Pain was quiet.
Not the screaming kind, or the sharp, immediate kind.
This was the kind of pain that sank—that settled into Kael's ribs and shoulder like stones in still water, every breath a reminder that he'd survived something he wasn't supposed to.
He sat against a cracked wall of moss-covered stone, blood drying down the side of his neck. The others were nearby, scattered in the half-lit chamber as silence took root around the ruined beast.
No one moved for several minutes.
Even Aegis stayed quiet—his presence humming gently, as if to say: You lived. Now feel it.
Kael finally exhaled.
And the sound of it—small, fragile—seemed to break the spell.
Asha Vorrik limped into view first, holding her right arm awkwardly against her side. Her face was pale, tight with pain, but her eyes were still alert. She dropped to one knee beside Neyra, who hadn't moved since the fight ended.
"Hey. You still with us?"
Neyra groaned and sat up slowly, one eye swollen shut, blood streaking down her temple. "Still kicking," she rasped. "Not gracefully."
Asha gave a wry smile. "Grace is optional. Breathing isn't."
Kael pushed himself upright, gritting his teeth against the sharp throb in his ribs. Silas was kneeling by the beast's core, inspecting what remained. His coat was torn down one side, and his left arm hung stiffly, but he hadn't made a sound since the battle ended.
Kael spoke first. "How bad?"
Silas didn't look up. "You mean the creature, or the cover-up?"
Kael winced. "Both."
Tarin approached from the far side of the ruin, dragging a half-functioning relay node he'd scavenged from a buried console. "No comms. All frequencies are jammed. This zone's either sealed… or someone's actively blocking us."
Silas stood slowly. His gaze swept the chamber once. "This was no simulation. That thing was real. Its energy signature, the plating—everything about it was Final Cycle-era. And we fought it like cadets on a training mission."
Neyra coughed a laugh. "Well. We are cadets."
Silas turned toward her, his face hard. "Not anymore."
Kael helped Tarin set up a makeshift camp in one of the deeper corridors. A natural arch overhead shielded them from the cavern mouth, and the walls were thick enough to trap heat. They wrapped injuries with rations-pack fabric and emergency paste, but it was a temporary solution at best.
Kael's shoulder was back in place, but every movement sent flashes of heat through his nerves. Still, he forced himself to move carefully, to show control.
Neyra sat by the far wall, legs stretched, her eyes tracking Kael.
"You knew something was coming," she said finally.
Kael looked at her.
"You weren't surprised," she continued. "When the ground fell. When the thing came out. You were ready to die for the rest of us without blinking."
Kael didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, "I'm used to fighting before I understand what I'm fighting."
She snorted. "That's not an answer."
Kael turned back to the gear he was sorting. "I've been hunted before. This wasn't the first time someone wanted me erased."
Neyra leaned her head back against the wall, exhaling slowly. "You're different, you know."
Kael's hands paused.
"I've trained with a lot of people. People who inherited glory. People who bought strength. But you…" Her voice softened. "You carry it like it's a punishment."
Kael looked at her. "Maybe it is."
Hours passed.
Wounds were cleaned. Shifts were rotated. Silence lingered.
Kael sat beside a broken pillar, staring into the dead glow of the fractured Echo core. It pulsed faintly, like something still lived inside it.
"You pushed past human limits," Aegis said. "Your Flow threading peaked during the final exchange. If you hadn't seen that timing—hadn't felt the rhythm of its core—you'd be dead."
"I know."
"And yet… there was a moment. A hesitation. You almost stayed down."
Kael closed his eyes.
"I wasn't sure I deserved to get back up."
"Because you hesitated?"
"No." He opened his eyes. "Because I didn't."
Silas sat across from him now, silent for a long time before he finally spoke.
"When I was six," Silas said, "my uncle brought home the body of my cousin. Burned through by his own ability. The family called it a training accident. I found out later—he was eliminated during a test for disobedience."
Kael frowned. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because power without allegiance is treated like treason. Especially if you carry the wrong blood."
Kael met his gaze. "So you're saying you trust me now?"
Silas didn't blink. "I'm saying I know what it's like to bleed for the right cause and be punished for it anyway."
He paused.
"Your Codex—your ability. It's bigger than any bloodline here. Bigger than the Families. If Regis knows what you're becoming, they won't test you again."
Kael nodded. "They'll kill me."
Silas didn't disagree.
Later, Kael found Asha sitting quietly by the broken arch, watching the static flicker across her broken data pad.
"You doing okay?" he asked.
She looked up. "You mean after watching a death machine nearly tear us in half, losing half my gear, and probably failing the most important assessment of our lives?"
Kael raised an eyebrow.
She cracked a small smile. "Yeah. I'm fine."
Kael sat beside her.
She hesitated, then said, "I always thought the military cared about control. Structure. Balance. But this… this place—it feels like the world before. Chaos pretending to be order."
Kael nodded slowly. "You're not wrong."
She looked at him. "What are you going to do when we get out?"
Kael didn't answer at first.
Then: "I don't know."
She leaned back. "I hope it's something loud."
That night, Kael couldn't sleep.
So he stood on the outer edge of the ruin cavern, looking up at the Rift's sky through the collapsed dome ceiling.
It was beautiful.
The storm clouds shimmered with unnatural light, streaks of plasma rolling across in silent waves. It looked like the edge of space—like the world above had cracked, and something greater was trying to break through.
Footsteps approached behind him.
Neyra.
"You don't talk much," she said.
Kael shrugged. "Words don't change much."
"Maybe not," she said, stepping beside him. "But they're all we have when strength isn't enough."
Kael looked at her.
She was staring at the sky too.
"You ever think we were born at the wrong time?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Like… maybe we were supposed to be part of something else. Something better. But we got handed a broken version of the world and told to make it work."
Kael was quiet.
Then he said, "No. I think we were born exactly when we were needed."
Neyra looked at him.
He added, "To fix what they broke."