The Ridges stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
They thought that was the end of it. Just another odd patrol, some strange carvings, bad air, and no contact. But then it got worse. Not louder. Not more active. Just… less.
First, the reports started stacking. Glitches on motion sensors. Power flickers in surveillance cams. Then came the silence.
Actual silence.
The kind that made even the insects shut up.
A meeting got called. Not a briefing. Not a friendly sitrep. A full-scale ops meeting. That alone told Rus something was about to slide downhill.
They sat in the chamber, Rus, Muriel, Reed, a couple of pencil-pushers from logistics, and the two TRU reps. The kind of company you get when a problem's big enough to actually matter.
Reed stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, jaw tight. He wasn't the nervous type, which made it worse.
"There's a silence in the Ridges," he said.
No one responded at first. Rus wasn't even sure what the hell that meant. Silence? As in no movement? No creatures? No noise?
Then Muriel clarified. "Total auditory drop. No ambient sound. Our drones have confirmed. The entire section's gone acoustically dead."
Still didn't mean much to most people in the room. To Rus, it was like someone kicked him in the back of the brain.
Reed looked at the TRU team. "Explain."
The taller one, doctor-something, leaned forward. Calm. Measured. Like he was talking about lab samples instead of death zones. "When a Rift begins to manifest physically, not just dimensionally, it starts to unravel ambient physics. Time, sound, even basic thermals. This kind of auditory silence is a hallmark of early-stage emergence."
Muriel finished it for him. "We've got a Rift manifesting in the Ridge sector."
That word hung like a goddamn guillotine.
Rift.
Every soldier in the UH flinched when they heard it. Most had nightmares about the first wave. About cities eaten, mountains folded, and people… well, no one really knew what happened to those caught inside. Best guess was screaming until your atoms stopped knowing what you were.
"It's still unraveling," Muriel said. "Which means we have time. Not a lot. But some."
They could already feel the headache forming behind his eyes.
Containment meant deployment. Which meant Cyma Unit was going back into the Ridge. Again.
Of course they were.
"Lt. Wilson," Reed said, turning to him. "You filed the last field log. Report."
Rus stood. No theatrics. Just gave them what he had.
"Initial patrol was quiet. No contact. No estranged fauna. No bird calls. Scans came up empty but the terrain felt off. Markings found, non-native symbols, possibly territorial, but nothing matched known monster or tribal patterns. Carved deep. Changed between sweeps."
The shorter TRU rep, female, sharp features, sharper tone, cut in. "Were there sightings?"
"No," Rus said. "Not of anything moving. But there were tracks. Clawed. Dragging. Then they vanished."
"Distortion," she nodded. "It's possible the Rift has already begun displacing space in localized pockets. Creatures may already be trapped between layers."
Great.
Reed paced a step. "The Ridge borders Damasa and leads into the Greater Plains. If a Rift fully opens there, we lose all forward mobility forward. We lose farmland. We lose control."
Everyone knew what that meant. And yet no one said the word.
War.
They'd fought Riftborne before. Barely held lines. Burned through lives like firewood. And that was with the support of the whole of humanity.
"How the fuck do you stop a Rift?" Rus asked. No tact. Just tired honesty.
TRU's lead scientist didn't blink. Used to the bluntness the grunts of UH have.
"You don't. Not directly. But you can starve it. Kill the formation before the heart stabilizes."
"And how do you do that?" Rus pressed.
He leaned back and gave the worst possible answer… a smile.
"We have a device."
Right. Of course they did.
"Made by UH?" Rus asked.
"Yes."
"That's comforting," Rus muttered.
Then he asked the next logical thing. "Is it a nuke?"
He hesitated. That was all he needed.
"Fuck. It is a nuke."
He shrugged, the kind of shrug only a man who didn't have to carry a rifle gave. "A bit more refined. We call it an ADR device. Atom Disruption Repeater. It shreds matter at the molecular level. Destabilizes Rift anchors."
"And the land?"
"Unusable. Permanently."
So they'd save Damasa by turning part of the world into glass.
Perfect.
Muriel stepped in. "We haven't greenlit the ADR yet. We're still assessing if the Rift can be redirected, sealed, or at the very least, monitored."
Reed nodded. "That's where Cyma comes in."
Of course.
"Recon and containment?" Rus asked.
"Observation," Reed said. "TRU will set up a containment station at Ridge Point Four. You'll escort them, establish a field base, and report hourly. If the situation deteriorates, you fall back. No heroics."
Rus stared at him. "And if it collapses early?"
Reed didn't answer. He just looked at the TRU team.
The scientist looked back at him. "Then you get out. Fast. Or don't. Either way, we detonate."
Rus sat down. The room got quiet. Not the Ridges kind of quiet. Just… tense.
After the meeting, he went to gear up. Berta met him at the lockers, tying her hair back, axe already strapped.
"Are we back in the dirt?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Ridge again?"
"Yeah."
She sighed, not angry. Not even surprised. Just resigned. "Well, guess I'll start shaving my head now. Radiation's a bitch on hair."
"You're not funny."
"You're just mad I am."
The rest of Cyma fell in over the next hour. They geared up, briefed, double-checked the sensors. The TRU team rolled in with a a transport packed with tech and nerves.
By dawn, they were wheels up. Ridge-bound. Again.
And this time, it wasn't just quiet.
It was wrong.
The trees didn't move. The wind didn't blow. The whole place looked like someone had frozen it mid-breath. No birds. No insects. No animal tracks. Even the sky looked still.
They stopped near Ridge Point Four not far from Elger Ridge. Same stretch where they saw the carvings.
Now there were more of them. Dozens. Lining every tree. Some spiraled inward. Others looked like eyes. And every one of them was deeper than before.
Berta stared. "I don't like this."
"Join the club," Gino muttered.
Amiel crouched near the markings, fingers hovering just shy of the bark. "These weren't made with a blade."
"Claws?" Rus asked.
She nodded. "Or something sharper."
The TRU team didn't say anything. They just started unloading their equipment.
They spent the next six hours setting up perimeter defenses. Portable walls. Motion sensors. EM field relays. Even a damn seismic reader.
By nightfall, the station was online.
And the silence got louder.
They could hear their own heartbeat. Every step felt like it echoed. Gino clicked his tongue at one point and flinched at how sharp it sounded.
They did shifts. Watches. Drills. Drank recycled water that tasted like regret. Nothing moved.
But the Ridge felt like it was waiting.
By morning, the first anomaly hit. All sound cut. Not just ambient. Comms too.
Gone.
Reed was right.
The Rift wasn't coming.
It was already here.
And we were sitting on its throat.
* * *
By the third day, the Ridge didn't just feel wrong. It acted wrong.
The forest no longer moved like a forest. Trees stood too still. Roots pushed slightly above ground like they were trying to breathe. And the light? It never changed. No proper sunrise. No true nightfall. Just a gray, oppressive stillness, like the whole place was held under glass.
Cyma stayed sharp. They had drills every six hours. Muriel ran sims on proximity incursions. Berta sharpened her axe until it could split hairs. Gino stopped joking. That alone told them the vibe had gone from bad to worse.
They stayed near the TRU outpost, which they'd nicknamed Relay Zero. They were already deploying phase one of their containment setup. Cables ran like black veins between their gear—stabilizers, pulse repeaters, shielding plates. Half of it looked like overgrown medical tech. The other half? Weapons.
And in the center of it all was a coffin-sized capsule sealed in matte black casing.
The ADR.
They didn't advertise what was inside, but they all knew. That was the last option. That was the goodbye rift button. If things went sideways, that box would turn the Ridge into a radioactive scar, and everything inside it, including them into atoms.
TRU played it cool, of course. The lead scientist, Kaira, walked around with her tablet like she was organizing a school trip. Her partner, Soren, never smiled. He just worked. Always testing air pressure, tweaking EM fields, recalibrating scanners like the world could be measured back into behaving. Garn was here too, but the son of a bitch wanted to see a Riftborne corpse more.
Around noon, something in the forest moved.
Not visibly. But the air folded. A shimmer, subtle but unmistakable, pulsed through the trees like heat above pavement.
Berta spotted it first. "There. Left of the ridge crest."
Rus raised his scope. Nothing concrete. But the scanner next to him clicked once then went dead.
Muriel radioed TRU. "We have distortion."
No reply.
Rus clicked his mic. "TRU, copy. You've got interference."
Nothing.
A second later, the sound came rushing back like a switch had been flipped. Birds chirped, just once and were cut off mid-note. Then dead silence again.
TRU's comms sparked on.
Soren's voice came from the radio. "Wavefront anomaly confirmed. We're activating stage two."
Muriel looked at Rus. "Stage two means they're activating the ADR housing field."
Rus clenched his jaw. "Meaning?"
"Meaning they think the Rift is almost stable. And they're starting the failsafe chain."
The chain. A twelve-step protocol. Each one more irreversible than the last. Once step six hit, they were committed. Once step nine passed, they couldn't leave.
Rus pulled the team together.
"Change in rhythm. Berta, Gino, you're perimeter. Amiel, with me on overwatch. Muriel, stay linked with TRU and monitor that housing field. If it flares red, I want to know now, not after."
Everyone nodded. No complaints. They didn't get paid to argue.
By sundown, the forest folded again.
This time, visibly.
It was like watching a curtain sway except the curtain was made of trees, and the sway wasn't wind, it was space sliding sideways for half a second before locking back in.
A deer stumbled through the fold. Or what looked like a deer.
It had antlers, sure. Legs, sure. But they were wrong. Twisted at odd angles. Skin shimmered like oil. Its head jerked in stuttering frames as it walked.
Then it stopped.
Turned.
And looked at them.
Even from a hundred meters, Rys felt it.
Not fear. Not aggression.
Recognition.
"Riftborne?" Gino whispered.
"No," Amiel said. "Not yet. It's still… changing."
The thing blinked once and stepped back into the fold.
Gone.
Just like that.
TRU didn't need their report. They saw it too. Cameras caught every frame.
Kaira was pale. Soren didn't even look surprised.
"We're moving to step four," she said over comms. "Pulse dampeners going live. ADR prep accelerated."
Rus stepped into their makeshift control tent. "How far until the device is armed?"
"Seventy-two hours," she said. "Assuming no breaches. If the Rift stabilizes earlier, we drop to phase nine within twelve minutes."
"And once nine is hit?"
She didn't look up. "You evacuate. Or die."
Rus laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. "Hell of a choice."
Kaira just checked her readouts. "You knew what this was."
She was right. But knowing didn't make it easier.
That night, Gino heard something.
He was on the second watch. Said he caught a whisper. Not wind. Not static. A voice. Close. Inside the trees. Speaking a language he didn't know, but could somehow understand.
He didn't tell Rus until morning.
Probably because of what happened after.
After the whisper, he turned to look.
And saw himself.
Standing just a few meters away. Not a reflection. Not a shadow.
A perfect copy. Armor. Face. Everything.
Except the copy didn't breathe.
Then it stepped backward. Into a fold in the air.
Gone.
Gino didn't sleep the next night.
Rus didn't blame him.
Muriel flagged the incident. TRU filed it under "temporal echo emergence." Whatever that meant. Probably another way of saying Rift's waking up, and it's starting to screw with identity.
By day five, the forest had retracted. The trees around Relay Zero were withering. Not dying. Just pulling inward, like they were trying to avoid the center.
That was the scariest part. Even the land knew to get away.
TRU started sealing the ADR.
A casing of poly-alloy steel wrapped the bomb, with stabilizer pylons anchoring it to the dirt. It hummed now. A low, predatory sound. Like a thing alive and pissed off that it had to wait.
Soren gave us the latest.
"Heartbeat readings show Rift pulses every four hours. The period is shrinking. Once it reaches sub-hour pulses, we'll be past the collapse threshold."
"How long?" Rus asked.
He looked at Rus like a man looking at a broken watch.
"Maybe forty-eight hours. Maybe twelve."
"What happens then?"
"The Ridge folds," he said flatly. "And everything inside becomes part of it."
Part of it.
Rus didn't ask what that meant. He already knew.
By the next morning, the last bird died. They found it near the comm relay. Just collapsed. No injuries. No marks. Heart stopped.
That's when Muriel gave him the nod.
"TRU's at phase six," she said. "We're entering the irreversible window."
No turning back.
The Ridge was either going to burn in atomic fire.
Or become something much worse.
Rus looked out at the gray sky. The still trees. The space that shivered sometimes, like it was catching its breath.
And for the first time since all this started—
Rus didn't feel like they were observing the Rift.
Rus felt like it was watching them.