The Gate registered Saejin's presence instantly. It was different from the Esper it had been watching, different from any usual Guide patterns operating through resonance, this was something else entirely. It was wider. Darker.
"There is another. What are you?"
Back at the mobile unit, Saejin sat still, eyes open but unfocused, locked somewhere far deeper than the room around him. A current of thin energy hissed softly from his skin, barely visible. The readings on his console spiked and flattened in alternating waves, normal vitals paired with impossible sync depth.
Hara moved toward him, cautious. "Saejin."
She reached out and a static burst cracked the air, sharp and fast, snapping near her wrist. Sparks scattered from the floor like something had rejected her presence entirely.
Then Saejin spoke, low, with no emotion but complete control. His voice moved cleanly through the resonance, aimed directly at the Gate.
"You don't have the language for what I am."
Yuwon said nothing. He knew that voice, but not that tone. The words had Saejin's cadence, but none of his restraint. The sync pressure had doubled, like someone else was driving part of his nervous system without taking control. He could still move, still think, but now there were two of them inside, like a current flowing through the same channel, reinforcing decisions he hadn't finished making yet.
"Saejin?" he tried again, quieter."What are you doing?"
Still no answer. Only that layered presence, growing denser inside the field.
The zone around them began to reconfigure, it was resisting: the walls ahead began to reform themselves, the hallways narrowed.
And then the girl screamed.
Yuwon turned sharply, pivoting through the new geometry, his movements guided by the same sync, whether he trusted it or not. He found her against the far wall, caught in a recursive loop that had locked her in place. Energy surged through her resonance field. Her body had gone slack, eyes wide, mouth parted in a silent scream that couldn't resolve.
The Gate was using her to hold itself up.
Yuwon moved, fast, pulling a static barrier in a tight arc around her. The moment the shield formed, the environment cracked again. A new Specter launched forward from the wall, mid-phase, more desperate than the others.
Yuwon met it head-on, dropping the left side of his shield just long enough to send a compressed kinetic burst directly into its upper frame. The Specter folded on impact but twisted sideways and reassembled mid-air. It was faster this time.
"She is the Anchor" the Gate said again. "Without her, I collapse."
From somewhere inside the resonance sync, Saejin grinned.
Yuwon felt it. The pull. Like something massive had activated behind his shoulders, and all of it was pointed inward.
In the mobile unit, Hara's voice cracked through the channel.
"Yuwon. Saejin's not responding to override. His vitals are steady, but we're not getting anything from his link. He's not there. You need to pull out now."
"Saejin" Yuwon tried, voice low. "You're absorbing it. You need to stop."
Still no reply.
"Saejin... if you continue, the sync won't hold."
But he already knew he wasn't going to stop. The pressure in the field wasn't just growing. It was sharpening. It had focus. Hunger, even. The Specter flared again in response to the collapse and launched toward the girl a second time.
Yuwon caught it mid-motion, redirected its weight through the floor, and followed up with a burst of pressure that spiked its trajectory into a wall. The Specter shrieked, then vanished. The Gate no longer needed it.
All its energy had been redirected, into the girl.
Her mouth opened again, and this time, the scream was distorted, carrying through the resonance sync itself. The zone shook. Yuwon dropped to one knee and dragged the barrier tighter around her.
The field around Saejin's body, miles outside the zone, was pulling in. Quietly. Massively. Everything around him was being drawn inward like gravity had reversed. Power, feedback, resonance, all compressing into one center point.
"What are you?" the Gate repeated.
But this time, there was no answer.
Yuwon looked down at the girl, she was rigid and unresponsive, and realized that the Gate had gambled everything to hold the Anchor, but now it was being pulled apart, and if he didn't move fast, they were going to be caught in the collapse.
He extended his right arm, pushing the sync to its limit and forming one final barrier to shield her just long enough.
The ceiling above them began to give. Walls cracked. The Gate's structure couldn't hold under the weight of Saejin's pull.
"Move!" Soren's voice rang out through the distortion.
Yuwon barely had time to react before Soren dropped into the collapsing zone and locked his arms around both of them, yanking them back through the nearest open channel.
The Gate collapsed behind them.
The sound hit like shockwave collapsing in on itself. The entire sector's sensors blew wide from the echo, and for a brief moment, the resonance grid across six sectors went offline.
Inside the mobile unit, the sync flatlined.
Saejin's body shuddered once, arms still lifted slightly as if trying to reach forward, and then collapsed entirely. Hara caught him before he hit the floor.