Chapter 32: Apex of Instinct, Core of War
The storm over Iskar's eastern plateau was unlike anything Aaron had seen before. The sky churned with blackened clouds that seemed to pulse with unnatural lightning, their arcs crackling in shades of red instead of blue. The wind itself howled with a voice of warning, as if the world sensed the convergence of something forbidden. Soldiers of the Vanguard and Crimson Order braced themselves behind barricades, many exchanging silent glances that revealed just how close to breaking they were.
Aaron stood at the eye of it all—silent, still, and watching the darkness boil across the horizon.
In the back of his mind, the Reality Sync Interface flickered.
> [SYNC RATIO: 91.8%]
[WARNING: Territory Phase Shift Detected – Category: Dimensional Overlap (RED ZONE)]
[Time to Core Instability: 03:48:27]
[Symbiosis Anchor Integrity: 68% - Suggest Core Stabilization Protocols]
"We need to stop this collapse before it swallows the entire quadrant," Reina muttered, her synthetic eye glowing bright. "I'm reading an artificial core buried beneath the siege outpost. It's been fed kinetic energy from every skirmish, every plasma round, every death."
"A war-fueled dimensional rift..." Aaron whispered. "Of course. That's why they've been baiting us to fight here."
Reina nodded. "Every time blood is spilled, the boundary thins. This isn't just about Iskar. They're trying to rupture the veil between realities."
"And the enemy?" Aaron turned to her.
She activated her tactical uplink and displayed a projection—an enormous obsidian construct half-submerged in fractured earth, swarming with cultists in Crimson Order regalia. Above it, a floating cathedral with inverted gravity spun slowly, chains of reality dangling from its spires.
"That's their crucible. And at its center—one of the Twelve Heralds of Collapse. An Omega-tier Manifestation."
Aaron's jaw tightened. "I'll breach it."
Reina blinked. "Alone?"
"I've synced far enough. If I go further, I might stabilize the interface enough to collapse the fracture."
"You might also stop being human," she said, softly. "Or worse, forget you were one."
Aaron looked toward the sky, feeling the pull of something vast and eternal—a symphony of memory, will, and violence that resonated with every cell in his evolved body.
He walked into the heart of the war.
---
The battlefield had shifted into something alien. Every footfall echoed like thunder, time dilating between motions. Soldiers blurred into semi-static illusions, their actions caught in strange loops or reversed spasms.
Reality bent. The HUD updated.
> [Dimensional Drift Detected – Gravity Lensing Engaged]
[Symbiotic Trait "Chrono-Inertia" Unlocked – Your actions leave afterimages in spacetime.]
[Mana Conversion Rate Increased by 37.9%]
[WARNING: You're entering a High-Density Memory Zone. Caution advised.]
Aaron saw it then—past the illusions, past the moment—his old self. The cadet from Earth, standing with trembling hands during his first deployment. For a moment, they locked eyes. One version bathed in blood and chaos, the other shivering behind a faulty helmet.
Then the vision shattered.
"You're becoming unstuck," whispered a voice that wasn't Reina's.
It was her.
Silva Velcris. The being once believed lost in the Collapse. The soul his new body had once belonged to.
Your instincts are diverging. Let me in. Together, we complete the cycle.
> [Symbiosis: 73.1%] [Memetic Core Accessed: Silva Velcris' Combat Phantasm Unlocked] [Skill Acquired: Blade Phasing – Allows manipulation of spatial latency within weapon trajectories.]
Aaron dropped low, dodging a jagged bolt of crimson lightning. His blade—no longer forged metal but a conceptual construct—sliced through a wave of cultists before they even finished casting.
Time twisted again.
He was in the courtyard of the cathedral now, elevated hundreds of meters off the ground. Above him floated the Herald.
A creature of shifting geometry and inverted mass, crowned in flames and weeping void from eyeless sockets. Its voice shattered thought.
"In ascension, we discard the cage of flesh. Will you rise—or rupture?"
Aaron activated every stored skill, his RS-I burning like a sun inside his skull.
> [Skill Chain Initiated: Shadow Reprisal → Core Pulse Overdrive → Neural Synaptic Burst → Blade Phasing (×3)]
[Overdrive Mode: 12.7 seconds active. Tactical sequence optimization at 112%. Lethal Probability: 84.9%.]
He didn't answer the Herald.
He moved.
Reality bent backward as he blitzed across space, phasing through gravity itself, slashing at every weakness in the dimensional weave the Herald relied on. Their battle existed in hundreds of realities simultaneously—each time they struck, it echoed across parallel trajectories.
Silva's voice guided him.
Phase left—counter entropy. Twist the blade during mid-teleport. Three seconds from now, release all stored kinetic charge into a single point.
Aaron's movements blurred beyond comprehension. He saw himself from the outside, a storm of calculated violence, a soldier no longer bound by biological rules.
He struck the Herald's core.
The cathedral imploded.
---
Aaron awoke in a crater, scorched earth curling with smoke around him. Reina knelt nearby, monitoring his vitals.
"You did it," she said, voice trembling. "The fracture closed."
But Aaron wasn't fully there. His eyes glowed with pale light. His skin shimmered with latent arcane residue. Something within had changed.
He had passed beyond.
The RS-I updated one last time in his vision.
> [REALITY STABILIZED – TEMPORARILY]
[Symbiosis with Silva Velcris: 81.3%]
[New System Functionality Unlocked: Ascendant Branching Tree]
[Current Tier: Awakened Warborn – Next Evolution: Sovereign Vector]
Aaron stood, ignoring the searing pain in his limbs. "This was just one Herald."
Reina stared at him. "You think there are more?"
He nodded. "Twelve. That was just one. And if they're trying to merge reality with the Collapse... we're running out of time."
---
Somewhere deep in the shadows between worlds...
A council of cloaked figures watched a projection of Aaron's battle.
"He's further along the Path than any iteration."
"He is not Silva. And that makes him dangerous."
"He will either end us—or finish what we started."
Their eyes turned to a living map of fractured dimensions. One continent pulsed with crimson light.
Earth.
Their leader stepped forward.
"Send the next trigger."
---
>End of Chapter 32-