The corridor shivered with each breath they took. Blistering white flickered off fractured panels, the light bouncing back as warped reflections.
The team advanced into a distorted room, deep in Site V9. The atmosphere made one hold their breath in anticipation, flickering lights and glitching notifications filled the air, a place excruciatingly familiar. The command deck was a wreck in this space, in the middle of it all stood Lucian—drenched in blood, skin slick with sweat and resonance burn—his Lucian.
Upon hearing the rushed steps of the team arriving, Lucian turned around to face them.
He stepped forward.
But Rowan didn't move, none of them did.
Every detail was correct. The glint of metal in his gauntlets. The way his fingers twitched before a slash. Even the slight tilt of his head—the exact motion Lucian made when studying a battlefield. The way he looked at Rowan wasn't cold. It was familiar.
Too familiar.
No glitch. No distortion. No hollow. Just… Lucian.
And then the figure spoke.
"I told you once, didn't I?"
Rowan's breath caught. "What…?"
"If you broke, I'd still choose you."
The words slammed into him like a memory.
Those weren't just Lucian's words—they were his promise. Whispered against Rowan's mouth, buried in warmth and heat and trembling breath back in their quarters.
No one else had heard that.
No one else could have known that.
Rowan stumbled forward. "Lucian?"
The figure's eyes gleamed violet. The scythe curled into his hand from a burst of spatial energy, dragging sparks as it scraped the fractured floor.
Behind Rowan, the team shifted. Alexander's shield lifted. Dain's fingers sparked with gravity coils. But Rowan threw up a hand.
"Don't."
The figure stepped closer. "You were warm when I held you. You said you didn't want to be alone again."
Rowan's heart lurched.
Another step.
"You whispered my name in your sleep," the figure said, voice softer now. "I listened every night."
"Lucian—?" Rowan choked, taking another step forward.
But the scythe flickered.
It slashed the air.
A tear formed in the space beside the figure—cutting through time, just like Lucian's signature move in Rift battles.
Ren gasped. "That's his—"
"I know," Rowan whispered.
But it didn't make sense.
Unless…
The figure leapt.
The team erupted into motion.
Alexander slammed his shield forward to intercept, Vespera flared with an empathic pulse, and Dain tried to crush gravity into the space between—but the figure vanished mid-flight and reappeared behind Rowan.
Rowan turned just in time, flinging a shield up. The resonance exploded.
"Lucian—!"
The figure tilted its head. "You're shaking."
Rowan hesitated.
The figure struck.
The scythe arced in a perfect swing—the same swing Lucian used in the courtyard two weeks ago, when Rowan had teased him for missing a strike. The same arc, the same pivot of the heel, the same rotation of his shoulder.
Blades met shields. Sparks screamed.
Ren was there in a second, throwing glyph after glyph to slow the figure's motion.
"I'll freeze time," Ren shouted. "Rowan, move!"
But Rowan couldn't. The figure was Lucian. In every breath, every movement—
"Do you remember," the figure rasped, slicing sideways through Dain's compression field, "when you kissed my shoulder and told me you liked my scars?"
Rowan's hand trembled.
"I remember," it said again. "You traced every one."
"STOP IT!" Rowan screamed.
The figure stopped.
And smiled.
That same half-smirk Lucian wore when teasing him.
"I told you I'd protect you," it said, then spun into another slash.
Rowan blocked—but only just. The impact sent him flying. His back slammed against a wall, pain flashing down his spine.
The figure moved faster now, like it was feeding on Rowan's hesitation.
The team tried to intervene. Alexander tackled it with brute force; Mira landed a lightning shot that should've paralyzed. But the figure knew them all. Anticipated. Evaded.
And every time it looked at Rowan—
—it looked like it loved him.
Rowan rose on shaking legs.
"Lucian… please. Stop."
The figure paused.
Then whispered, "You always die before I reach you."
It slashed downward.
Rowan barely lifted his shield in time—resonance flaring, overloading. His wrist console screamed warnings.
"Rowan!" Ren shouted.
Vespera surged forward. "We have to bring him down!"
"NO!" Rowan screamed. "That's—"
But the figure—Lucian—spoke again.
"Your pulse always spikes when I touch you here." It brushed a knuckle against Rowan's cheekbone.
"Don't do this…" Rowan whispered, a sob caught in his throat.
The next strike was the last.
The team surged together—Alexander crashing forward, Ren detonating a temporal burst, Mira sniping clean through a temporal loop.
The figure fell back.
But it smiled.
Soft.
Loving.
Just like Lucian.
And whispered, "You told me you'd love me even if I broke."
Rowan hesitated—
—and Mira's final bolt pierced the figure's chest.
It dropped to its knees.
Looked at Rowan.
Reached.
And said, "I tried… to come back to you."
Then the tether snapped.
Rowan screamed.
The room shook.
Resonance howled and collapsed in on itself.
The team stood frozen. Mira's hands trembled. Vespera looked away.
And Rowan—
Rowan fell to his knees.
"No… No no no no—"
His hand hovered over the body, fingers shaking.
"It was him… It was—"
His wrist console blinked.
[ANCHOR TETHER SEVERED]
[RESONANCE CASCADE HALTED]
[WARNING: TEMPORAL ANCHOR UNRESOLVED]
[…]
[LIVE TETHER SIGNAL DETECTED – SECTOR X43. DEPTH 7.]
Rowan blinked.
"What?"
He looked at the corpse—then at the screen.
"Lucian…?"
The body didn't move.
But far, far beneath the floors of Site V9—
Something stirred.
Aftermath
The silence that followed was not peace.
The battlefield stilled, but the air remained heavy—crushed under the echo of vanished power, under the weight of something irreversible. Scorch marks charred the floor where resonance had flared. Blood stained the fractures of Site V9's warped corridor, and amid the broken lights and twitching shadows, Rowan knelt.
His hands were soaked in red.
Lucian—*his* Lucian—lay crumpled before him, unmoving.
The tether had snapped.
Not weakened.
Not disrupted.
*Gone.*
And Rowan knew. Even before the console flashed blank, even before the ache in his chest deepened into hollowness, he *knew.*
He couldn't feel him anymore.
Lucian's warmth, the ever-present hum of him at the edge of Rowan's senses—the thing that steadied him, that had always been *there*—was gone.
His breath hitched, caught halfway up his throat, and he folded over, forehead nearly pressing to Lucian's chest as if proximity alone could restore something.
Behind him, no one spoke.
Ren stood frozen mid-step, hands trembling, his eyes wide and glassy with shock.
Alexander turned away, jaw clenched so tightly a tendon twitched near his temple.
Vespera lowered her gaze, the faint shimmer of her guiding field dissipating into the stillness.
Mira shifted her weapon slowly, her fingers lingering too long on the grip.
Even Dain, whose mouth always had something irreverent to say, sat down hard against the wall, eyes fixed on nothing.
Rowan's fingers found the edge of Lucian's collar, tugging it gently like a thread that might unravel this nightmare.
"You idiot," he whispered. His voice cracked. "You said you'd stay."
He bowed his head.
No tears came.
Just that gaping, echoing *absence*.
A slow tremor ran through his arms. The blood on his hands was warm, and that made it worse. It meant it hadn't been long. That maybe—*maybe*—
No.
The tether was gone.
His chest felt like it was caving in.
And then—a chime.
Soft. Mechanical. Invasive.
His wrist console flickered.
[ANCHOR TETHER SEVERED]
[RESONANCE CASCADE HALTED]
[WARNING: TEMPORAL ANCHOR UNRESOLVED]
[…]
[LIVE TETHER SIGNAL DETECTED – SECTOR X43. DEPTH 7.]
Rowan stared at the screen, mouth slightly open.
He reeled back from the corpse, his stomach lurching. The details—the familiar movement, the mirrored powers, the intimate words whispered in the fight—*
"What…?" Rowan muttered in confusion.
The air still hung thick with ash and blood, the remnants of the battle still bleeding into the walls of Site V9.
The team stood stunned, surrounded by the devastation left behind. Rowan remained motionless, eyes unfocused, the broken tether still burning through his chest like a cauterized wound.
Ren had collapsed to a crouch, drenched in sweat, his chrono-brace flickering red from overuse.
Vespera's voice was hushed, the weight of finality coiling around them. "It's over."
Rowan didn't answer.
It wasn't.
The corridor behind the battlefield pulsed once—an ambient surge of corrupted light—and the system blinked back online.
[SIGNAL DETECTED: SUBJECT CLASS S - ACTIVE]
[CONTAINMENT BREACH - SECTOR V9 SUBLEVEL 03]
Everyone froze.
Ren's breath hitched. "...He's still alive?"
Rowan looked up, blood draining from his face. His fingers clutched at the empty space where the tether once pulsed.
"Sector V9. Sublevel 03," Vespera repeated, already moving.
They ran.
As they pushed into the deepest parts of Site V9, the terrain around them warped. The corridors twisted impossibly, bleeding into fractured overlays of dead timelines. Entire stretches of hallway bore scorched shadows burned into the walls—figures caught mid-scream, bodies half-phased through steel.
On one doorframe, Rowan's name was etched in reverse, flickering in and out of existence.
"Timeline bleed," Mira murmured. "This isn't just spatial instability—it's temporal recursion collapsing in on itself."
Ren's face was pale. "I've seen this in simulations. But never like this. Never...this real."
They passed a chamber where the air trembled with static. Inside, a version of Evelyn stood at a console—but she flickered, her face melting into someone else's every few seconds: Juno. Mira. Even Rowan.
Rowan's stomach turned. "This is wrong."
"Everything here is," Dain muttered in response.
A black vein trailed along the ground now—thick like tar, humming softly. It led them forward like a trail.
They found Lucian in a collapsed chamber at the edge of a warped containment node—once part of the original testing center. A bubble of time distortion hovered like a frozen storm around the pod.
Inside, slumped against the wall, was Lucian.
But not the Lucian they remembered.
His scythe lay cracked beside him. His armor was shredded, blood dried and blackened along his ribs and throat. His hands were raw, fingernails split from clawing at the floor. His eyes—once bright silver-gray—were vacant, unfocused, sunken in.
He didn't react to their arrival.
Rowan stepped forward slowly, knees weak. "Lucian?"
Nothing.
Lucian's lips were slightly parted, but no sound came. He blinked once. Slowly. Like the movement wasn't even his own.
Rowan inched closer. "It's me. It's Rowan. I'm here."
No answer. No spark of recognition. Just a shell.
The air buzzed violently around them.
"He's not responsive," Vespera whispered. "Not responsive to anything."
"He's broken," Ren said softly, horrified.
Dain turned away, jaw tight. "What the hell did this place do to him?"
Rowan reached out and gently cupped Lucian's cheek. "Please... come back."
Lucian flinched.
But there was nothing in his expression. No fear. No anger. Just the absence of a soul too burned to remember itself.
Behind them, another black pulse of energy tore through the walls—more timelines bleeding into the facility. The system wailed in a pitch no one could hear, and still Site V9 stood.
But so did Lucian.
Or what was left of him.
He hadn't moved.
Not when they stepped into the chamber.
Not when Rowan whispered his name.
Not when the others spread out, weapons lowered, hearts caught in their throats.
Lucian remained slumped against the furthest wall of Site V9's core—the eye of the storm. His arms limp at his sides. The air around him shimmered faintly, like time couldn't quite hold still near his skin.
His body bore the aftermath of a thousand battles—burns, bruises, raw scorched marks along his ribs. Blood, dried and fresh. One side of his face was shadowed, bruised purple-black beneath a split brow. His once-vibrant eyes stared ahead, vacant.
"Lucian?" Rowan called again.
Nothing.
Just a faint sound—his breath, shallow and broken, like he'd forgotten how to breathe properly.
Ren stepped forward cautiously, time glyphs still humming at his fingertips. "Is that… really him?"
Rowan didn't answer.
He already knew.
The resonance tether hadn't reconnected.
There was no pulse in his chest, no spark of familiarity echoing back. Only a dull, dead silence where Lucian used to live inside him.
He knelt slowly, not caring that his knees hit broken shards of floor.
Lucian didn't even look at him.
"Lucian," Rowan whispered again, voice trembling. "I'm here."
His hand brushed Lucian's arm—slowly, reverently.
Lucian flinched.
Only slightly, like a fragment of instinct still remained beneath the hollow surface. But he didn't speak. Didn't blink. Didn't move again.
"Shit…" Dain's voice cracked behind them.
Mira looked away. Vespera lowered her eyes.
Rowan cupped Lucian's face, gently turning it toward him. His skin was ice cold, his cheek slack against Rowan's palm. His lips parted slightly, but no words came.
"Say something," Rowan pleaded. "Say anything."
Lucian just stared through him.
Like Rowan wasn't there.
Like no one was.
"I think…" Ren hesitated. "He's locked in. Not physically—mentally. Temporal instability does this sometimes. Like the mind… gets lost between overlapping moments and never comes back."
Rowan's throat closed.
He leaned in, pressing his forehead to Lucian's, eyes stinging. "Please. I'm here. I never left you. We all did our best to come get you"
Still—nothing.
Until, after a long silence, Lucian blinked once.
Then whispered:
"…don't… know you…"
The words hit like a blade.
Rowan's breath left him in a violent gasp. "It's me. Rowan."
Lucian didn't respond.
But tears welled in Rowan's eyes anyway. Not because of the words, but because of the emptiness in them. Because the man who had once held him like the world would end if he let go now couldn't even recognize him.
This was worse than losing him.
Ren moved to Rowan's side, his voice soft but urgent. "We have to bring him back. Physically, we can extract him. But his tether… whatever broke inside him—it's not healing."
"We'll carry him," Alexander said from behind, his voice a low rumble.
"I'll stabilize the corridor," Vespera added, already preparing a pulse.
And still, Rowan knelt there, clutching the sides of Lucian's face, like touch could rebuild memories. Like warmth could rewrite whatever was shattered inside.
"I'm not leaving you here," he whispered. "Even if you don't remember me. Even if you hate me. I will drag you out of this hell. Even if you broke, I'd still choose you"
Lucian's gaze shifted—just slightly. Not recognition, but something else. A flicker of pain.
It was enough.
Rowan turned to the others. "Let's bring him home."