Cain exhaled.
"Another test."
One node shot forward first—a blur of black, slicing the air. Cain dodged sideways, grabbed another passing node, and slammed it into the incoming one. The collision detonated in a burst of light and distortion that felt like static digging into his bones.
Two down.
The rest accelerated.
Cain moved through them, deflecting some, letting others scrape past him without committing force he didn't need. The nodes weren't trying to kill him—they were mapping him, gauging his reactions, feeding data back to Nebula's core.
He couldn't let Nebula assemble a full profile.
Cain reached out, seized a node by its trajectory, and crushed it with a burst of structural force. The basin floor reacted instantly, glowing in branching patterns as though the realm felt the loss of data.
Another node slammed into his back. Cain staggered, teeth clenched against the spike of pain—not injury, exactly, but destabilization. His anchor field flickered.
