The simulation chamber roared around him, but Leon Rivera was still.
His breath slowed. Heart calmed.
The world didn't disappear, but it shifted. It layered. He could see the fabric beneath things: shimmering outlines, radiant strands twisting and tightening with every motion.
This was what they called "sync." Not just reflex. Not instinct. Ascension
"Maintain focus!" Echo's voice cracked through the comm. "Feel the flow!"
Leon blinked sweat from his eyes and moved. The training drones whirled, lashing beams of light and kinetic force. But now he wasn't dodging he was reading. Each strike unfolded before it happened.
He dipped low, spun on his heel, and snapped his hand outward. A ripple of compressed force surged from his palm, catching a drone mid-spin and flinging it into another. Sparks exploded midair.
Cael whooped from the observation deck. "That's what I'm talkin' about!"
Echo remained still. Analytical. She tapped notes into her datapad, expression unreadable.
When the final drone shattered in a pulse of dissolving aether, the simulator shut down.
Silence.
Leon stood in the center, chest rising and falling, sweat clinging to his skin like mist. But his eyes gleamed,lit from within.
"Better," Echo said as the chamber lights returned. "Still rough on the draw. But you're reading the weave faster."
Leon flexed his hand. He could still feel it, the current beneath the skin of reality.
"It's like… I don't know. Breathing underwater. But the water is alive."
"Poetic," Cael said, entering the chamber. "You're syncing with your rig's aether lattice. That means your internal signature's stabilizing. Soon, we can mod you properly."
Echo gave Cael a nod. "Begin full suit integration protocol. We deploy within the cycle."
Leon turned. "Deployment?"
Echo's lips tightened. "Your first full field mission."
Much Later.
Fort Veridion buzzed with a subdued tension. Word had spread fast, a second breach bloom had been detected at the edge of the northern divide. Not far from the abandoned research dome they had just cleared.
"It's growing," Kestra muttered as she checked her rifle. "Whatever's pushing through… it's getting bolder."
Aros slammed a magazine into place. "Then we hit harder."
Leon stood beside Cael near the launch deck, watching the final adjustments to his suit.
"It's not complete," Cael said, inspecting a chestplate node. "But it's close enough. The flow rig is aligned. Just don't overextend your output. If your core destabilizes, I'm not scraping your atoms off the ridge."
Leon chuckled nervously. "Comforting."
Ryn passed, pausing to hand him a serum vial. "For neural feedback. Use only if your senses start looping."
Leon pocketed it. "Thanks."
The team boarded the drop shuttle under pale violet light. The sky above Orion 17 was storm-wracked but silent, as if holding its breath.
"Mission objective is breach suppression," Echo briefed them in transit. "The anomaly is anchored near an outpost once owned by a now-defunct energy research firm. We believe it's reacting to the leftover tech—possibly amplifying the instability."
"Company name?" Kestra asked.
Echo hesitated.
"Novais Dynamics," she said.
Leon's brow furrowed. The name felt… wrong. Heavy. Like a splinter lodged in the skin.
"Didn't they go under cycles ago?" Cael asked.
"Officially," Echo said.
No one spoke after that.
The Landing Zone – Sector Delta-94
The shuttle touched down on cracked soil. Wind howled through rusted towers. The ruined Novais outpost loomed ahead, fractured and covered in strange fungal growths that pulsed faintly in sync with the anomaly's glow.
Leon stepped onto the ground . It pulsed beneath his boots again.
Just like before.
Aros led the advance, shield gauntlets deployed. Kestra flanked left, Vex high-scouted on a sniper perch. Cael deployed drone scouts ahead while Ryn kept central, monitoring team vitals.
Echo and Leon moved at the rear, her watching everything, him still finding his rhythm.
Then the first echo hit.
A ripple tore through the sky, like glass screaming, and reality fractured .
A shimmering tear opened midair, spilling forth shapes: elongated forms made of refracted matter, limbs in the wrong places, mouths that whispered backward prayers.
"Contact!" Aros roared.
The team moved as one.
Leon barely had time to brace before Cael's drones erupted into light, scattering hardlight barriers. Aros charged forward, absorbing a full blast from one of the entities and smashing it back with a seismic punch.
Kestra danced between cover, her rifle singing with calibrated bursts. Vex's shots rained like meteors, each one precise and final.
Leon felt the weave twist. One of the entities targeted him, slithering with fractal speed. He raised his hand, and this time, the current responded.
Aether snapped around him, forming a shield just as the creature lunged. It struck and rebounded in a burst of static.
"Nice timing," Echo said, her blade flashing out and cleaving through the stunned entity.
More poured through. The breach widened, unstable, hungry.
Cael cursed. "They're not random! They're protecting something!"
Leon's vision blurred again. Symbols etched across the outpost shimmered—and he saw it. sealed, a vault door beneath the overgrowth. Faint pulses ran through it in time with the anomaly. Inside, something was calling.
"Echo," Leon said. "There's something down there. A containment vault."
Her eyes flicked to him. Then to the horizon, where another wave of entities approached.
"Aros. Kestra. Defensive perimeter. Vex, cover. Cael, Ryn, Leon, you're with me. We're breaching the vault."
The stairwell reeked of decay and static. The walls shifted subtly, like the facility itself was resisting them.
They reached the vault door, ancient, bearing the logo of Novais Dynamics and a newer, scorched-over crest: Division 0.
"What the hell is this?" Cael breathed. "There's no Division 0."
Ryn examined the surrounding symbols. "These are anchor glyphs. But… corrupted."
Leon approached the door. As he drew near, his Aether flared.The glyphs ignited. The door hissed open,inside was a chamber of curved crystal and black steel. A pod stood at its center, cracked. Empty.
Monitors flickered. Data flashed.
PROJECT VESTIGE . STATUS: UNCONTAINED
RESONANCE HOST LOST
SEEKING ECHO SIGNAL
Leon staggered. The text pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
Then the breach above erupted.
Echo's voice blared through the comm. "Entities swarming! The anomaly's reacting, fall back now!"
Cael grabbed the data core. "We've got what we need. Move!"
They burst from the vault as the outpost shook violently. The breach pulsed, now nearly touching the ground.
Leon turned, and time slowed.
One of the largest entities, a towering, serpentine form of twisting crystal and shadow, descended directly toward Echo.
She braced, but it was too fast.
Leon ran
He didn't think. He didn't reach for Aether.
He became it.
A shockwave burst from him, intercepting the creature mid-strike and vaporizing it with a resonant scream.
The rest of the world returned all at once.
Echo stared at him, then smiled, just barely.
"Now you're learning."
Back at Fort Veridion
The debrief was quiet. The data core had revealed nothing clear, only fragmented logs and references to an internal Novais project long erased from public record.
One log, corrupted but partially recovered, repeated the phrase: "Echo protocol initiated. Anchor tether incomplete."
Leon sat alone in the chamber after, staring at the floor.
He felt… more awake now. More here.
Thorne entered quietly and sat across from him.
"You feel it now, don't you?" Thorne said. "The pull."
Leon nodded. "I was part of that breach. It reacted to me. I could feel it watching."
Thorne tapped the core of his armor. "Because you're tethered. Not to this world—but through it. Something buried in Orion reached across to find you. We still don't know why."
Leon looked up. "And Novais?"
"They're not just some buried corporation. They were the hand of something greater. A puppet for a deeper will."
"A shadow?"
Thorne didn't speak, but Leon saw the truth in his silence.
Later,
Echo gathered Leon in the strategic briefing room.
A holographic map of Orion 17 bloomed into being: ten divisions spiraled around a central node marked Supreme Command.
The Ascension Hierarchy
Supreme Commander Eryndor Voss – Oversees all Ascension forces.
Division 1 – The Seraph Guard – Elite planetary defenders.
Division 2 – Skyforged – Aerial and orbital strike force.
Division 3 – Obsidian Choir – Information warfare and intelligence.
Division 4 – Tempestrum – Elemental and weather manipulation.
Division 5 – Gilded Path – Diplomatic and psionic operatives.
Division 6 – Black Sun – Assassination and shadow ops.
Division 7 – Aetherbound – Cosmic researchers and relic handlers.
Division 8 – Iron Quorum – Mech, siege, and heavy infantry.
Division 9 – Veilrunners – Scout and recon.
Division 10 – Valiant – Crisis response and anomaly suppression.
"And us?" Leon asked.
Echo gestured to their symbol: a burning wing over a fracture.
"We're the firewall. When the other divisions hesitate, we go in."
Leon nodded.
"And the anomaly?"
Echo folded her arms. "It's not just a hole. It's a wound. The universe is bleeding, and something out there is watching the flow. Novais tried to control it. Now they're gone."
She leaned closer.
"But what they served? That shadow? It's not gone."
Leon swallowed. "And me?"
"You're still the variable," Echo said. "But you're ours now. And we don't leave our own behind."
Far away, deep in the void…
A voice, hollow and amused, whispered across a breach.
"He's awakening."
Behind a curtain of fractured stars, a figure watched, strings of light and thought tangled in its grasp.
Novais had been the hand.
Now it would reveal the arm.