The silence that fell over the clearing was a different kind of silence now. It wasn't the quiet of nature, but the absolute, ringing vacuum that follows an event so impossible it shatters the very framework of understanding.
Rylan's mind, usually a razor-sharp instrument of calculation and deceit, was a maelstrom of raw panic. Every instinct, honed by years of service in The Concordance, screamed at him. Threat. Unquantifiable. Apex predator. The F-rank he had dismissed, the anomaly he was sent to discreetly 'clean', had just erased an S-class threat with a bored sigh and a poke.
His friendly smile was a distant memory, replaced by a mask of cold sweat and barely suppressed terror. He took an involuntary step back, his twin daggers held in a defensive posture that felt utterly, laughably inadequate.
"I... I don't know what you're talking about," Rylan stammered. The words were weak, pathetic even to his own ears.
"Don't you?" Zane took a slow step forward. The mud and grime on his boots seemed to melt away, his cheap tunic now looking less like a peasant's rags and more like a deliberate disguise.
"Let's start with the basics. The poison in the creek. The 'bait' strategy. The convenient timing of your 'rescue'. It was all very well-rehearsed. A bit cliché, maybe, but competently executed. The Concordance trains its dogs well."
The name landed like a physical blow. The Concordance was a myth, a ghost story whispered among high-ranking Awakened. To have its name spoken so casually, so knowingly, in this remote mountain clearing was impossible.
Rylan's composure shattered. "Who are you?" he snarled, dropping all pretense.
"Me?" Zane stopped, now only a few yards away. "I'm just a guy who's tired of being hunted by ghosts."
He tilted his head, a gesture that was almost curious. "But I know who you are. Rylan, the Azure Blade. A rising star. But also... Cleaner-7 of the Concordance's Third Directorate. Speciality: 'Accident' facilitation. You still have a fondness for fast-acting neurotoxins, I see. Some habits die hard."
Every word was a nail being hammered into Rylan's coffin.
This wasn't a guess. This was a personnel file being read aloud.
Elara, standing frozen at the treeline, could only listen, her mind struggling to process the flood of impossible information.
The Concordance... Cleaner-7... Zane didn't just suspect Rylan; he knew him, knew him in a way that defied all logic.
Panic gave way to a desperate, feral instinct for survival. Rylan wasn't dealing with an anomaly anymore. He was dealing with something that knew his deepest, most guarded secret. There was no walking away from this.
"[Spatial Rend]!"
With a roar, Rylan lunged, not at Zane, but at the space beside him. He slashed his daggers through the air, and reality itself seemed to tear.
Two shimmering, razor-thin fissures in space shot towards Zane, designed not to cut flesh, but to sever the target's connection to the physical world, shunting him into the chaotic void between dimensions.
It was his ultimate trump card, a technique for erasing targets without leaving a body.
Zane watched the spatial tears approach. He didn't move. He didn't raise a barrier. He didn't even blink.
He just spoke a single word. A word that felt ancient, heavy with power that had nothing to do with the System.
"Halt."
It wasn't a skill. It wasn't a spell. It was a command. A command issued to reality itself.
And reality obeyed.
The spatial rifts, shimmering with chaotic energy, froze in mid-air, inches from his body. They hung there, trembling like frightened animals, held in place by a will so absolute it superseded the laws of physics.
Rylan's eyes widened in utter disbelief. His ultimate technique, neutralized by a single word.
AURA's voice was a whisper in the back of Zane's mind, and for the first time, it held a trace of something that sounded like awe.
[Analysis: Primal Script detected. Word of Power: 'Halt'. Authority Level: Unprecedented.]
"Pathetic," Zane said, his voice laced with genuine disappointment. "You wield the fabric of space like a clumsy child swinging a stick."
He reached out and tapped one of the frozen rifts. It shattered into a million motes of harmless light, like a pane of glass.
He looked at Rylan, and for the first time, a real emotion surfaced on his face. It wasn't anger. It was a profound, bone-deep sorrow. A weariness that transcended lifetimes.
"I gave you everything, Rylan," he said, his voice dropping to a low, personal whisper that only Rylan could hear. "Power. Knowledge. My trust."
Rylan's blood ran cold. That voice. That tone. He had heard it only once before, in a different life, from a different man.
A man who sat on a throne at the center of creation. A man Rylan had called 'Master'. A man Rylan had helped to kill.
The realization hit him with the force of a collapsing star. It wasn't just an anomaly. It wasn't a glitch.
It was him.
"You..." Rylan whispered, his daggers falling from nerveless fingers. His face was a mask of utter, soul-shattering horror. "It can't be."
"It can," Zane confirmed, his eyes now glowing with a faint, internal light, the color of a dying star.
"And now you have a choice. Tell me who gave the order. Tell me everything you know about Kaelen's plan. Or," he paused, gesturing to the second, still-frozen spatial rift hanging in the air, "you can see what happens when I tell it to 'return'."