The air fell apart like broken glass. Kai stumbled backward as the tear expanded, its edges giving off colors that made his eyes water. The floating Shards inside the distortion began spinning faster, creating a vortex that pulled at everything in the basement.
"It's collapsing!" Mira shouted over the rising wind. "We need to…"
The first Echo emerged before she could finish.
It looked almost human, except its proportions were all wrong. Its arms were too long, it had way too many fingers, and its face kept shifting between expressions like a corrupted video file. The air around it seemed to twist.
"It's a Phantom Stalker Echo… Rank C, from my readings.:
Kai froze in terror for a second, like he was in some kind of hallucination. But then, Chen was already moving.
"Formation!" the squad leader barked, wind blades materializing around both hands. "Fall back to the stairs!"
But the Fracture pulsed again, harder this time, and three more Echoes materialized. Then five. Then a dozen. They poured out of the tear in reality like water from a broken dam, their bodies flickering in and out of existence.
"There's too many!" Demo's voice cracked with panic. He threw a charged explosive at the nearest cluster. The blast caught two Echoes, but they simply reformed a moment later, their bodies knitting back together from scattered fragments of light.
"They're C-rank regenerators," Chen said, looking pale. "We can't kill them fast enough. Torres, Jin, we need extraction NOW!"
Static crackled through the comms.
"Torres? Jin?" Chen tried again. Nothing. The dimensional distortion must have cut the signal.
"Stairs!" Mira grabbed Kai's arm, pulling him toward the exit. "Move!"
They ran, but the Echoes were faster. One materialized directly in front of Demo, its elongated arms reaching for his throat. Demo screamed, releasing an explosive charge at point-blank range. The Echo disintegrated, but so did half of Demo's torso.
He hit the ground, still screaming, blood pooling beneath him.
"Demo!" Kai started toward him, but Mira yanked him back.
"He's gone! Keep moving!"
Two more Echoes blocked the stairwell, their bodies merging into a writhing wall of distorted flesh. Chen's wind blades carved through them, creating a narrow gap.
"Go, go, GO!"
Kai ran through the opening, feeling cold fingers brush against his jacket. Behind him, Chen was still fighting, his C-rank Shard blazing with power. But even from this distance, Kai could see the exhaustion in his movements.
There were too many Echoes, and they kept coming.
They made it halfway up the stairs before the Fracture pulsed a third time.
This pulse was different… stronger too. The whole hospital groaned; the walls started to crack, and the floor began tilt. From the collapsing tear, something even worse than the Echoes materialised.
It stood eight feet tall, wearing armor made of solidified shadow. Where its face should have been, there was only a mirror-like surface that reflected impossible angles. Reality bent around it, warping and twisting like heat waves.
[Echo Detected: Phantom Lord - Rank B]
"B-rank," Mira whispered in shock. "We're dead. We're all dead."
The Phantom Lord raised one armored hand, and the air itself crystallized into razor-sharp shards. They shot forward like bullets.
Chen threw himself in front of them, his wind blades spinning into a defensive barrier. The crystallized air shattered against his technique, but the force drove him to his knees. Blood ran from his nose and ears.
"Run!" he shouted at them. "I'll hold it off!"
"Chen, no…"
"That's an ORDER, Kai!"
Another figure emerged from behind the collapsed wall on the first floor. Dr. Sarah Lin, their team's healer, her hands already glowing with soft green light. She was supposed to be in the van with Torres and Jin, maintaining their escape route.
"Sarah, what are you doing here?" Mira's voice broke.
"Same thing as Chen." Sarah's smile was sad but steady. "Buying time for you kids to live."
Her healing Shard flared, brighter than Kai had ever seen it. But she wasn't healing… she was converting her life force into pure energy, creating a barrier of light between them and the Phantom Lord.
"Sarah, please…" Kai choked on the words.
"Tell my daughter I tried," Sarah said softly. Then she released the energy.
The explosion of light was blinding. When Kai's vision cleared, Sarah was gone… just ash and fading particles of green light. But her sacrifice had bought them precious seconds. Chen grabbed both Kai and Mira, half-dragging them toward the second floor.
They made it to the pharmaceutical storage room before the Echoes caught up.
"Barricade the door!" Chen shoved a shelf against the entrance while Mira and Kai piled medical equipment behind it. But they could hear the Echoes gathering outside, their wet, clicking sounds growing louder.
"There's no other exit," Mira said, checking her tactical display. Her hands were shaking. "We're trapped."
Chen slumped against the wall, breathing hard. His wind blades had faded as his Shard was almost depleted. "I'm sorry. I'm so damn sorry. I thought… I thought I could…"
"It's not your fault," Kai lied. It absolutely was Chen's fault, but what good would blame do now?
The door exploded inward.
C-rank Echoes poured through the gap, their distorted bodies filling the room. Chen tried to stand, to fight, but an Echo's elongated arm speared through his chest before he could activate his Shard.
He looked down at the wound, surprised, then collapsed.
"CHEN!" Mira's gauntlets blazed with electricity as she threw herself at the Echoes. She took down three before one grabbed her from behind, its fingers sinking into her skull. She spasmed once, then went still.
Kai backed toward the far wall, his basic earth manipulation useless against enemies that could literally warp reality. An Echo lunged at him. He dodged, but another caught his leg, slamming him against the ground.
Something in his chest snapped.
He tried to crawl away, but his body wouldn't listen. His legs were heavy, useless.
The Phantom Lord entered the room, bending down to fit through the door. Its mirror-face reflected Kai's terrified expression, multiplied into infinity. It didn't run; it didn't need to. It simply drifted closer, raising one armored hand.
The air around Kai's neck started to compress.
He clawed at his throat, but there was nothing there to grab… just invisible, crushing pressure.
His vision began to fade. The sounds of the dying hospital: the wet tearing of the Echoes, the groaning metal… it all faded into a dull underwater hum. The pain in his ribs was becoming distant; the fear had stopped mattering.
'So this is it,' he thought, strangely calm despite the chaos around him.
He looked at the ceiling, or what was left of it. He was tired… tired of running, of fighting for scraps, of being weak.
He thought of his younger sister, waiting for him to come home. Mei was only fourteen, and she'd be alone now. She'd be just another orphan in the post-Incursion world, waiting for a brother who would never walk through the door.
'I'm sorry, Mei. I'm not coming home.'
His hand fell limp at his side. The darkness creeped in from the edges of his eyes, turning the world gray. He closed his eyes, waiting for the snap.
Thud.
Something heavy landed on his chest, knocking the last bit of air from his lungs.
Kai blinked through his dying vision, faintly registering a shard lay on his sternum. It wasn't glowing like the others; it was a black piece, with crystal sides that seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it.
Just then, golden text flickered through the darkness.
[You lack power.]
[Would you like to accept the [Reckoner System]?]
[YES / NO]
Kai stared at the words; they didn't feel like a lifeline… they felt like a taunt.
Power? What good was power to a corpse?
The tightness around his throat got worse. His lungs were on fire, screaming for air that wasn't there. He felt his mind starting to fade.
I don't want to die.
It wasn't a shout of resistance; it was just the sad, desperate sound of a creature taking its last breath.
I don't want to die.
His fingers twitched. He didn't have the strength to lift his hand, so he just curled his fingers inward, grazing the cold, sharp edge of the black crystal.
Yes.
The Shard didn't wait.
It didn't merge with him; it attacked him.
The black crystal liquefied, sinking through his clothes and searing into his skin, like someone had poured molten lead onto his chest.
Kai tried to scream, but the Phantom Lord's grip held his throat shut. The sound died in his windpipe, turning into a choked gurgle.
The substance burrowed past muscle, past bone. It found his E-rank core… the weak, pathetic little spark of earth magic he'd lived with, and crushed it, devouring it.
His heart seized.
The pain wasn't just physical. It felt like his very existence was being scraped out and replaced with something.
His back arched off the floor, his eyes rolling back into his head. Capillaries in his eyes burst, flooding his vision with red.
[Integration: 20%...]
[Integration: 60%...]
[Integration: 100%]
Then all of a sudden, everything stopped: the pressure on his throat, the pain, even the sound of the world… it all vanished.
For one second, there was absolute silence: no wind, no heartbeat, no Echoes.
Then, the text returned, burning gold against the red.
[SSS-RANK SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
[WELCOME, RECKONER]