There was no peace in the darkness. It felt like drowning in nightmares: gears grinding, wind screaming, something monstrous pressing right up against the inside of his skull.
Vance jerked awake and caught the taste of ash and blood in the air.
He didn't move right away. He just lay there, sprawled across cold stone, feeling the leftover pain in his shoulder fade into a dull, steady ache.
Eventually, he blinked his eyes open.
That weird, bruised-purple sky of Fracture's morning filtered through the fog outside. He must've been out for hours. When he turned his head, he noticed someone had dragged him deeper into the cave, away from the wind.
He glanced at his arm—and his breath hitched.
His left arm wasn't bandaged. Instead, tendrils of black electricity wrapped around the torn skin, cauterizing veins and stitching up muscles like barbed wire. It was brutal, invasive, and just felt wrong.
Axiom sat ten feet away in the shadows, all muscle and menace.
The mutated Lynx watched him. No concern there, just calculation—a predator making sure its prey stayed alive.
Suddenly, golden text flickered across Vance's vision:
[Parasitic Regeneration Active.]
[Warning: The Tethered Entity is forcibly maintaining Host's cellular structure to prevent System collapse.]
[Cost of accelerated regeneration: 5 years of Host's natural lifespan.]
Vance almost laughed, but it came out as a cough, a spray of blood. He'd made it through the night, but now he was paying dearly. Five years shaved off his life—just for an arm.
"Don't worry," he croaked, locking eyes with that wild, supernova stare. "I'm not planning to die of old age anyway."
Axiom bared its fangs, sparks darting across them. It hated him. The bond between them cut like razor wire inside his head—ready to snap if his will slipped. If he flinched, showed weakness, the beast would take over and devour him, mind and soul.
Vance pushed through the pain, forced himself to sit up. The room spun, but he clamped down, refusing to let the nausea win.
He needed to move—find a safe zone, stabilize the Astral Engine, stay ahead before Axiom got any ideas about dominance.
His right hand fumbled for his canvas coat. He pulled it over his shoulders, covering up the rough electrical stitches binding his arm.
Then he paused.
The Weeping Canyons should've howled with wind by now. But outside, everything was eerily quiet.
That same unnatural silence he'd heard before the Lynx attack.
Vance shoved his mind past the agony, stretching his new, heightened senses. The beast's instincts let him feel the air, the pressure—almost taste the mood of the canyon.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Something vibrated, slow and steady. Not a living creature. Mechanical.
He crept to the mouth of the cave, pressed his back to the wet obsidian, and peered into crimson fog.
Up in the ravines, three huge shapes slid through the clouds. Vanguard Syndicate dropships—slick, armored, all white and gold, flaunting their elite status.
His blood ran cold.
In his old timeline, Vanguard never bothered with big transport ships in the Canyons. This was a dead zone—a waste of fuel. The elite were supposed to be hunting in the Crimson Woods, nowhere near this place.
So why was there a tactical squad gliding silent over the dead zone on day two of Initiation?
Squinting, Vance focused his vision. As the ships tilted to maneuver between cliffs, he saw what hung beneath them: massive containment vaults, bound by thick magnetic cables.
Not here to hunt. Here to capture. Whatever it was, it had to be catastrophic.
Julian Thorne's words from the day before echoed: I prefer anomalies.
Yesterday, Julian—the Obsidian Cartel's heir—had been wandering these canyons. Now, Vanguard had containment ships scouring the same airspace.
A bone-deep chill settled in as Vance realized something terrifying.
He had always thought only he knew what was coming, that traveling back in time gave him an edge. But what if the Aethelgard Watcher's explosion screwed with more than just his timeline? What if Syndicates and their seers, their algorithms, had felt the shift too?
They didn't know his name, but they knew the world had changed. And they were already moving, locking down anomalies before anyone else could react.
Vance glanced into the cave's darkness. Axiom had stood up, fur bristling as it sensed the magnetic hum from the dropships overhead. The golden gear in its chest vibrated quietly.
He wasn't just a grunt with a busted arm, zero credits, and a hostile parasite chained to his soul. He was the prize in a canyon where an empire hunted for the god-fragment he'd accidentally spawned.
Survival wasn't just hard—it was rigged.
Vance picked up his knife from the dirt and wiped it clean on his trousers. There was no point running back to base; if a Vanguard scanner caught the temporal radiation leaking from him or Axiom, he'd be tossed into a lead-lined vault and dissected.
"Alright, Axiom," he whispered, voice tight, cold—almost desperate. "New plan. We're not going home."
He looked toward the tunnels—pitch-black, winding down into the unmapped Sub-Stratum. Anyone else would call this suicide.
"We're going down."
"We're going down," Vance whispered. His voice barely cut through the distant thumping of the Vanguard dropships overhead.
He didn't hang around waiting for Axiom's approval. The Parasitic Tether pretty much yanked the beast along behind him. Vance left behind the bruised, sickly light at the cavern entrance and stepped into total darkness, the descent tunnel swallowing him whole.
Right away, the air turned icy. The Sub-Stratum wasn't just deeper—it was uncharted, suffocating, and the kind of place that used to eat entire squads of Tier-3 soldiers alive. They'd march in, never come out. Physics and biology didn't exactly play by the rules down here.
Vance used his hand as a guide, trailing it over the freezing obsidian wall. Behind him, Axiom's paws made almost no sound. The beast didn't need light—he navigated like he was born for this. Once in a while, Vance felt Axiom's abyss-black fur brush his arm. Not comforting. More like a brutal reminder: a monster at his heels.
Then, the deep, thrumming heartbeat of the Vanguard ships stopped. Just shut off. Vance went still, held his breath. Axiom halted too, a strange, electrical hum growing in its throat.
The ships weren't flying anymore. They were hovering. Right above the caverns.
"Don't move," Vance whispered, even though the beast didn't need to be told.
A metallic screech echoed through the rock. Doors, big ones, opening. Not good.
What came next made Vance's blood freeze—a high-frequency whine, spiraling up like a turbine. A Resonance Ping.
So, the Vanguard Syndicate wasn't just hunting anomalies with cameras. No, they were about to drop a localized, high-density sonar wave. That thing would map the genetic density of everything within five miles. The kind of tech that burnt through millions of credits every time they used it.
If that ping hit the cavern and bounced off the temporal radiation leaking from the Aethelgard Watcher's gears—those same gears crammed inside Vance and Axiom—they'd light up the Vanguard monitors brighter than a pair of flares.
"System," Vance thought, fighting panic. "Status on temporal shielding."
Golden text flickered, barely there.
[Astral Engine Stabilization: 1/100.]
[Temporal Shielding capability: Offline.]
[Warning: Resonance Ping imminent. Detection probability: 99.8%.]
Vance cursed under his breath and clawed at the stone wall, squeezing his eyes shut as he dove inward, focusing on his Inner Stratum.
The shattered body of the Aethelgard Watcher hung in that nebula darkness, massive gears moving sluggishly. He felt Axiom's panic through their mental link—the beast wanted out, wanted to run, wanted to fight.
Stay still! Vance hammered his willpower at Axiom, building an iron cage around the beast's instincts.
Axiom fought back, their Tether straining like razor wire. Blood started streaming from Vance's nose, hot and sticky.
If they find us, they'll lock us up, he projected, shoving the vision of lead-lined vaults into Axiom's mind. You'll get dissected alive—hide your core!
The whine above them peaked, deafening.
Vance didn't have a shield, but he did have the parasitic Engine. He clenched his will—just forced the Astral Engine to halt. Froze the golden gear in his heart.
It hurt. Bad. His heart skipped, stopped. His lungs locked. He was a corpse, standing upright.
Axiom got the suicidal command. For a second, the beast resisted, then gave in, stopping the gear in its chest cold.
The Resonance Ping slammed through.
It wasn't noise—it was pressure, heavy and crushing, pouring through stone. It washed over Vance, scanning his bones, his battered ribs and ruined arm.
He didn't move. Didn't breathe. His heart didn't beat.
The wave rolled over Axiom, taking in every inch of the monster's muscle and shadow fur.
Ten brutal, endless seconds. And then the ping moved past.
The air loosened.
Vance let go, and the Astral Engine lurched back to life, his heart pounding painfully. He fell to his knees in darkness, gasping, grabbing his chest.
Behind him, Axiom hissed, sparking the tunnel with dark electricity as it clawed back from frozen stasis.
They'd pulled it off. By shutting down the gears, they hid their anomaly. As far as Vanguard tech cared, he was some weak Tier-0 human with a scavenger beast hiding in a cave.
Above, a muffled thud signaled the dropships' doors closing. Magnetic drives spun up, ships moved off, sweeping further down the canyon.
Vance slumped against the stone, letting out a gritty, exhausted laugh.
"We beat them," he whispered. "They missed us."
Only, that triumph didn't last.
Something deep below—way, way under them—answered the Resonance Ping.
Not a roar. Not a mechanical growl.
It was the slow, awful sound of stone dragged across a tomb.
[Warning: Extreme Seismic/Genetic Anomaly Detected below Host.]
[Entity Class: Unknown. Age: Ancient.]
Axiom's ears pinned flat. He didn't snarl—he did something worse. He stepped back, pressing himself tight against the wall.
Vance stared into the descent tunnel. The Vanguard ping hadn't just scanned the canyon. It woke something up.
And now, he realized, they were walking straight into its maw.