Dani stood frozen in the orchard ruin, shoulders tense, breath slow and unnatural. Her weapon was still warm in her hands—but it had done nothing. Not against that. She didn't blink. Couldn't. Not yet.
Her eyes stayed locked on the empty space the anomaly had vanished into, the one still twisting like a wound barely healing—still remembering her. Its voice lingered, low and insistent, like a pulse beneath her skin.
You saw it.You gave it proof.You named it real.
She slammed her palm into her temple. Once. Twice. Harder the third time. "Forget," she muttered. "Forget."
Her breath quivered, barely audible above the rising hiss of spatial static surrounding her. She pulled a neural suppressor stick from her belt—standard issue for post-contact trauma—and shoved it beneath her tongue. The bitter capsule dissolved, crawling electric down her spine. Her left eye twitched.
Thirty seconds of blurred reality. Then the memory shattered—like glass reassembling in reverse. She didn't lose the memory. She buried it deep, folding it into an unreachable echo.
She stared forward. Nothing remained. No anomaly. No threat. Just her. Alone.
And then the orchard cracked.
Not in sound or sight. Metaphysically.
They hadn't moved. They were the movement.
One heartbeat, Dani stood amid broken trees. The next—her boots scraped hard on cracked pavement.
Hollow Reach.
Somewhere near the eastern quarter. The skeletal observatory loomed far in the mist.
A guttural, wet choke snapped her head left.
Kenton collapsed across the street—clutching a battered case, eyes glazed with static. His coat torn, lenses cracked. But he was breathing.
Then—
A third sound.
Meaty. Wrong.
Dani spun.
Lance wasn't standing.
He'd been dropped. Like meat.
His body hit the pavement with a dull thud, then sagged—boneless and silent. Dario scrambled after him, yipping anxiously, tail tucked.
The dog crawled to Lance's side, whining sharp and desperate.
Dani's breath caught.
Not in shock.
Recognition.
Lance was broken.
His skin mapped with bruises—shades no living body should bear. His left shoulder hung too low, dislocated or shattered beyond sense. Ribs heaved unevenly, chest twitching in jagged, arrhythmic jerks like his lungs forgot their rhythm.
His arms—twisted and crooked. Bent like broken branches, useless as folded paper.
His shirt soaked in a sick blend of milk and blood, pooling beneath him in slow, surreal drips. The milk still leaked from his eyes.
Opaque. Cloudy. Wrong.
And beneath the milky stream, sharp veins of crimson snaked through.
His mouth was sealed tight, jaw clenched.
Not asleep.
Shattered.
Unconscious, but taut, as if pain alone tethered what was left of his soul.
Dani crouched, one knee trembling beneath the weight.
Kenton limped forward.
He froze at the sight.
Dani stood, arms trembling, carrying Lance's limp form like a broken marionette. Dario followed close, eyes darting to the shadows as if trees might whisper secrets.
Kenton's gaze locked on Lance. He swallowed hard.
"…Oh."
Breath caught in his throat.
Lance wasn't just hurt. He was—
He didn't speak.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't even blink.
"God," Kenton whispered. "What did it do to him?"
Dani said nothing.
The orchard breathed around them.
Not wind.
A slow exhale through a hundred branches, leaves arching in silent unison—watching.
Kenton stepped closer—and froze again when he saw the smear on Dani's coat. More than blood. A pale sheen shimmering, stinging his nose like vinegar and static.
"He's not just hurt," Kenton said quietly. "He's—""I know," Dani said, tone brittle, sharp—but not clinical. There was weight behind it now. Guilt, maybe. Or something closer to fear. "Don't start dissecting him like some project. I already made that mistake."
"I wasn't—" Kenton faltered. Then sighed. "I wasn't trying to."
Time ticked.
Behind them, a tree creaked—not from age, but movement.
Its shadow lengthened in the wrong direction.
"We have to move," Dani said, voice cracking, then steeling. "This place isn't dead. It's watching."
Kenton's voice dropped to a whisper.
"…Is he going to die?"
Dani said nothing.
She tightened her grip on Lance's shoulder—as if daring him to fight back.
A branch split with a sharp crack, bleeding sap thick and pale. Dario growled, ears flat, eyes fixed on the nearest trunk—as if it might lunge at any moment.
No one spoke.
Only Lance's milky breath.
Each inhale a struggle against something inside him.
Something still changing.
Still remembering.
And Dani—who had faced monsters, anomalies, even her own unraveling—felt something new.
Fear.
Suddenly, the ground trembled.
Not gently.
Like something ancient and enraged beneath them was stirring.
The cracked pavement rippled, as if the world itself was breathing unevenly.
Shadows stretched and twisted, folding over buildings and twisting streets into impossible angles.
The sky darkened unnaturally, stars blinking out like fading fireflies.
Hollow Reach was alive—and it was angry.
Branches reached out, clawing at them like desperate hands.
Walls groaned as cracks snaked along surfaces, fracturing reality.
Kenton stumbled, struggling to hold his balance.
Dani's eyes darted wildly.
"This isn't just a place," she said, voice low and harsh. "It's a wound. And it's trying to close."
Lance's body spasmed against her.
The twitch inside him flared, crackling and cold.
A sudden pulse rippled through the air—a resonance that made skin crawl and ears ring.
From the mist, figures formed. Not people. Not quite.
Shapes made of shifting bark and glassy leaves, eyes like shards of fractured mirrors.
They advanced.
Slow.
Relentless.
Unyielding.
The orchard was no longer their prison.
It was their predator.
Dani's breath hitched as the mirror-eyed figures closed in, each step warping the air like ripples on a dark pond. The orchard's twisted branches groaned, reaching hungrily for them, scraping against Dani's coat like brittle claws.
Kenton lurched forward, dragging his injured leg but keeping pace. "They're not just spirits," he rasped. "Manifestations of the Reach itself… the place is alive—feeding off us."
Lance, limp over Dani's shoulder, twitched again. His skin shimmered faintly, veins of pale light snaking under bruised flesh like stained glass cracking. The twitch pulsed—a subtle rhythm—almost like a heartbeat.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shuddered violently. Dirt and broken concrete erupted, forcing Dani to drop Lance with a grunt as the earth tore open like a mouth revealing jagged teeth.
From the chasm spilled a thick, viscous fog—black as spilled ink, it coiled like smoke but carried whispers—half-remembered voices, mocking laughter, desperate pleas.
Kenton held his case tight. "That's no fog. It's the Reach's memory—every lost soul it's consumed, trapped in this endless loop."
The mirror-eyed figures halted at the fog's edge, hissing as if repelled.
Dani's voice was fierce, trembling. "We use this."
Before anyone could question, she yanked a shard of broken glass from the cracked pavement and slashed it through the fog.
The black mist recoiled, shrieking like a wounded beast, retreating underground as a sharp, pulsing light flared from the shard.
"Shards of Hollow Reach," Kenton breathed. "They carry fragments of its essence—can cut through the fog, but..."
The ground groaned, splitting beneath their feet again.
Suddenly, the orchard behind them cracked open—a giant rift tearing through space like a wound reopening.
From it spilled not figures, but twisted reflections of themselves—shadow-doubles, pale and silent, eyes empty voids.
Dani's breath caught. "It's mirroring us. Copying."
The shadow-Lances moved independently, and one reached out with clawed fingers, pressing against the real Lance's chest.
Lance spasmed violently. His skin pulsed with warped light, as if struggling between the real and the echo.
Kenton snarled, drawing a blade etched with ancient glyphs from his coat. He lunged, slicing through one shadow, which evaporated like mist.
But more appeared—dozens of them, silent and relentless, circling in slow, deliberate patterns like predators stalking prey.
"Not just a place," Dani whispered. "It's a trap."
Panic threatened to surge, but Dani steadied herself. "We fight smarter."
Kenton looked at her, eyes sharp. "How? They're part of us now."
Dani's fingers brushed the neural suppressor stick in her mouth. "I forget to forget," she muttered. "If memory gives them power, then maybe we unmake it."
Lance's body twitched again, light flaring faintly from his chest.
"His symbiote..." Kenton said. "It's a key. The Reach hates what it can't control."
The mirror-figures faltered, recoiling from Lance's faint glow.
Dani's voice hardened. "Then we make him a weapon. We push the Reach back. But first—we survive the orchard."
The ground trembled violently again.
Branches reached down, wrapping around their legs.
Dani struggled but planted her feet firmly.
"Hold fast," she barked.
Kenton jammed his boot into the roots, tearing free with a snarl.
Lance spasmed one last time and opened his eyes—milky but focused.
A flicker of control surged.
His hands extended, trembling, and the warped orchard around them shuddered and bent back, as if reality itself tried to escape his will.
The mirror-figures hissed, staggering.
Dani smiled grimly. "Yeah. That's it."
But the Hollow Reach wasn't done.
From the rift, a booming voice echoed—low, guttural, and unmistakably alive.
"You do not belong. You will not remain."
The orchard twisted once more, ready to consume them whole.
And the storm inside Lance—symbiote and all—was only beginning to wake.