The descent began at dawn.
Valen stood at the edge of a jagged crevasse hidden beneath the ruined districts of the old city. The morning sun didn't reach this deep anymore—its light broken by layers of collapsed steel and twisted rebar. The Rift readings were strongest here. So strong, even the scanners shorted out the moment they crossed the edge.
This wasn't just another Rift pit.
This was the Nexus.
And it was calling.
He turned to his squad—only four joined him. Lira, silent and steady. Kira, ever at his side. Markus, the grim heavy who had once doubted him but now followed him without a word. And Arlen, the youngest, barely twenty, his hands trembling but eyes burning with purpose.
"You all know the risks," Valen said, his voice low. "Once we cross, there's no signal, no rescue."
Kira smirked. "Wouldn't be the first time."
Valen nodded once. Then he stepped forward and dropped into the darkness.
The Descent
The shaft was deeper than expected.
They rappelled through layers of dead infrastructure, rusted piping, ancient reactor cores cracked open and humming with dead energy. The walls grew warm the deeper they went—pulsing, like veins.
Around them, the Rift twisted reality in subtle ways.
Gravity shifted in pulses.
Time stuttered. Seconds repeated or vanished.
Markus cursed under his breath. "I feel like I'm dreaming."
"No," Valen muttered. "This is something worse."
They landed in what had once been a subterranean monorail station—now mutated beyond recognition. Tracks floated in midair, broken steel hovering like teeth around a maw of blackness in the center of the platform.
That was the Nexus.
A tear in the world.
A wound that never healed.
Lira stepped forward. "It's… singing."
They all heard it now.
A deep hum that vibrated through their bones. Not music. Not language. Something older than either.
Valen's Echo flared on its own.
It wanted to go in.
So did he.
Crossing Through
He stepped into the tear.
It was like walking through fire and ice at once—his senses shredded, reassembled, then reversed. For a moment, he didn't exist. No body. No thought. Just a presence, drifting in something too vast to name.
And then—
He emerged.
But not in the city.
Not even on Earth.
They stood in a fractured mirror-world, where sky had no top and gravity had no rules. Broken buildings hung in the air, upside down, sideways, some spinning slowly in space. Shadows moved without light. Water ran upward. Echo energy shimmered like mist across the surface of everything.
"This is the Echo Nexus," Kira whispered. "It's not a place. It's a… dream of one."
Valen could feel it—power thrumming through the air like static.
Here, Echo obeyed no rules. His control over it grew wild, erratic.
He raised a hand, and black fire sparked without summoning.
Too much energy. Too close to the source.
"We don't stay long," he said. "Find the core, then collapse the entry if we can."
"Collapse this?" Arlen asked, staring at the floating skyscraper ahead. "With what?"
Valen's expression was grim. "With me."
The Center of the Nexus
They traveled through a corridor made of glass and memory.
Every step triggered flashes.
Valen saw himself—dying in the first apocalypse, reborn in the second.
He saw the moment his parents vanished, his brother screaming, and the Riftborn crawling from the fissures with teeth made of light.
Lira reached for him once.
"Don't get lost," she said.
But the worst came at the center.
A spire floated at the heart of the Nexus—a tower not built, but grown. Its walls pulsed with Echo energy, veins of power surging from the base up into an eye-like sphere at the top.
The same eye he saw in his dream.
The Dreaming Eye.
It turned toward him—not literally, but he felt it notice.
And the voice returned.
You are almost ready.
Valen fell to one knee, gripping his head. The others tried to reach him, but an invisible force pushed them back.
His Echo surged. The Blackfire within his veins erupted, flickering in violent waves.
Harbinger, the voice whispered. You survived the flame. Now survive yourself.
Reclaiming Control
He grit his teeth and roared, forcing the Echo back into himself, slamming the fire down with sheer will. The Nexus pushed, tempted, offered him more—power beyond comprehension.
He refused it.
Barely.
When he rose again, the scars on his chest glowed white-hot. But he stood tall.
"I'm not your vessel," he growled. "I'm not your weapon."
The eye pulsed once.
Then closed.
The Collapse
"We collapse it now," Valen said, his voice rasping.
He stepped to the base of the spire and channeled everything—every ounce of Echo, every ember of Blackfire, all of it into one focused pulse. A heart attack for the Nexus.
Lira and Kira helped anchor him, shielding the team from the backlash.
The tower began to crack. The Nexus screamed—not in sound, but in feeling. A thousand thoughts pressing in, begging not to die.
But Valen didn't stop.
The core ruptured.
Reality snapped.
They ran.
Return
They emerged from the tear as it imploded behind them, spitting fire and debris up the shaft. The cavern groaned and collapsed. Valen barely got the team out before the ground sealed shut behind them.
He collapsed to his knees.
Breathing hard.
But alive.
Lira crouched beside him. "Did we win?"
Valen stared into the dust.
"No," he said. "But we delayed it."
He looked up at the faint sunlight breaking through the rubble above.
"And now they know I'm coming."