The heat woke him.
Paper crinkled under Aiden’s cheek as he stirred, vision spiraling into unreadable ink swirls. Groggy, heavy-limbed, he lifted his head. His glasses were somewhere—he blinked once, twice—the words on the paper danced like minnows fleeing a predator.
He wiped the drool from his face, heart thudding with quiet, stupid shame. No Natasha. He almost laughed—a ghost-smile tugging at his mouth.
Standing was harder than it should have been. His hand missed the glasses once. Twice. Found them on the third try.
Click.
The frame slid into place, and the world snapped into brutal focus.
The shard on his desk pulsed with faint blue light, its glow syncing to his heartbeat.
Aiden ran a hand through his tangled hair and turned to the data stack, his chest still weighed down with something he couldn’t name.
Then he saw the note.
Taped above the data stack, perfectly angled:
"I'll be heading out."
—4:56.
He glanced at the wall clock.
4:56. On the dot.
“Should I be impressed?” he muttered.
Flipping the paper he'd slept on, making Coz flow from his palm, circuitry lines flickering to life.
The page shimmered, folded, and rose — transforming into a 3D projection.
Ruined bridges. Toppled buildings. Roads split into veins of molten stone. Goblins and Orcs the places with heavy masses of them pulsed as red markers. Dozens—maybe hundreds.
But that wasn’t the real threat.
It was the Coz levels in the atmosphere they were too high
His frown was deeper than the one he had when lucas had died he hadn't smiled since then.
The paper drifted back down, silent as dust.
Aiden stumbled toward the sink.
Brushed his teeth mechanically, movements stiff.
Adjusted the crooked picture on the wall — Lucas’s grinning face frozen forever.
He caught his reflection in the broken glass.
Eyes hollow.
Jaw clenched.
He snatched the comb on the sink and sank it into his beard.
First stroke—calm.
Second—rushed.
Third.
Then—
The comb snapped in his grip.
His fist cracked the mirror too. Shards dug deep into his palm painting parts of the mirror that held in lines of blood.
Blood dripped as he punched it. Again. Again. Shards flying.
The console flickered. Warnings flashed.
As the warning lights died down the console reverted to a face stored on it Tari’s face Hilter. Obsidian eyed. She would his hardest project yet he had to make sure he didn't let himself build up trauma from the Lucas matter.
“Did I really have to kill him?” he whispered, but the monitor was dead to empathy.
He just needed a distraction. Something loud.
He typed fast. Random files. Static. A song began to play --
His fist shattered the screen. Sparks bloomed like toxic flowers.
Aiden collapsed to the floor, blood smeared across cracked tiles, broken pieces of yesterday digging into his back.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into the dust.
"...Lucas."
He dragged himself to the drawer, he found them
The hidden drawer creaked open.
Inside: syringes. Crushed vials. Shredded tissues.
And some syringes still unused. Lined up like soldiers waiting for orders.
Aiden hesitated — just a breath — then drove the first needle into his thigh.
The second.
The third.
The chemicals hit like a tidal wave.
Cold clarity crashing through the screaming storm inside him, the one he took to be able to talk to Lucas on his death bed.
Be harder come on you can't change this country without being ruthless it was necessary
Minutes passed.
Breathing slowed.
Tears dried into salt.
He wiped his mouth. He moved.
Back at the console, he pulled up the OrphanNet terminal.
Fingers bloodied but steady.
→ Transfer: 5,000,000 Credits
→ Enugu, Port Nova, Aegis Orphanage Home
→ Confirm.
A hollow ache spread through his chest.
He didn't wait to watch it finish.
He slammed the door behind him.
—
Six figures stood under the cold neon hum of the portal station.
Among them, he was the easiest to spot — pale skin, dark stubble, and a lean frame resting casually on a compact staff.
The staff was collapsible spelltech, its surface etched with worn glyphs — a tool built for distance and precision.
He was the mage.
The others filled in the rest.
Aiden Holt flicked his gaze across the party list flashing in his HUD.
Adventurer Party Contract: Active
- Assassin: Alyce (Silver E++)
- Tank: Kayla (Bronze E)
- Support: Blondy (Bronze D)
- Marksman: Peter (Bronze F)
- Fighter: Angry Boar (Silver F)
- Mage: Aiden Holt (Bronze F)
A full Caste squad. Barely stitched together. Disposable.
The contract was locked tight — brutal penalties for desertion — but it was amazing what fear, greed, and stupidity could still convince people to try.
Aiden leaned against the cracked vending machine, head bowed, hands deep in his coat pockets, pretending to debate between cheap coffee and cheaper tea.
In the scratched reflection, he saw it —
movement slicing through the crowd, quiet, focused.
Messenger bag slung like dead weight.
Same height. Same tucked strands behind the ear. Left shoe worn inward.
A hundred percent match.
Virulent 09-A
He didn’t react.
Just dropped a coin into the slot.
Click.
The can thudded down.
The figure kept walking — casual, unbothered.
Aiden’s hand twitched toward the can.
SLAP!
Alyce’s hand smacked his wrist aside. The can bounced across the concrete, spraying cheap foam in wide arcs.
"Are you trying to die today?" she hissed.
Peter’s voice followed in a shrill panic over the comms.
"Oh my GOD, you just signaled him! You want us all DEAD?!"
Raz snorted, adjusting the strap of his battered shield.
"Appear weak when strong. Strong when weak," he muttered, almost to himself.
Aiden flexed his fingers once, the blood rising where Alyce had hit him. Calm, clinical.
"He has no Coordinator link. He can't trace us," Aiden said flatly.
Peter blanched. "Could be faking it! And Raz, what the hell does that even mean?!"
No one answered.
There wasn’t time for lectures. Without a linked Coordinator, teleportation wasn’t a doorway — it was a dice roll with death.
You could end up three steps from your destination... or dropped screaming out of the sky.
Bravery. Stupidity. Same line, different names.
Blondy — their Support — pushed up her glasses, her face blank.
"Fate's a cheap excuse," she said coldly.
Raz fiddled with the cracked casing on his Coordinator device, belt creaking.
The portal rings ahead flickered, brightened.
The world twisted — a lurching, gut-deep wrench.
They were gone.
—----
The portal vomited them out into darkness.
Aiden hit the ground hard, rolling, feeling the wet stone scrape skin through his coat.
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He shoved himself upright, blinking through the mist clinging to the tunnel.
Rot.
It hit first — thick, sour — rotting stone, blood-soaked soil, the sickly-sweet stench of fungal decay.
The walls bulged with growths that pulsed faintly, wet and wrong, like living tumors.
The air pressed heavy against their lungs, every breath tasting of mold and iron.
[HUD ALERT: ATMOSPHERIC DISTORTION DETECTED]
Coz Saturation: 71% and rising.
Gravity Fluctuation: Minor.
Biohazard Threat: High.
Aiden’s HUD flickered static as Coz radiation bled into the systems.
The dungeon wasn't just unstable — it was alive.
And it hated them.
Raz crouched low, shield up, sword angled like a drawn fang.
Aiden followed, light on broken stone.
Ahead: movement.
Goblins.
Not the crude little pests of surface legend — these had blistered skin blackened by radiation burns, teeth too long, claws sharpened by endless mutation.
Coz saturation in a zone did three things: corruption, mutation, and evolution.
Give it enough time, and physics itself starts to rot. Creatures changed faster than evolution could dream.
Terrain shifted.
Walls breathed.
The floor might bite you back.
Aiden’s gaze sharpened.
Fifteen sentries.
Left side.
Spears. Daggers. Clubs.
Raz picked up a stone. Weighted it in his hand.
Threw.
A goblin collapsed before it could scream, throat caved in by the impact.
Silence.
Alyce blurred forward, knives flashing silver — arteries slit clean, bodies lowered without a sound.
Peter's breathing rasped too loud in Aiden’s comms, but no one scolded him yet.
The sentries died quiet.
The tunnel pressed in around them — stones shifting like sleeping things.
Hidden pit traps.
Structural fractures leaking raw Coz into the air.
Every step was a dare.
Every breath a gamble.
"Left line only," Raz muttered through the channel.
Peter, of course, veered right.
Aiden didn't bother warning him.
Already calculating six possible disaster outcomes.
All bad.
The ground sighed under Peter’s foot.
[Skill Activation: Temporal Thread - Incomplete ??]
? Time Acceleration +10s (Party Only)
? Environmental Timeflow Slowed by 60%
The world shifted —
movement stretching like syrup —
just in time.
Boom!
The ground where Peter stepped blew apart, razor-moss shrapnel slicing through the air.
Peter yelped, slapping frantically at the acidic thorns melting through his jacket.
Foam sprayed from punctures in his gear.
"OH MY GOD, IT’S IN MY HAIR!" he wailed.
Alyce skipped past him, laughing lightly, blades flashing.
Raz dragged Peter back by the scruff like a misbehaving mutt.
"No screaming. You’ll call the packs."
Peter grumbled under his breath. "Game over, man..."
The tunnel breathed around them — walls flexing like lungs.
The deeper they went, the thicker the corruption became.
---
"Imagine if we find a dragon in this goblin cave and kill it," Tank Girl said quietly, adjusting her shield.
Peter snorted, cocky despite the acid burns.
"Slay a dragon? What world are you living in, tank-girl?"
Blondy — their Support — barked out a harsh laugh, clutching her cracked armor.
"Gods, listen to yourselves," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
"You sound like kids."
She caught her breath, face grim.
"Dragons are extinct. Same as honesty."
Tank Girl just shrugged, scanning the shifting walls.
"Maybe. Maybe if we kill enough of these things... maybe someone will notice."
Alyce twirled a dagger lazily between her fingers.
"Oh, we'll get noticed," she said brightly. "Don't you worry."
Peter rolled his eyes, swapping mags on his rifle.
"I don’t need to be noticed. I need pay. Big difference."
Blondy smirked, fiddling with a cracked wrist module.
"Relax, soldier boy. Been studying some old chemistry."
Her smile widened, sharp and knowing.
"Real chemistry. Illegal chemistry."
She winked.
"One day I'll cook up something that'll make Suspended notice. Before I blow."
Aiden stayed silent.
Measuring.
They were brave enough.
But bravery wasn’t enough.
Support would die first.
They always did.
- - -
The tunnel widened ahead — a yawning black mouth opening into a massive pit.
Their HUDs screamed red.
[WARNING: LARGE BIO-SIGNATURE DETECTED]
The rumble deepened.
From the dark, a figure unfolded — massive, crimson, plated in jagged armor.
The Goliath stepped into view, each footfall splitting the cracked stone wider.
Its eyes leaked molten fury, and tusks jutted from its jaw like broken spears.
It roared —
not a sound, but a pressure, vibrating through bone and blood.
The ceiling shook.
The ground flexed.
Peter’s voice cracked in the comms.
"Tell me if someone packed a nuke."
Alyce twirled her knives, smiling wide.
"Relax, Petey. We just gotta dance."
Raz slammed his injured arm into his shield brace, face grim.
"Mages rear. Marksman left wing!" he barked.
Orders.
Habits.
Survival stitched from instinct.
Aiden breathed in slowly, Coz rising under his skin.
Already calculating odds.
Already planning who was going to bleed first.
The Goliath moved —
faster than anything that size should.
Its massive hand clipped Raz mid-step, shattering his half-healed brace.
Bone split through flesh.
Raz staggered but didn’t fall.
Blood poured freely down his side, soaking his belt.
Aiden didn’t flinch.
He had already calculated an 83% major injury risk for Raz.
Still... it twisted something inside him to watch it happen so cleanly.
Tank Girl fared worse.
She blocked high — wrong angle, wrong timing —
the Goliath’s tusk slammed into her shield, folding her arm backward with a crack like snapping tree branches.
She hit the wall hard, coughing blood, kinetic fields flickering like a dying star.
Aiden’s prediction had been a 27% risk.
Wrong.
He hated being wrong.
Peter fired wildly — rail rounds punching into the Goliath’s armor — but the creature's skin rippled, repairing itself mid-impact.
[ALERT: Adaptive Bio-Armor Detected]
Peter cursed viciously.
"This thing’s cheating!"
Alyce laughed as she danced through goblin spawn boiling out of the ground, her knives carving green-black smoke.
"Everything cheats, darling. You're just slow."
---
The Goliath roared again —
but this time, the sound fractured the air.
The stones underfoot bent and rippled, reality warping like cloth in a hurricane.
Aiden felt it —
raw code spilling from the dungeon’s guts.
Something impossible.
Something wrong.
Then the Goliath’s armor split at the seams, vomiting out black vapor.
The vapor congealed into fractured goblin echoes — twisted, broken things half-made of hate and gravity.
They charged.
Peter backpedaled, firing on instinct.
Raz braced with his good arm.
Tank Girl forced herself upright, dragging her shield like dead weight.
Blondy — bleeding, coughing — gritted her teeth and pulled herself into a crouch, working something furiously at her wrist.
Aiden didn’t hesitate.
He inhaled sharply, Coz burning down his throat, weaving flame through his palms — but it resisted him.
The fire that answered wasn’t clean.
It was wild, snapping and twisting, memories of something older and crueler riding its heat.
Blue-white flame flared from Aiden’s hands, splintering through the fractured spawn.
But it wasn’t enough.
The Goliath gathered itself, light cracking across its plates, energy boiling up its spine.
It was going to erase the entire battlefield.
None of them could survive what was coming.
Not broken.
Not bleeding.
Not slow.
---
Blondy already knew.
Even as blood soaked her side.
Even as her breaths rattled.
She knelt, drawing a broken circle in the dirt with her own blood, hands shaking.
There was no time for clean spellweaving.
To use a form as an Effector you need a fuel source to make whatever you build persist.
Coz was drawn to her pooling up.
Her right arm exploded at the elbow —
raw, bloody Coz spraying from the wound.
She bit her lip until blood filled her mouth, muffling the scream that should’ve shattered the cavern.
And then—
the spell ignited.
---
A surge of white-green force hammered outward.
Aiden felt his cracked ribs cinch back together — ugly, crooked, but functional.
Raz’s mangled arm locked, stabilized just enough to fight.
Peter’s burns sealed over in rough scar tissue.
Tank Girl gasped, bracing upright against her shield.
Only Alyce remained untouched, grinning like she belonged inside the blast.
The Goliath staggered —
its charging field fracturing, destabilizing.
Blondy sagged forward, spent, blood dripping into the dirt.
Her job was done.
Theirs wasn't.
---
Alyce moved.
One heartbeat she was at Aiden’s side.
The next, she was under the Goliath’s throat, crossing her blades in a shining X.
She twisted hard —
and the Goliath's head separated from its body in a geyser of light and vaporized blood.
The monster collapsed with a ground-shaking crash, splitting the floor beneath it.
Dust howled through the pit.
Silence rippled outward.
The Goliath's corrupted light guttered and died.
---
Aiden stayed still, breathing shallow.
Waiting.
No second roar.
No resurrection.
[SYSTEM RECOGNITION: HIGH-RANK ENTITY DEFEATED]
Golden lines flickered across his vision.
[ACQUISITION: WARP-CROWN SIGIL]
- Classification: Arcane Relic (Mage Class Exclusive)
- Function: (+Partial Rewind Extension, +Environmental Influence Amplified)
The phantom weight pressed against his palm — unseen by the others.
They wouldn’t even notice.
Only Effectors tuned this deeply into Coz could even feel it.
---
Peter stumbled to his feet, coughing and cursing.
Raz leaned on his sword, one eye nearly swollen shut.
Tank Girl’s shield arm hung limp at her side.
Blondy sagged against the wall, her remaining hand pressed to her ruined stump, her breath whistling.
They were alive.
For now.
Alyce wiped her knives clean, grinning.
"You look like you just won the lottery," she chirped.
Aiden adjusted his glasses with two fingers, expression unreadable.
Already calculating the threat by his side
They stood in the wreckage, breathing smoke and rot.
The Goliath's corpse steamed, bleeding black mist into the broken stone.
The pit walls sagged inward, wounded by the monster's death.
The dungeon trembled under their boots — not rage this time, but something slower.
Exhaustion.
Aiden exhaled once, adjusting the weight of the phantom sigil burning cold in his palm.
None of the others noticed.
Only Blondy glanced his way, one arm gone, her face pale as death.
She didn’t say anything.
Maybe she knew.
Maybe she didn’t.
It didn't matter.
---
Peter cursed under his breath, dragging the last of his gear back into place.
"Next time, I'm packing plasma," he muttered, voice shaking more than he wanted to admit.
Raz grunted agreement, leaning hard on his sword, blood soaking through the bandages Blondy had slapped onto his side.
Tank Girl checked the fractures along her armor plates, shield dragging at her side like dead weight.
They were alive.
Worse than dead in some ways.
But alive.
---
Blondy finally staggered upright, her face a tight mask over the gaping wound where her arm had been.
"You get what you needed?" she asked Aiden quietly, voice raw.
Aiden met her gaze.
Brief.
Flat.
Then nodded.
A lie, or close enough.
Silence.
His HUD blinked steadily.
4:14.
4:15.
Peter staggered upright, laughing breathlessly.
"We did it," he gasped.
The others were catching their breath too — bloodied, burned, exhausted.
The dust hadn't even settled when the HUD timer blinked again:
4:15.
4:16.
Peter never saw 4:17.
A flicker of silver —
a whisper of steel —
and Peter fell.
A dagger buried itself between his wide, panicked eyes. His body crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
No screams.
No warning.
Just the wet slap of flesh against stone.
Aiden opened his mouth to shout — at full volume, but he already knew there was no timeline where Support dodged fast enough. Blood ran from his lips
She saw it coming.
She threw up a desperate, overloaded shielding spell — a brilliant second of flaring light.
The tusks tore through her midsection like paper.
Alyce ripped her off the tusks with a vicious jerk, then hurled her broken body into the pit at the center of the arena.
Gone.
---
WHAT THE FUCK!
Tank Girl charged.
Fury burned around her, kinetic barriers flaring electric blue.
Alyce blurred — teleporting in short, sharp bursts, leaving afterimages behind.
Tank Girl raised her shield to block, but Alyce’s daggers smashed against it in a relentless orbit — rapid, precise, merciless.
The barrier cracked.
Then shattered.
The final dagger punched through her throat.
Tank Girl staggered forward a few steps, then collapsed in a heap.
---
It happened so fast.
Only Raz and Aiden remained.
Alyce stood across from them, blood spattered, daggers orbiting her like a twisted crown.
She twirled one idly between her fingers, smiling like a child playing with a razor.
"Well," she sang, voice lilting and strange, "this got real boring real fast. You all made it waaaaay too easy. I was hoping for... more."
Her voice was sing-song, unstable, giddy.
---
"You demon!"
Raz roared, shield raised, blood dripping from earlier wounds.
He charged.
His sword sang with stored causalities, flashing white-hot as it carved a brutal arc through the air.
Alyce laughed.
"Come on, Razzy-boy! Hit me!"
She blinked —
Bam!
— appeared behind him —
daggers slashing for the back of his neck.
---
In that frozen instant—
Reality shivered.
Aiden’s system flashed a sudden alert:
[WARNING: Causality Layer Activation: INCOMPLETE REWIND]
[Mind Rewind: Failed]
[Body Position Rewind: Success]
---
The battlefield stuttered — like a movie missing a frame.
Raz — mid-swing — was abruptly rewound to just before his attack.
Alyce — blinking forward, mid-strike — was suddenly in front of him again.
Their bodies had rewound.
But their minds remembered.
Both felt the wrongness — the trap — all at once.
---
For a heartbeat, it was almost even.
Raz’s greatsword cut a searing arc, inches from Alyce’s throat.
Alyce twisted, impossibly fast — daggers slicing for his exposed side.
If it had played out naturally, Alyce probably would have won — but it would have cost her.
She would have been wounded for the first time.
A crack in her perfect rhythm.
---
But Aiden had prevented it.
Not to help Alyce or Raz but himself.
They needed to be able to survive on their own long enough to convince him they deserved the offer.
It made him sick.
It made him sick but it was his design.
---
He adjusted his glasses.
Watched it unfold.
---
Alyce grinned wider, unbothered by the glitch in time.
"You cheating little rat," she cooed, voice dripping with mockery.
"You think you can just… push pause and rewind like we're your little playthings?"
She stuck out her tongue, eyes gleaming with madness.
Her legs tensed a moment before she blitzed through the air toward him.
---
"I will kill you first," came the calm voice from the back of Aiden’s mind.
He pushed his glasses up and turned to face her — her frozen body.
Time had stopped for her.
He glanced at Raz, still mid-motion and coughed up blood.
Alyce’s eyes were still moving — slowly — a terrifying detail.
A wild card indeed.
---
Aiden drew the shard from his pocket — the last of his Coz fuel.
Time stop shouldn’t have lasted this long.
His reserves had been depleted since the battle began.
He took a slow breath.
---
"I have a proposition for you," he said, voice steady.
"I'm ninety percent sure you’ll like it. You too, Ratz."
He glanced over his shoulder at Raz, still locked in frozen time.
Aiden smiled faintly.
"Do you hate Suspended?"
