The console blinked. Once. Then again. The biometric readings came into focus—Chi resonance signatures, neural stress graphs, emotional spike patterns, and genetic markers scrolling in obscure Riftborn code across the monitors in his control pod.
At first, the Collector barely looked. Another brute caught in the spiderweb of Rift-layered dreaming. Another would-be bounty hunter sniffing around Ume-Ojinmo's periphery.
He sipped bitter tea from a cracked ceramic mug, his mechanical eye rotating to read the neural bleed.
"Hmm. Exceptional resilience," he muttered.
Then a name registered. Not given, not stated aloud. The system didn't recognize it—but he did.
The Chi pattern.
The sealed core.
The twin harmonics buried beneath his suppression.
He froze.
"No... it can't be—"
He brought up the deep-layer scan. Only two cases in the Riftborn archives had a Chi structure this rare. One was dead. The other... had a bounty request embedded into multiple regions of the Shadownet, most of them by Ezego himself.
"Chizoba Obinwanne."
His real name had never been confirmed—until now.
The Collector rose, tea forgotten.
"Ezego's golden ghost," he whispered.
"The half-blood heir. The boy with sealed godhood in his spine."
"The one they say carries both Chi and Ase."
He laughed once—quiet, breathless, disbelieving.
"I nearly killed him. I almost atomized him thinking he was another Orun-Saa errand dog."
"He's worth more than a vault of Iron Relics."
A thousand plans bloomed behind his eyes. A thousand promotions.
He had always been a low-tier handler, stuck running the Riftborn's less glorious retrieval operations. Not even a lieutenant. A glorified jailer with nice tricks.
But this?
"I could be made a vice-captain."
"Or more."
"Captain Eru has no one like this under her belt. If I hand Chizoba over intact, I leap over five ranks. At least."
He pressed a button, sealing the psychic isolation chamber.
"No more experiments. No more stimuli. We need him lucid. Ezego will want proof."
Then he paused, lips twitching.
"Or... maybe I wait."
"See what I can extract first."
His fingers danced over the interface.
"They say he's hard to break. But even the most sealed Chi must echo if you knock loud enough…"
Darkness trembled.
Then cracked.
A fissure of white light shot through the dream like a blade severing flesh.
Chizoba opened his eyes—not in the illusion, but in truth.
He lay on cold iron.
Chains, etched with Riftborn script, bound his wrists and ankles. He had no idea how long he'd been in that construct. Hours? Days? The wounds he'd received inside the illusion still bled in the real world.
His ribs were cracked.
Right femur fractured.
Something was wrong with his left lung—breathing hurt like fire.
"So it wasn't just illusion. It was a psychic echo-loop… connected to my nervous system."
He had been tortured. Slowly. Quietly. From inside.
A door hissed open.
Footsteps.
The Collector entered, his mismatched eyes gleaming, one biological, the other a shifting glass orb laced with Rift-metal veins.
He looked… pleased.
"I must thank you," the man said, his voice clipped, academic, not unkind. "That was the most reactive Chi structure I've seen in twenty years."
Chizoba's eyes barely moved, his face a mask of cold fury.
"You've given me more than data. You've given me opportunity." The Collector placed a gentle hand on the iron wall. "I just wanted to look you in the eye before I ascend."
He turned, walking away.
"Ezego will be here soon. I hope you two have a pleasant reunion."
The door hissed shut again.
Silence.
No more illusions. No more pain-feeding loops.
Only the real pain now.
Bone. Blood. Weakness.
But also, beneath it—
Chi.
Still sealed, yes—but precisely calibrated. He hadn't let go of the sliver he could access. He had held it close during the spiral.
Now it was time to use it.
"Slow. Exact. I cannot rush this."
He closed his eyes.
He began with bleeding. A controlled burst of inner Chi to contract vessels, thicken blood, and guide cellular stitching. He visualized the tissue. It responded. Not quickly, but it responded.
Then the bones.
He found the fractures one by one. Fused them not by brute energy, but by aligning his Chi to the same vibrational frequency as the marrow.
A technique known only to master-healers of the Chi-menders of Ikenna's Grove.
"My father's lessons weren't wasted."
Each bone mended like stone softening and re-hardening under divine will.
Ribs first. Then femur. Then jaw.
He grunted. Spasmed. Grit his teeth.
Next came flesh—more stubborn, more complex. He would need hours, maybe more.
He channeled Chi to increase white cell proliferation. Directed micro-signals to nerve endings to dull pain, not remove it.
"Pain is a map. I must follow it."
Skin knit over wounds like ink soaking into paper.
His strength didn't return—but his mobility did.
Breathing was still ragged, but bearable.
Sweat soaked his brow. His vision swam. He nearly passed out—but didn't.
When it was done, Chizoba lay flat, staring at the ceiling, body barely held together by threads of focus and fury.
But he was alive.
And more than that—
He was awake.
Orun-Saa | Periphery Zone Delta-9 | One Day After Chizoba's Disappearance
The sky above Orun-Saa's outskirts roiled with rust-colored clouds, thick with magnetic dust and the faintest hum of residual Ase. The broken landscape below was dotted with fractured temples, relic mines, and collapsed circuitry from wars that predated memory.
Omo knelt beside a jagged cliff of broken basalt, her goggles pulsing with Iron King glyphs.
"Where are you…" she muttered.
In her palm, Her visor lens hovered just above her skin—its single crystalline eye glowing faintly. The artifact whirred, scanning again.
No trace.
No residual Chi. No Ase echo.
Not even a memory fragment—something Omo had previously pulled from battlefield ghosts.
Nothing.
"You didn't die," she said aloud. "You're just… gone."
She reset the lens, overlaying her own telemetry with the device's readings. Even the Ember Drive's sensors—the same ones that once detected buried Iron King cores from miles away—were picking up zero anomaly trails.
And that's when she felt it.
That old tingling on the back of her neck. The subtle shift in air pressure.
I'm being watched.
She spun, gauntlet raised, fingers crackling with stored kinetic energy. The armature snapped open with a loud whir—ready to fire.
"You've got ten seconds to say your name or lose your teeth—"
A smooth voice interrupted.
"Relax, steam-brain. If I wanted you dead, you'd be ash."
From the shadows of a shattered colossus, a figure stepped forward.
Crimson armor. Flame-scorched pauldrons. Twin blades across her back. A silver ring glowing faintly on her forehead—the mark of her Ase patron, Sango. The god of fire, lightning and Thunder.
Omo lowered her weapon slightly, brows raised.
"Zahra?"
"Took you long enough to notice."
The two stared at each other for a beat.
Then—finally—Omo exhaled and smiled, thin and dry.
"You've been stalking me this whole time?"
"Only since you stepped foot in Orun-Saa." Zahra crossed her arms. "Rumors said the Ember Wraith herself was sniffing around. I had to see if it was true."
"You could've just said hi."
"Where's the fun in that?"
They shared a quiet laugh. It was brief—but real.
Zahra's face softened.
"You look tired."
"I've been tracking someone."
"I know."
Omo blinked.
"You… know?"
Zahra nodded.
"Chizoba. Riftborn took him, probably deep. You've been pinging every ruin and relay for the last six hours like you're bleeding desperation. It's loud."
Omo looked down, jaw clenched.
"I didn't mean to pull you into this."
Zahra tilted her head, walking closer.
"What I want to know is: why?"
"Why?"
"Why are you hunting ghosts for a man you've known, what—three days?"
Omo didn't respond.
Zahra's voice was calm, but with an edge.
"You're not reckless. You don't play the hero. You survive. You dodge warlords, avoid the Riftborn, and hide in places even gods wouldn't crawl."
"But now you're chasing a half-dead Chi-wielder through ruined empires like a headless pilgrim."
"What gives?"
There was a long pause.
Omo's voice came out lower. Quieter.
"He intrigues me."
Zahra raised an eyebrow.
"That's it?"
"Not just that," Omo said. "He's... something different."
Zahra rolled her eyes.
"That's poetic. Dangerous, too."
"He's not like anyone I've met. He doesn't react to the world—he's shaping something. I don't know what, but I can feel it. Like he's some... incomplete key trying not to turn."
Zahra's expression turned pensive. Then she shook her head.
"So you've gone soft."
Omo smirked.
"You would've liked him."
"I don't like anyone."
"Exactly."
They shared another moment of silence before Zahra sighed and unhooked her flame-tethered blades, letting them rest on her shoulders.
"Fine. I'll help."
Omo raised a brow. "Out of friendship?"
"Out of spite."
"Spite?"
Zahra's eyes burned like coals.
"If the Riftborn have him, then it means they're close to something important. That's dangerous."
"So?"
"So I'm not letting those freaks win. We find Chizoba, burn half their operation, and maybe—maybe—I'll see what makes him so fascinating to you."
Omo grinned, gauntlet powering up with renewed energy.
"Welcome back, Zahra."
Zahra cracked her knuckles.
"Don't get used to it."
They turned toward the wastelands. A new signal had just pinged from the western ruins—faint, but real.
Omo fed the coordinates into her gauntlet.
"Let's go find our ghost."
"And kill anyone in the way."
They disappeared into the storm.