feels like I’m fighting in syrup.”

Gabriel refocused. “Kael, change your pulse timing. Leonardo, sweep left and drop heat in short bursts. Force a pivot.”

Without answering, Kael adjusted his stance and sent another vibration shock forward. This time, the pulse was staggered, layered into a rhythm that disoriented the creature’s footing. The tiles cracked again, and the ground shifted beneath the monster’s weight.

Leonardo followed instantly, fire coiling around his arms as he launched a close-range blast. The flame struck the creature’s midsection, flaring with an impact that sent up a cloud of ash and vapor.

For a second, it worked.

But then the fog collapsed inward, and the creature lashed out, faster than before.

A sharp limb struck Kael across the side. He slammed into the nearest support and dropped to a knee, bracing himself with one hand. His other arm hung stiffly at his side, blood already soaking through the fabric.

“Kael, status?” Gabriel called out, already rerouting data to analyze the creature’s movement pattern.

“Functional,” Kael replied, his voice steady but short. “Avoid central mass. Its torso density is irregular.”

Leonardo shifted back, eyes burning. He launched another flame arc, more focused now, and hit the creature in the upper chest. The blast pushed it back a few meters, smoke rolling across the floor.

Gabriel activated the short-range sync again. The signal flickered but stabilized, long enough for his data stream to update. The field interference was still there, but now it pulsed in waves. Predictable, almost.

“Keep it off-balance,” Gabriel instructed. “It’s trying to draw a pattern. Do not fall into rhythm.”

Leonardo adjusted instantly. Kael, already rising to his feet, reset his gauntlet settings.

Then Gabriel’s breath hitched.

The creature’s energy signature changed. It pulsed twice. Not once.

He looked up from the screen, brows drawing together.

“It’s redirecting,” he said aloud, mostly to himself.

And then he realized who it was looking at.

The fog around the creature thickened, curling with strange awareness, then abruptly peeled back in a sudden pulse of dry heat. For a heartbeat, the world held still, just long enough for the tension to settle like a weight in the chest.

Then it screamed.

The sound wasn’t just a shriek. It was Gabriel’s voice. Distorted, stretched, painfully loud. The sound echoed from every direction at once, saturating the air with something that sounded almost real.

"Leonardo," it called.

Gabriel froze mid-step.

His own voice had spoken the name, but not with his breath. It carried none of his fear, none of his hesitation. It rang sharp and hollow, like a memory reassembled by something that had only ever seen the shape of a human, never felt what it meant to be one.

Leonardo’s shoulders shifted before Gabriel could react. His stance lowered, fire building at his fingertips. But he didn’t turn toward the voice.

He turned toward Gabriel.

“I’m here,” Gabriel said, louder than intended. His pulse hammered in his throat. “That wasn’t me.”

Leonardo nodded once, his gaze never leaving the thing that now stalked toward them with slow, deliberate steps.

“We know.”

The creature lunged again. Its limbs blurred briefly, then solidified into a shape that resembled arms, claws, bone. It tore through a shattered crate without slowing. Its gaze locked onto Gabriel with terrifying precision.

Gabriel's stomach dropped.

“Pull back,” he snapped, stepping sideways and trying to widen the angle between himself and the beast. “Don’t let it isolate...”

Something shifted at the monster’s core.

Black light surged there, compact and pulsing.

It fired.

A beam of concentrated energy, hot and sharp like a cutting torch, tore across the clearing straight toward Gabriel’s chest.

Time slowed. His hand lifted instinctively, but it was too late to counter or move.

Then a force slammed into him from the side, rough and blistering.

Leonardo’s body crashed into his, heat radiating off him like a wildfire. Gabriel hit the ground hard, the air rushing from his lungs. A protective weight anchored him. Leonardo’s arm braced over him, the other thrust forward, palm open.

Fire surged outward.

It collided with the creature’s beam mid-air.

The explosion was immediate, a burst of blinding pressure and distorted light. Gabriel turned his head, half-curled beneath Leonardo’s form as the blast shattered glass, splintered wood, and hurled debris in every direction. What remained of their shelter groaned above them.

Leonardo held firm, his body braced like a dam against the flood. His jaw was locked, teeth gritted hard enough to hurt, flames roaring from his outstretched palm in an unbroken arc.

Each breath he took came rough, dragged from lungs fighting the pressure. Sweat slid down his neck, steam rising where heat met skin. The fire bent and flared, resisting the pulse of the creature’s energy, barely.

Gabriel could feel it all. The trembling in Leonardo’s arms. The heat radiating off him in erratic bursts. The way his shoulder muscles locked to stabilize the blast.

“Don’t give,” Leonardo muttered, but it was unclear if he meant the fire, his body, or himself.

His power flickered for a fraction of a second, just enough to reveal the raw strain beneath. Then he doubled down, fire bursting hotter as if anger alone could hold the line.

But it wasn’t enough.

The light shifted again. A spiral of warped energy coiled outward, thick and consuming. It wrapped around them, not as flame or force, but as a pull. Like the world itself had begun to unravel.

Gabriel’s tablet shorted in his grip. The screen flashed, then went dark with a crackle of static.

Behind them, Kael’s voice broke through the rising noise.

"Leonardo! Gabriel!"

Gabriel turned his head. For half a second, he saw Kael racing toward them, vibration waves radiating along the ground in broken ripples.

And then everything fractured.

Heat and pressure swallowed them.

For a breathless instant, Gabriel was nowhere. No ground beneath him. No sky above. Just roaring static, colors that didn’t belong in nature, and a blinding white that pressed behind his closed eyes.

The grip hadn’t loosened. Gabriel could feel the tremble in the Esper’s arms, the burning weight of someone still shielding with everything he had. He clung tighter without thought. The only thing keeping him tethered was Leonardo’s unyielding hold.

Then came the tearing.

The distortion wasn’t natural. It felt like the zone itself was reacting, bending space, pressure, and energy around the monster’s will.

Gabriel didn’t just lose his balance, he lost his anchor to the world. The rupture unfolded without sound or warning, but its impact screamed through every nerve. A split in reality itself, seamless and absolute.

One moment, he was grounded in Leonardo’s grip. The next, his body jolted sideways while his mind was flung backward. Up became down. Heat bled into cold. His inner ear twisted.

Time fractured. Thoughts scattered. The beat of his heart no longer matched the rhythm of space. He tried to scream, to speak, but the air was shapeless, and his breath broke apart mid-exit.

His senses collapsed, not one by one, but all at once.

Sight blurred into light. Sound into pressure. Distance into nothing.

He tried to speak, but the air had no substance. His voice dissolved on contact.

Fragments drifted in the white, shards of their outpost, Kael’s silhouette flickering at the edge, arms raised, vibrations splitting the air around him. He was shouting something.

Gabriel couldn’t hear him.

Behind Kael, the zone twisted. The land coiled like fabric caught in a storm. The sky fractured into unnatural hues. And through the distortion, the monster still stood. It didn’t pursue.

It only stared.

Gabriel felt the weight of its attention. Cold. Immense. Patient.

Then Leonardo’s voice found him. Not loud. Not sharp. Just near.

“Gabriel.”

His name, steady and urgent. A single thread in the storm.

Real this time. His voice... not stolen. Not reassembled.

Gabriel opened his eyes.

The world collapsed.

Not with violence. Not with noise. But like a curtain falling, or a memory ending.

All sensation peeled away, light, sound, gravity, even fear, lifted from him in one clean, silent instant.

Then, the world tilted.

Color drained. Sound vanished. The air itself disappeared.

A fissure opened beneath them, slicing the moment in two.

Gabriel reached out, for the ground, for Leonardo, for something real. His fingers clawed through empty space, grasping at air that no longer held weight. The fabric of the world seemed to slip just beyond reach, like the surface of a dream he could no longer wake from.

His pulse stuttered. His thoughts felt too loud inside a body that barely existed anymore. He tried to hold on, to breath, to presence, to anything solid, but it all unraveled.

It didn’t matter.

The breach opened wider. And it took them.