The Warden didn't walk. It drifted—glitching between moments as if it didn't belong to any single reality. Fractured code stitched across its limbs, and each step warped the Riftwalk platform beneath it, turning steel into glass, and glass into dust.
Ji-Eun hurled her spear.
It never reached.
Time fractured mid-flight. The spear froze midair, split into a thousand flickering versions of itself, all vibrating between timelines. Jae-Won's heart slammed into his ribs.
"Causal breach detected. Anomaly: Zero-Point Origin," the Warden intoned, raising one hand.
He moved.
Glitch.
Jae-Won surged sideways, bypassing reality for a flicker of unstable time. But as he landed in a crouch to the Warden's left, its head snapped to him instantly. It was adapting.
Serin yanked Ji-Eun out of the blast radius as the Warden raised its arm again.
A beam of silver energy lanced through the space they had just vacated. The blast left a gaping void in the air—an actual hole in time itself, where gravity screamed and light died.
Jae-Won activated Glitch again, only for static to flood his vision.
[ERROR: LOOP WITHIN LOOP DETECTED]
"What the hell—?!" he staggered, blood trickling from his nose. His ability was shorting out.
"They nullify unstable temporal fields," Serin shouted over the chaos. "The more you loop or glitch, the more you draw them!"
Jae-Won clenched his fists. "Then how do we kill it?"
Serin's eyes darkened. "We don't. We misdirect it."
The Warden raised both hands now. Rings of corrupted runes ignited in the air around it. Jae-Won could feel reality folding in. They had seconds.
Ji-Eun dragged out a pulse beacon from her belt. "If I overload the Riftstone core, we can destabilize the Warden's anchor. At least long enough for us to get out."
"You'll rupture the Riftwalk!" Serin snapped.
"You have a better idea?" Ji-Eun growled. "Or should we stand around and die aesthetically?"
"No," Jae-Won cut in. "Do it. I'll buy you time."
He activated Glitch one last time, overriding the loop warning. It hurt. He felt his cells screaming, his blood vibrating at a frequency he wasn't sure was survivable.
But he moved.
And in that flicker—between one collapsed second and the next—he appeared in front of the Warden. Face to face.
"You're not supposed to exist," the Warden murmured. "You broke the design."
"I'll do it again," Jae-Won hissed.
He slashed with his dagger. The sleek, glowing blade cut through the Warden's coding, scattering light and corrupted glyphs. The Warden shrieked—not in pain, but in rage.
Ji-Eun's pulse beacon activated.
A thrum built beneath the platform—Riftstone screaming as energy twisted into overload. The Warden staggered as the temporal anchor flickered.
Jae-Won felt it weaken. Just a little.
"Get out now!" Ji-Eun shouted.
Serin opened a small local exit, stabilizing a path back to the outer Chrono Sector. "Come on!"
Jae-Won turned—but the Warden moved faster than it should've. One hand reached out and tagged his chest.
Just a graze.
But it was enough.
"Chrono-flag planted. You are now marked."
Jae-Won dove through the portal.
The Riftwalk collapsed behind him, and the Warden vanished with it. But its words followed him through the rift.