There was no light. No sound. No breath.
Just a weightless stillness that felt far too still to be natural.
Brett floated—though he couldn't feel his limbs or his chest or anything tethering him to a body. He was suspended in something endless, vast, and cold, like the space between thoughts.
Then something rippled.
A soundless hum trembled through the void, and with it came a pulse—four lights flickering to life in the black.
Red.Blue.Green.Gold.
Each color surged toward one of the men, and then the darkness bloomed, folding open into a sweeping, surreal plane. The four of them appeared not standing, but drifting in an infinite field of shifting gray, suspended above a fractured mirror-like surface below them. The reflections didn't show their faces—they showed pieces of the fight, the monster, Musk's final moment, the deaths.
Carlo stirred first, coughing out a breath and looking around in confusion.
"The hell is this…?"
The twins groaned nearby. Brett remained still. His eyes were open but unfocused, locked on something deeper in the void. Or maybe just on the blood still fresh in his mind.
Then the voice came.
"You have entered the Threshold of Self."
The sound echoed from everywhere and nowhere. It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It bent the space around them.
"You have consumed the fragments. You carry the spark of origin. You are... awakened."
Carlo took a slow step forward, boots not touching anything but still moving across the strange plane. His voice was low, sharp.
"Awakened into what, exactly?"
A shimmer of light formed in the air—a geometric pattern that twisted and turned in on itself, refracting shards of the battle below them.
"Your world stands at the beginning of collapse. The Vault is broken. The Shroud is thinning. And those who sleep beyond are beginning to stir."
"Vault? What vault?" the Will twin asked, his voice shaking.
"The prison of your world. And of theirs."
The gold light around the Will twin pulsed faintly, like it recognized the words even if he didn't.
Brett slowly turned to face the voice, red mist rising from his skin, though his body was still flickering between thought and form.
"What do you mean 'those who sleep'?"
"Entities from before the Fall. Before structure. Before flesh. Your kind does not yet understand what is breaking loose beneath the surface."
The green light around the Vitality twin grew brighter, almost frantic, reacting to something unseen in the distance. He gripped his shoulder with a hiss of pain.
"I… I think I feel something. Something massive. Down there."
"The fragments you have absorbed bind you to the Rebirth System. The same force that once sealed the Vault. You have become… Candidates."
A pause. A longer silence now.
Carlo narrowed his eyes.
"Candidates for what?"
The geometric sigil spun faster. Lights converged.
"Ascension. Or extinction."
And just like that, the void cracked.
The mirror surface below them shattered in a flash of white—
They awoke in stages.
Brett gasped for air like he was being born again. His lungs screamed, his throat burned, and for a brief second, he thought he was back in the cave, surrounded by blood and death.
Then he saw the ceiling. Bright. Clean. Artificial.
Fluorescent lights. Medical-grade panels. Monitors. A sterile hum.
He was in a hospital bed, IV in his arm, wires stuck to his chest. He tried to sit up but winced—his muscles felt like they'd been melted and reformed in a fire.
Next to him, Carlo stirred. The twins were in the next beds over, both unconscious but stable. No tubes down their throats. No machines doing their breathing. That meant one thing.
They were alive.
Brett sank back into the bed and stared at the ceiling, the red mist from his hands fading slowly. He didn't call for a nurse. He didn't need to.
He already knew what was coming.
It took another hour before a man in a black suit—not military, not medical—stepped into the room, flanked by two guards. He didn't speak right away. He just looked at Brett, and Brett looked back.
Finally, the man said:
"You've been unconscious for seventeen days. You're lucky to be alive."
Brett didn't answer.
The man continued, eyes scanning his clipboard.
"We found you at the entrance of the cave. The bodies around you were… unrecognizable, except for your tags and Musk's pack. You were holding the launcher, Brett. Still had one shell left."
"Then you already know what happened," Brett muttered. "Why ask?"
The man stepped closer, lowering his voice.
"We know what happened in that cave. Or at least, what we think happened. But the thing is… it's not just that cave anymore."
He dropped a folder onto the bed. Brett opened it with trembling fingers.
Inside: photos. Satellite footage. Civilian drone captures. Blurred figures, giant silhouettes, red glows in distant woods, black spines emerging from ocean trenches.
"They're showing up all over the world."
The man's voice turned colder.
"And the people who survive them? The few that do? They come back… different. Changed. Not like you, though. Not even close."
"What do you mean?"
"The others—they only ever black out for minutes. A few hours at most. None of them were gone for seventeen days. And none of them… came back stronger."
Brett's stomach turned. His hands shook.
"The others… you're keeping them too?"
"Observing them," the man corrected. "But we think you four—" he paused, "you three and a half—may be the key."
Brett's eyes darkened.
"Three and a half?"
"One of the twins is still in critical condition. Your friend Carlo and the other twin are stable. But the younger one... his vitals are erratic. He's not waking up. We're not sure if he will."
Brett said nothing. He only looked at the IV line again, the blood in the tube running darker than it should.
The man leaned in.
"We want to run more tests. Deep scans. Resonance mapping. Whatever this is… we're calling it the Rebirth Phenomenon. And we think it's tied to something ancient. Something buried."
He tapped the folder again.
"And you four… are still changing."
*Thank you for reading, and I hope you're enjoying the series so far. If you have any recommendations or things you want to see happen, leave a comment!*