The gunshot shattered the night, deafening in the cold stillness.
I braced myself, my heart seizing in anticipation.
But the bullet never reached her.
A crackling sound, deep and unnatural, filled the air between Elara and her captor. The bullet dissolved mid-flight, reduced to drifting embers before my wide, disbelieving eyes. The air thickened, pressing down with an oppressive energy that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Her captor barely had time to react. One moment, he stood defiant, gun raised. The next—darkness swallowed him whole.
A writhing, inky force surged from the ground, latching onto his limbs. His scream was cut short as the shadows devoured him, collapsing inward like a black hole. Then—nothing. No trace of him remained.
The twins stepped back instinctively, their movements eerily synchronized.
From the void, a figure emerged.
Even before I saw his face, I knew him.
Power—cold, absolute—radiated from him in waves. Draped in the classic Crimson Veil outfit, he moved with a calm that made everything else seem insignificant. The wind caught the edges of his coat and his silver hair, pale strands glinting under the fractured moonlight.
Sylus.
My chest tightened. I had spent months watching this character through a screen—memorizing his voice lines, his gaze, the subtle way his hand would rest against his chin when he was calculating something.
And now he was here.
No, I was here.
Silence. Heavy and unnatural.
Then—the measured rhythm of his dress shoes against gravel.
Each step felt like a countdown.
Elara was still on her knees, dazed but conscious, her hand trembling as she reached toward the empty air where her captor had been. I wanted to help her, to move, but my body was still half-drugged, heavy with residue from whatever toxin had knocked us out.
Sylus stopped just short of her.
I could feel his attention like pressure—sharp and suffocating—even though his gaze wasn't on me. He looked at Elara as though she were a specimen under glass: curious, critical, unreadable.
This is where it happens.
I knew this scene.
In the game, this was where he first met the protagonist. He recognized her Aether Core and took her.
But that was the scripted version.
In this version, I was standing beside her.
An unscripted extra.
And Sylus didn't like anomalies.
The thought made my blood run cold.
I watched his hand grab Elara's chin and tilt her head up.
"Look at me," he murmured. His tone was clinical, almost gentle, but every word carried the weight of ownership.
Elara didn't answer. She couldn't.
My head was spinning with the possibilities. If he didn't see a reason to keep me, he'd have Luke and Kieran dispose of me.
I didn't know what death here meant.
If dying would bring me back to my world—or just end me, completely.
The scene from the game continued, exactly as I remembered it.
She squeezed her eyes shut, fought against it.
A knife.
Steel flashed.
A thin, crimson line bloomed across his cheek.
She barely had time to process it before the cut sealed itself in a blink, skin knitting back together with eerie precision—too smooth, too seamless. As if the wound had never existed at all.
Sylus chuckled, a dark sound that sent ice through her veins.
"Is this how you greet a new friend?" he mused, brushing his thumb over his cheek.
"I guess you don't remember anything," he murmured, almost mournful beneath the steel. "Allow me to jog your memory."
He grabbed Elara's face, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"From your past to your future... to even all the crimes you'll inevitably commit."
His grip tightened.
Then, lower, an ominous whisper:
"After all, you and I… we're the same. True kindred spirits."
Elara fainted.
His attention turned to the twins. "Clean this up," he ordered, his deep voice smooth, carrying an effortless command. "No witnesses."
The twins reappeared from wherever they had gone when Sylus first arrived, flanking me in perfect formation. They didn't speak. Each grabbed an arm, and I was half-dragged, half-lifted off the ground.
Panic surged, sharp and electric. I needed to say something. Anything that made me worth keeping.
"I can be useful!" The words tore out of me. "I'm a hacker—a systems specialist. UNICORN division."
It was half-true, half-lie; the only weapon I had was the truth I'd been given.
Sylus's gaze slid toward me, glacial and disinterested. "I have more than enough specialists." His eyes moved past me as if I were smoke.
Desperation clawed at my throat.
If he ignored me, I was dead.
So I gambled.
"Wait—Sylus."
That name wasn't supposed to be known at this point in the story. It wasn't on file. He was only ever referred to as the head of Onychinus.
He froze.
The air went still.
In two strides he was in front of me, his hand closing around my throat—not hard enough to crush, just enough to remind me how easily he could. The twins dropped my arms. His crimson eyes—one glowing as he used his power—burned with focused fury.
"So the association knows my name?" he asked softly.
His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. The low, calm cadence was worse.
My pulse pounded beneath his grip.
"They don't—not even she does," I said, pointing toward Elara. "It's just me."
His expression flickered—confusion, calculation, something colder beneath it.
His grip didn't tighten. But it didn't loosen either.
His right eye glowed brighter; he was using his Evol to see into my mind.
In the game, this was the part where she screamed—the pain was unbearable, my MC just fainted from it.
But I felt nothing.
No heat. No pressure. Just… silence. A hollow stillness, like his power had reached for me and found nothing there to grasp.
Something in his expression shifted. Not much—just a flicker, a narrowing of his eyes, a pause where there shouldn't have been one.
He tried again. Nothing.
The composure that defined him—impeccable, unshakable—fractured for a breath. And then his hand tightened around my throat.
The sudden pressure crushed the air from my lungs.
Instinct took over. I twisted my hips, bringing my arm up between us the way I'd been taught—pivot, strike, break the grip at the thumb. I tried to drive my elbow into his forearm, to loosen the choke—anything to free myself.
He didn't budge.
It was like striking stone.
The odds were stacked.
His strength went beyond what any human should have—in this world, Evolvers were altered on a genetic level. If I hadn't just been drugged, I might have had a chance.
My vision blurred at the edges.
Maybe I'd pushed too far. Maybe this was how I died.
As the darkness crept in, one thought clawed through the panic: If I die here, let it send me home. Please—not to nothing.
Then everything went black.