The chamber was dim, lit only by dull blue glowstones embedded in the cracked ceiling. The air was thick with cold and metallic tang. Chains coiled tightly around Chizoba's chest, arms, and ankles, bolted into the reinforced stone beneath him. They weren't ordinary shackles—woven with anti-Chi sigils, each one humming faintly with disruptive energy.
His breath came slow. Controlled.
He had been here too long.
And yet… still not broken.
"They think I'm helpless because I stay quiet", he thought.
"Because I endure."
A scraping sound echoed through the room as the thick steel door groaned open. A Riftborn sentinel stepped in—tall, cloaked in dark mesh robes reinforced with tech-laced armor. Their face was hidden behind a half-mask of chitin and rusted steel, but their tone was gleeful and mocking.
"I brought you water, wretch," the Riftborn croaked. "The Collector says we should keep you alive a little longer. He likes his prey lucid when he opens them up."
They stepped closer, a half-full gourd in one hand.
"You should be grateful. Most die before they even see his knife. But you—"
Chizoba looked up slowly. His golden eyes gleamed in the low light.
"You talk too much."
The Riftborn blinked—confused—just as a sharp crack rang out.
The chains holding Chizoba shattered, metal splintering like glass under pressure. He rose smoothly, uncoiling like a panther from a crouch. Before the Riftborn could react, Chizoba's elbow struck their throat with surgical precision. The figure staggered back—choking—before Chizoba swept their legs, brought them down, and drove a powerful strike into their temple.
The body collapsed, twitching once.
Silence returned.
You think suppressing my Chi makes me harmless? I was trained for silence.
…....…
Chizoba moved through the stone hallways like a shadow. Silent. Controlled.
Each turn brought more danger. Riftborn patrols marched in pairs, their armor marked with strange glyphs and archaic tech. Some dragged energy weapons, others wore bone masks and carried cruelly shaped blades.
Chizoba waited patiently behind broken arches or slipped into alcoves as they passed.
The Collector's office would be above. Overseer level. That's where the secrets will be.
He climbed a half-collapsed stairwell, using the support beams as handholds. Every motion calculated. Every breath measured.
At last, he found the door.
The Collector's Sanctum.
It was carved with rotating gears and iron symbols of the Riftborn. Chizoba picked the lock with a slender blade he had lifted from the fallen guard, twisted the mechanism—and entered.
Inside was a chamber of unnatural calm. Machinery lined the walls—flickering terminals of lost Iron King origin. Strange maps hovered over a projector embedded in the floor, showing regions of Orun-Saa, Nri-Ulo, and even further lands marked with Riftborn sigils.
But Chizoba's eyes settled on the ledger.
It sat alone on a pedestal near the rear. Bound in cracked black hide, its pages glowed faintly with embedded Ase filaments.
He opened it and scanned quickly—names, locations, rituals, shipments.
And near the bottom: a diagram of the Silent Citadel.
He closed the book and slipped it into his coat.
Then the door behind him slid open.
"So…" came a familiar voice. "It is you."
The Collector.
He stood in the doorway, a look of amusement stretching across his mask. His voice echoed strangely, almost mechanical.
"Do you know what you've done, child?"
He took a deep breath.
"Riftborn! Intruder in the sanctum!"
The alarm echoed immediately—a blaring, screeching howl that filled the halls.
Chizoba's eyes narrowed. He didn't speak. He just moved.
In a blur, he sprinted toward the Collector, hoping to bypass him in the confusion—but slammed into a sudden, invisible wall.
A kinetic forcefield.
It threw him back through the air.
Mid-flight, Chizoba twisted his body. Arms out. Legs curled. He flipped, landed with a soft thud on the balls of his feet.
So the door's blocked.
The Collector stepped forward slowly, smiling.
"You won't leave here alive."
Chizoba said nothing. Just looked to his right.
A stone wall.
Thick, but old.
He clenched his fist, gathering the precise amount of Chi he had reclaimed since escaping the cell, directing it to his knuckles. Not enough to burn bright—just enough to strike like thunder.
He hurled his fist into the wall.
Crack!
The stone splintered, a spiderweb of fractures crawling outward from the impact.
One more strike.
Boom.
The wall burst outward, chunks of stone flying as daylight streamed through the breach. Dust and light exploded around him.
Chizoba stepped through the hole.
"If a door's blocked," he murmured, "you make your own."
And then he vanished into the storm.
Dust swirled where the wall had been. The Collector stood motionless for a moment, eyes narrowed behind his fractured mask as debris settled on the floor like ash. His fingers flexed absently, the residue of the forcefield pulsing at his fingertips.
"He made a door," he muttered, then laughed once. Dry and hollow.
The laugh died quickly.
He turned sharply, activating a control rune embedded in his bracer.
A crackle, then a projection flared up in front of him—a ghostly orange map of the facility.
"All Riftborn! Chizoba Nkemjika has escaped confinement!"
"He is headed northward. Section C breached. Do not attempt to engage alone."
He tapped a glyph.
"Activate sentinel drones. Seal the surface-level exits. Bring him back—alive."
A junior Riftborn's voice crackled through his bracer:
"What's his threat level, Overseer?"
The Collector's voice grew cold.
"He broke chains forged in Riftsteel. Killed a sentinel barehanded. Evaded patrols. And he's walking out of this fortress with our ledger."
He glanced once at the shattered wall.
"Threat level: Ascendant."
The hallway pulsed red as alarms shrieked louder.
"Hunt him down."
…....…
Chizoba darted through the half-lit halls, slipping between columns and through blind corners as klaxons wailed behind him. His body ached with every step—his bones still knitting from the healing he had managed in his cell—but his movements were efficient. Clean.
His breath came slow and shallow.
"Noise attracts death."
He passed a Riftborn patrol rounding a corner. His senses flared—Chi vibrating through the soles of his feet. He pressed against a wall, let them pass. One of them paused—sniffed the air—but said nothing.
They moved on.
He ducked into a vented corridor, feeling the metal floor hum with the pulsing of backup generators.
His mind raced.
"The facility exits are too obvious. Too guarded. They expect me to flee upward."
He took a sharp turn left, descending instead—toward the water recycling wing. Few guards. Less security. A weak wall leading to the ravine cliffs behind the mountain outpost.
Moments Later – Water Ducts
Chizoba crawled through a narrow maintenance shaft, gripping rusted bolts and slick piping. Below him, water thundered beneath the grating—a sheer drop into a rocky canyon. Dangerous. But better than staying.
Behind him, mechanical shrieks echoed.
Sentinel drones.
He leapt from the vent and landed on a catwalk, metal creaking beneath him. He sprinted toward the drainage sluice—but a drone dropped in his path, spinning blades buzzing with violet energy.
It lunged.
Chizoba slid under its strike, grabbed the underside of the catwalk, and threw himself off—vanishing into the foggy ravine below.
The drone peered over the edge… then turned back, scanning for movement.
The ravine wind howled around Chizoba as he plummeted, body twisting in the air. He hit the water hard—but at the perfect angle, breaking surface tension like a spear. Pain rippled through his battered form, but his Chi flared on instinct, forming a thin protective aura that kept his bones from snapping outright.
He emerged coughing, gripping a chunk of rusted metal lodged in the cliff wall. He dragged himself up, lungs burning.
Above, spotlights panned the cliffs. The shrieking of sentinels faded. For a moment… silence.
Then—a hiss.
He turned.
Three Riftborn scouts leapt down from higher up—silent, precise, blades glinting in their gauntlets. Their faces hidden behind bone masks. Their presence was followed by several more dropping behind them, forming a rough semicircle that began to close in around him.
And behind them—Aberrations.
Twisted beings, bodies made of flesh and corrupted tech, their forms shifting unnaturally with every step. They hissed like ruptured steam valves.
Chizoba backed away, step by step, deeper into the ravine's throat.
"Narrow ground. Good. One direction. One front."
He raised his hands, the shackles still clinging to his wrists clattering softly. His breathing slowed.
His eyes focused.
And then he moved.
The first Riftborn scout lunged—blade high, sweeping low.
Chizoba stepped to the side with precision, twisting his hips and launching a controlled palm strike to the temple. The soldier crumpled. The second came from behind, but Chizoba's senses were alive, his Chi humming through the air.
He ducked under the strike, seized the attacker's wrist, and snapped it with brutal precision, then drove an elbow into their throat.
"Chi control: redirect. One flow. Two targets."
Another came—this one faster, a flurry of jabs. Chizoba let his knees bend, almost flowing with the strikes, each one grazing but not hitting. When the scout overcommitted, Chizoba unleashed a burst of Chi into his legs, launching upward into a midair spin and axe-kicking the Riftborn's neck.
"Strike. Reposition. Never let them surround you."
More came. Every time one fell, two more dropped from the cliffs. But they were slower. Cautious now. They had learned. Yet still—not enough.
Chizoba flowed between them like smoke. Each punch and kick was not just a movement—it was an expression of mastery. His Chi, although restrained, was precise, condensed, and used only when necessary. He enhanced the tensile strength of his muscles, sharpened the perception in his eyes, slowed his heart rate to conserve energy while pushing his body beyond human limits.
Sweat ran down his back.
His body was protesting.
But the end of the ravine loomed—and with it, a jagged breach into a wasteland.
He sprinted through it just as an explosion lit the cavern behind him—a Riftborn grenade hurled too late.
Before him stretched a field of rusted wreckage and abandoned war machines, some still half-alive with sputtering Iron King tech. Crushed helms, fractured mechs, broken Ase-tech relics. The wind smelled of oil and blood.
And then—they emerged.
Three Aberrations, standing equidistant from him, forming a triangle. Their limbs twitched. One had multiple arms ending in drills and saws. Another had no face, only a mass of sensory nodes and tendrils. The last towered above, hunched like a gorilla, its flesh sagging over bronze-plated implants.
They charged.
Chizoba dropped low, Chi compressing around his legs, and vanished from view with a flash-step to the left. The tendriled aberration lashed out, missing.
He appeared behind it, delivering a palm to its spine—then surged his Chi into the strike. A concussive force exploded outwards, sending it sprawling.
The multi-armed aberration spun to intercept. Chizoba jumped high, flipped over its swinging drills, then landed on its back. His fingers found a weak point in the Iron King spine implant—and ripped it out with Chi-enhanced force.
The creature screamed and fell.
Two down. One to go.
The largest aberration lunged.
Chizoba dashed to meet it head-on. His Chi flared, coating his body in a silver-blue glow. The impact when they collided was thunderous. Chizoba ducked the first swing, planted his foot in the ground, then twisted with his full weight, driving a Chi-coated elbow into the beast's ribs.
The impact created a shockwave.
The aberration stumbled—then swung again.
This time, Chizoba didn't dodge. He caught the punch barehanded, veins glowing faintly as he redirected the kinetic energy through his spine and into the earth.
"Absorb. Transfer. Rebound."
He launched upward with a devastating uppercut.
The monster's head snapped back—neck breaking.
And it collapsed.
Chizoba stood still for a long moment, body trembling. Blood ran down his side. His breath came in heavy gasps.
He looked back—no more pursuers. For now.
He turned his gaze forward.
"The ledger is intact. The truth of the Riftborn… whatever secrets they're hiding… I'll find it."
But before he could move, The collector and ife walked out of the ravine with what seemed to be the entirety of the riftborn forces that this base possesed; a several score of soldier and a dozen aberrations.
"You actually thought you could run away chizoba"
The collector asked with a smirk painting his face. Ife stood beside him but said noting, just palmed her knife and stood ready. Chizoba said nothing and took a battle stance, his chi flared signaling the riftborn to attack him.