The city was breathing.
Not in the metaphorical "vibrant urban ecosystem" way, but literally Blackreach was alive, and tonight, it exhaled a pulse that rattled every window, flickered every light, and made Liam's skin crawl like he was standing inside a giant organism with very bad intentions.
He stood on the edge of an abandoned relay tower, high above Sector Nine, watching the ripple spread across the skyline. The buildings didn't shake, but the people did. Everyone below stopped for half a second, like some primal part of their brains had whispered: Something just woke up.
Behind him, the air shimmered once.
"You're late," Liam said.
Juno dropped her cloaking field with a grin. "And you're glowing."
He glanced down.
The blue veins in his arms were humming, faintly illuminated through his skin like someone had plugged him into a light socket. "Great. I'm turning into a mood lamp."
"I always knew you'd end up as some kind of emotionally unstable appliance."
She tossed him a portable cloak field, which he caught with one hand and draped over his back like a cape.
"What's the status?" he asked.
"Bad. But weird. Like, glitch-in-the-matrix bad. Systems across the eastern grid went dark after your last spike. People reported hallucinations, double shadows, some even claimed they saw their own funerals."
Liam swallowed hard. "It's starting."
"You sure it's not just a side effect of you skipping therapy?"
He shot her a look.
"I'm serious," Juno said. "We joke a lot because if we didn't, we'd all be crying in the shower but this? This feels like the edge of something real."
"It is," he said. "And the second heartbeat's getting stronger."
Juno blinked. "You're still hearing it?"
"Hearing it, feeling it… and now, I think I see it."
He turned to the horizon.
There was a rift.
Not big, not obvious. Just a shimmer. A place where the air bent wrong, like heat off asphalt, except cold and sharp. Inside it he briefly saw a figure.
Himself.
Bleeding. Eyes hollow. Smiling like a man who'd lost everything.
Then it vanished.
"Coolcoolcool," Juno muttered. "We're officially entering oh no we're boned territory."
Liam's comm pinged. Nova.
:: Location ping locked. Heading your way. Hold position. ::
He stared at the message for a beat too long.
"Nova?" Juno asked, voice carefully casual.
"Yeah."
"She doesn't know you've been seeing yourself in rift echoes, does she?"
"Nope."
"Are you going to tell her?"
"Eventually."
"By eventually, you mean never."
"I mean after I figure out whether or not I'm about to implode and take the planet with me," he snapped, sharper than intended.
Juno held up her hands. "Okay, okay. No need to bite. I'm just trying to keep your apocalypse timeline neat and emotionally fulfilling."
They stood in silence for a moment.
Then Liam turned. "Thanks for coming."
She blinked. "Wow. That almost sounded like genuine gratitude."
"I'm trying something new. It's called not dying alone."
Juno smiled. "You've always had flair, Liam. Even when the world's ending."
Down below, Nova sprinted through the alleyways, pulse in her ears louder than her footsteps.
The connection between her and Liam had started buzzing the moment his spike hit. Not just in her chest. In her mind. Thoughts weren't just hers anymore. Flashes of memory his memories bleeding into her perception like static.
She saw the pod.
The girl.
The moment Liam looked in the mirror and didn't see himself.
It hurt.
Because he hadn't told her any of it.
A shadow darted ahead. She drew her blade, eyes narrowing.
But it wasn't Wane.
It was Rhea, appearing from the mist like a ghost with a PhD in murder.
"I figured you'd be heading here," Rhea said. "We tracked the last anomaly to this sector."
"Liam's up there. Juno's with him."
Rhea looked up at the tower. "How bad is it?"
Nova hesitated. "He's… cracking. But he's still him."
"Cracks let the light in."
Nova raised an eyebrow.
"Quoting poetry now?"
"No," Rhea said. "Juno hacked my tablet and replaced all my motivational error messages. It's deeply upsetting."
They shared a tiny smile.
Then Nova's expression turned grim again. "We have to reach him before the next pulse. Before Zorren finds him."
"I'm already here."
The voice came from behind them.
They spun to see Zorren Kael, flanked by two silent operatives and wearing an expression of mild disappointment, like a parent who just found out their favorite child became a supernova.
"Move," Nova snarled.
"I can't do that," Zorren said. "Liam has passed the containment threshold."
"You'll have to kill me first."
Zorren smiled.
"That was always the plan."
And above them, Liam stood frozen as the pulse came again.
Stronger this time.
And this time… he screamed.
A sound that shook the tower. A sound that shattered mirrors two blocks away.
A sound that made the world shiver and the sky blink.
Kairo's voice echoed across the comm, panicked and sharp.
"Liam just opened a Rift. A full one."
The city held its breath.
And Liam Vale, Catalyst, Apex, walking singularity, dropped to his knees with blue light pouring from his eyes
and whispered,
"He's coming through."