The military wagon kicked up a cloud of dust as it came to a grinding halt at the designated coordinates. Edmund Ashford hopped down, his boots crunching on the rocky ground that felt oddly brittle beneath his feet. The evening air carried a metallic taste that made him grimace.
"Spread out, standard formation," Captain Marwen barked, his voice cutting through the stillness. "Keep your eyes open and your abilities ready. This isn't a drill."
Edmund adjusted his pack and took his first real look at the rift. Christ, the reports hadn't done it justice. The thing hung in the air like reality had been sliced open with a cosmic blade, its edges rippling with colors that shouldn't exist. His fire abilities stirred restlessly under his skin, responding to something they didn't like.
"Ashford, take the eastern perimeter," Marwen ordered. "Your flames should give us good coverage on that flank."
As Edmund jogged toward his position, something nagged at him. The forest was too quiet. Not the peaceful quiet of evening settling in, but the dead quiet of a graveyard. He stopped mid-stride, tilting his head to listen.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
"Captain!" he called out, his voice sounding too loud in the silence. "You notice how quiet it is out here?"
Marwen looked up from where he was setting up the command post. "What do you mean?"
"I mean there's nothing alive in this forest. No birds, no squirrels, hell, I haven't even seen a bug since we got here." Edmund gestured toward the treeline. "It's like every animal with half a brain decided to pack up and leave."
Sergeant Vera shielded her eyes with her hand, scanning the northern treeline. "He's right. I've been watching for movement for the past fifteen minutes. Dead as a doornail out there."
"Animals can sense things we can't," Corporal Thane added from the west. "Remember Thornwick? The horses started going crazy three days before that rift blew its top."
Marwen's expression darkened. "How wide do you think this dead zone extends?"
Edmund closed his eyes, letting his fire abilities stretch out like invisible fingers. They'd always made him sensitive to life energy, and right now he felt like he was standing in the middle of a void. "Mile radius, maybe more. It's like there's an invisible fence that every living thing knows not to cross."
'And that's not normal,' Edmund thought, unease crawling up his spine. 'Even the nastiest rifts don't usually scare off wildlife until they're actually spitting out monsters.'
"That's... problematic," Marwen said, his tactical mind clearly working overtime. "Most rifts don't affect animal behavior until activation. If this one's already creating an exclusion zone while dormant..."
"Then maybe it's not as dormant as we think," Edmund finished.
The team continued their setup as darkness settled over the valley like a suffocating blanket. Every small sound seemed amplified in the unnatural quiet - the scrape of boots on stone, the soft clink of equipment, even their breathing echoed strangely.
Lieutenant Adria Reese activated her enhanced vision abilities and began scanning the rift itself. "Energy readings are all over the place," she reported. "The patterns are... weird. Like a heartbeat, but irregular."
"Weird how?" Marwen asked.
"It's hard to explain. Most rifts emit steady energy signatures, even when they're building toward activation. This one feels..." She paused, searching for the right word. "Alive. Like it's got a pulse."
Edmund felt ice water run down his spine. "The field observer said it looked like the rift was breathing. If the energy patterns are organic..."
"Then we're not just dealing with a dimensional tear," Marwen concluded grimly. "We're dealing with something that might be aware of us."
Hours crawled by as they established their full perimeter. Edmund found himself staring at the rift during his watch, noting how the pulsing energy seemed to be growing stronger, more rhythmic. The breathing pattern was becoming more pronounced, like whatever was on the other side was waking up.
Around midnight, Vera's voice crackled through the communication crystals, tight with tension.
"Movement at the rift site."
Every muscle in Edmund's body went taut. His fire abilities flared to life, ready for action. "What kind of movement?"
"The rift itself is... expanding and contracting. Like it's breathing, but more pronounced now. And there's something else..." Vera's voice dropped to almost a whisper. "I think something's trying to push through from the other side."
Reese focused her enhanced vision on the anomaly. "Energy fluctuations are spiking. The barrier's getting thinner."
Edmund squinted at the rift, wishing he had Reese's enhanced sight. All he could see were the swirling colors becoming more agitated, like oil on disturbed water.
"This is supposed to be a seven-day manifestation period," Thane said, his voice cracking slightly. "Nothing should be coming through yet."
"Tell that to whatever's on the other side," Edmund muttered, feeling sweat bead on his forehead despite the cool night air.
Marwen was already activating the long-range communication crystal. "Command, this is Perimeter Team Alpha. We have a situation."
Colonel Hestian's voice came through sharp and clear. "Report."
"Sir, the rift is showing signs of premature activation. Energy patterns are intensifying, and we have visual confirmation of something attempting to breach from the other side."
A pause. Then Hestian's voice, tight with concern. "Something? Describe it."
Reese took over the communication. "Sir, this is Lieutenant Reese. I'm seeing... a shape moving beyond the rift barrier. It's not fully formed yet, but..." She hesitated, her voice uncertain. "Sir, it looks human."
The silence that followed was heavy with implication.
"Human?" Hestian's voice carried a grim familiarity, as if he'd been dreading this exact report. "You're certain?"
"The proportions are definitely humanoid. Two arms, two legs, upright posture. But sir..." Reese's voice wavered. "We're used to seeing beasts come through these things. Claws, fangs, scales. This is different. This is wrong."
"No, Lieutenant," Hestian's voice was cold as winter steel. "This is exactly what I was afraid of. Maintain your distance and do not engage under any circumstances. I'm contacting the Crown immediately."
Edmund felt his fire abilities surge defensively as the rift suddenly pulsed brighter. The temperature around the perimeter dropped like a stone, and his breath began to mist in the suddenly frigid air.
"Captain," Vera called out urgently, "the rift is destabilizing. Energy readings are going haywire."
Through the swirling dimensional barrier, the humanoid shape pressed against the boundary. For a moment, it seemed to turn toward their position, as if it could sense their presence.
'Architects preserve us,' Edmund thought, his hands unconsciously clenching into fists. 'It knows we're here.'
"Sir," Reese spoke into the communication crystal, her voice steady despite the fear Edmund could hear underneath, "whatever this unranked classification means, I don't think we're dealing with just another dimensional anomaly. The entity on the other side... it's aware of us. And I think it's about to make its move."
The rift gave one final, violent pulse that made the air itself seem to scream. Marwen's voice cut through the night like a blade.
"All positions, defensive formation now! Whatever's about to happen, we're the only thing standing between it and forty thousand civilians in Millbrook."
As the team readied their abilities and weapons, Edmund couldn't shake the feeling that they were about to face something that would change everything they thought they knew about the rifts.
'All this time, we've been expecting monsters,' he thought, watching the humanoid shape grow more solid within the dimensional tear. 'But what if the real nightmare is that they look just like us?'*******
---
Back at command, Colonel Hestian's hand trembled slightly as he cut the communication. 'Not again. Please, not again.' The memory of S-ranked Awakener Edwin Schofield 's final transmission echoed in his mind - the confusion in his voice as he described fighting something that looked human but moved wrong, fought wrong, killed wrong. They'd found pieces of Thorne scattered across a mile radius, along with the bodies of his entire unit.
That incident had been classified at the highest levels. The official report listed it as a Class S beast encounter. But Hestian knew better. He'd seen the real reports, the ones that described humanoid entities that fought with an intelligence that surpassed anything they'd encountered before.
And now they were back.
He reached for the Crown communication crystal with hands that hadn't shaken in over a decade of military service.