Riven ran.
The corridor wasn't a corridor anymore. It bent and shifted under her feet like running across glass shards floating on an ocean. Every step felt like it could drop her into nothing.
Her shoulder burned. The bullet-wound wasn't healing, it was rewriting. Her HUD flickered with corrupted prompts:
[HP: 73% → ERROR]
[SYSTEM ACCESS: INTERRUPTED]
[PLAYER TAG: ???]
She ripped the notification from her vision and kept moving.
But the whisper followed her.
Not her brother this time. Not Kazien.
Something darker.
"You left him."
"You'll leave him again."
"You were never the savior. You were the delay."
She clenched her teeth, drew her blade, and slashed at the empty air.
"No more ghosts."
Behind her, footsteps.
Not Kazien.
Heavier. Hungrier.
A squad of Killshards dropped from the collapsing ceiling corrupted player-constructs with glowing skulls and rifles made of bone-white code. Their movements were jerky, like bad playback footage, but their weapons hummed with precision.
The lead one tilted its head.
[TARGET: RIVEN_SOLIS]
[KILL ORDER: ACTIVE]
She grinned bitterly. "Finally. Something I can stab."
Kazien moved through the vault ruins, every step echoing against memory walls that still pulsed with fragments of Ghostrun.
SAGE's voice stayed clinical.
"Tracking Riven's tag: unstable. Path divergence at 73%. If she continues alone, survival odds: 9%."
FURY buzzed with nervous energy.
"Bro, she's literally walking into a frag party. You should be running, not brooding."
Kazien ignored them.
His eyes burned on the lingering shadow where Echo-6 had stood.
SYNDRA's voice coiled around him.
"You think chasing her saves her?"
"I don't care about saving her."
"Liar."
"I care about finishing this."
"Then let him kill you."
Kazien froze. "Echo-6."
"He's the bullet you should've fired. The self you refused to accept."
"When he kills you, I'll finally know how to end you."
Kazien raised his guns. "Then I'll just kill him first."
SYNDRA laughed soft, like a whisper inside his veins.
"You can't. He's already you."
The first Killshard lunged.
She ducked, slashed upward blade cutting through its corrupted ribcage. The thing screamed in static and dissolved, but the others closed in fast.
Her HUD pulsed red:
[SYNC ABILITY: DISABLED]
[WARNING: PARTNER LINK LOST]
No recoil chain. No bullet fusion. No Kazien at her side.
Her blade flickered. Her wound burned.
Still she fought.
Because that's all she had left.
The Killshards tightened their circle.
One raised its rifle point blank at her chest.
Her blade arm trembled. Too slow. Too weak.
The shot fired.
And was intercepted.
A bullet perfectly placed shattered the Killshard's skull before it could pull the trigger again.
The construct collapsed in static dust.
From the shadows behind her, a voice:
"Looks like you still can't finish a fight without me."
Riven spun.
Not Kazien.
Jax.
Gun smoking.
Eyes cold.
The Killshards disintegrated in static dust around them, Jax's twin pistols still glowing faintly from the overcharge.
Riven wiped blood and code residue from her cheek, blade still raised. "If you're here to finish me off, you picked a really stupid dramatic entrance."
Jax smirked. "If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't waste time saving your ass."
"You mean like last time?"
His grin slipped. "Cute. But no. This isn't the last time. This is worse."
He holstered one pistol, kept the other trained casually at her. Not exactly hostile. Not friendly either. Just… Jax.
Riven didn't lower her blade.
"Why are you here?"
"To keep you alive."
"Bullshit."
He shrugged. "Alright. To keep you alive long enough."
Her eyes narrowed. "Enough for what?"
Jax tapped the side of his head. The faint hum of an overlay system flickered across his face.
"You really don't remember, do you?"
"Remember what?"
"Ghostrun wasn't just a bloodsport. It was a filter. They weren't picking the best killers, they were picking the best subjects."
Riven stiffened.
"What subjects?"
"You."
Her blade wavered.
"Explain."
"Not here." Jax jerked his chin at the collapsing corridor behind her. "Zone integrity's tanking. We move, or we both flatline. Your call, Riven."
She hated him.
Hated his smirk. His calm. The way he said her name like he'd owned it first.
But she hated dying more.
She lowered the blade. Slightly.
"Lead the way," she muttered.
Jax smirked again. "Knew you'd remember who the better shot was."
Kazien walked through what looked like a desert of broken glass, his boots crunching code-fragments that glowed faintly underfoot.
Every few seconds, he'd catch glimpses of Echo-6 in the reflections. Always just behind him. Always smiling.
FURY grumbled.
"Bro, I swear if he jumps out of one more reflective surface, I'm uninstalling myself."
SAGE chimed calmly.
"Warning: Spatial feedback loop detected. Path integrity compromised."
Kazien's grip tightened on his guns.
"I know it's a trap," he muttered. "I'm still walking into it."
The glass plains shifted.
And there he was.
Echo-6, waiting.
Not guns drawn. Not attacking.
Just standing there, as if Kazien was right on time.
Echo-6's voice carried on the static wind.
"You came alone. Just like before."
The corridor opened into a shattered arena, where fractured stadium lights blinked on and off above a half-collapsed battlefield.
Riven's HUD flickered warnings. Jax's didn't. He moved like he belonged here. Like he'd been expecting this map.
She finally asked, voice low:
"What did you mean subjects?"
He looked at her.
"Your brother wasn't killed by accident, Riven."
Her throat tightened. "Don't "
Jax's eyes hardened.
"He was erased. So you could take his slot."
The glass plains stretched in every direction, each shard catching Kazien's reflection twisted, multiplied, warped.
Echo-6 stood in the middle, pistols loose at his sides.
"You're early," Echo said.
Kazien raised his guns. "Or maybe you're late."
The first shot came without warning.
Echo's bullet shattered a glass spire beside Kazien not hitting flesh, but memory. The shard re-formed instantly, replaying Ghostrun's arena stands, crowds screaming, Kazien's name flashing on holo-screens.
Echo smirked. "See? Even the system remembers who you were."
Kazien fired back. His bullets didn't just crack glass they cracked Echo's smile.
The ground trembled as the reflections around them rippled, showing moments Kazien didn't want to see:
Riven bleeding out in Redrift.
His killfeed climbing as his team dropped, one by one.
The way his finger never wavered on the trigger.
Echo's voice echoed across the shards.
"You can't kill me, Kaz. I'm not your shadow."
"Then what the hell are you?"
Echo's grin sharpened.
"I'm the trigger you keep pulling."
The duel ignited bullets ricocheting, each hit rewriting the battlefield with new memories, old failures. Every miss still struck something. Every ricochet cut deeper into Kazien's past.
FURY shouted over the comms.
"Bro, he's literally playing 4D trauma chess with your head right now!"
SAGE's voice was calmer.
"Analyzing pattern… his reload cycle matches yours, Kazien. He is firing before you even decide to."
Kazien's jaw clenched. He emptied both mags in a blinding chain shot only for Echo to mirror him, every bullet meeting its twin midair, bursting into shards of light.
They both reloaded in the same breath.
Kazien muttered, "Figures."
Echo smirked. "You always hated mirrors."
Riven and Jax crouched behind a collapsed scoreboard in the shattered arena.
She hadn't taken her eyes off him since his revelation.
"You're lying."
"Am I?"
"My brother died in Ghostrun because "
" because someone shot him. Right?" Jax cut in, his voice sharper than the bullet he hadn't fired. "But you never saw who. Never questioned why he was the only casualty that round."
Riven's hands tightened on her blade. "Kazien saw. He would've told me."
Jax's smile was bitter.
"Funny thing about Kazien. He only tells you what keeps you on his side."
Riven's chest tightened. The wound on her shoulder pulsed hotter, like her body was rejecting the memory.
She snapped, "Why are you really here, Jax?"
"To make sure you don't repeat his mistake."
Kazien ducked behind a jagged shard, breathing hard. Echo's footsteps echoed on every surface, it was impossible to tell where he was.
Echo's voice drifted from everywhere at once.
"You still don't get it. SYNDRA doesn't want me to kill you."
Kazien's eyes narrowed. "…Then why the game?"
"Because she wants me to break you."
And then Echo fired.
One shot.
Clean. Perfect.
Straight into Kazien's chest.
The bullet slammed into Kazien's chest.
No blood. No system warning. Just weight.
His knees hit the glass. Shards cut into him, but he barely felt it. What he felt was… absence.
The memory of his first kill gone. The face, the smell, the recoil in his arms blank.
Echo's voice curled around him.
"You think your kills make you stronger. But every trigger is just a brick in the wall you're building to forget."
Kazien tried to raise his guns. His hands shook.
Echo fired again.
Another hit shoulder this time. Another memory blinked out.
His team. Ghostrun. Their last laugh before everything burned.
Gone.
SAGE cut in, urgent.
"Kazien, his rounds are erasing your mnemonic core. At this rate "
FURY shouted over her.
"Bro, he's literally deleting you! Pull some anime-shit reversal, NOW!"
Kazien gritted his teeth, voice hoarse.
"I don't… need memories to pull the trigger."
He raised his pistols.
Riven staggered as the pain in her shoulder spiked. She collapsed against the shattered scoreboard, blade clattering from her hand.
Jax caught her before she hit the ground. For once, his grin was gone.
"Shit. It's worse than I thought."
Riven gasped, "What… what is this?"
Jax's jaw tightened.
"It's not a wound. It's a tether."
She blinked at him through the haze. "Tether to what?"
"To who."
He pulled her shoulder into the light. The wound wasn't just burning it was pulsing, in sync with a faint echo in the air.
"Your brother," Jax said softly. "They didn't erase him. They rewrote him. Into you."
Her breath caught.
"That's why you've always been unstable when you Sync. It's not just you firing. It's two souls trying to share one trigger."
Riven's heart hammered. Rage and disbelief surged together.
"You're lying "
"Look at your HUD," Jax snapped.
She did.
The flickering tag beside her name shifted. For just a blink
[PLAYER TAG: RIVEN_SOLIS]
[LINKED GHOST: ???_SOLIS]
She froze.
"No… no, no, no "
Echo stepped closer, guns steady.
"You can't beat me, Kaz. I'm everything you tried to bury. Every trigger you pulled when you thought nobody was watching."
Kazien's breathing was ragged, but his eyes burned.
"You're wrong."
Echo tilted his head. "Oh?"
Kazien's fingers tightened on his triggers.
"I buried nothing. I carry it. Every kill. Every scream. Every bullet."
He pulled both triggers.
The glass plains shattered in a storm of ricochets reflections splintering into infinite pieces.
For a moment, it was like Kazien had turned the whole world into a magazine unloading at once.
Echo staggered, first time he hadn't mirrored perfectly.
But then Echo smiled.
"You finally get it."
Kazien's HUD flashed.
Not his killfeed.
A choice.
[TARGET LOCK: RIVEN_SOLIS]
[KILL ORDER: ISSUED]
[PRESS TRIGGER TO COMPLETE]
His hand shook. His gun aimed, unwilling, straight at Riven's reflection in the shards.
Her eyes wide. Terrified.
Kazien's finger on the trigger.