Chapter 4 – The Rift

  The sileer the first attack was suffog. Dust swirled in the dim glow of their scattered equipment, casting long, shifting shadows across the stone chamber. The guardian’s eyes still glowed faintly, but it had returo stillness, watg, waiting.

  Eliahe weight of its gaze in his chest.

  Miguel gripped his rifle tightly, sing the darkness. "That thing didn't leave," he muttered. "It just... stepped back."

  Dr. Rivera checked the vitals on one of the wounded soldiers, her hands shaking as she patched the bleeding wound. "We should get out. Now. Before it decides to finish the job."

  Elian barely heard them. His mind was still reeling, caught between the shock of the enter and the pulsing hum that hadn't left his skull sihey’d ehe temple. It wasn’t just the Hollow Signal anymore—it was something deeper. Something listening.

  Then, the growl.

  Low. Guttural. Close.

  Miguel's head soward the entrance, his face draining of color. “There’s another one.”

  A heavy thud echoed from the far corridor, followed by a scraping sound—flesh dragging against stohe temperature dropped, a breath of something cold slithering through the chamber.

  Then it lunged.

  It came from the darkness on all fours, a monstrous form with limbs too thick, too long, moving with an unnatural, predatraot a Dark Stalker. Something worse.

  The beast hit the first soldier before he could react, its massive arm sending him crashing against the stone wall with a siing ch. Dead instantly.

  Shouts erupted. Gu up the chamber, the bullets tearing into the creature’s flesh—but it barely slowed. It was built for this.

  Another soldier screamed as it grabbed him by the leg, yanking him backward. The gun slipped from his grasp as he was dragged into the shadows, his screams turning into somethi, gurgling. Then silence.

  Panied the survivors. Some ran, others fired aimlessly into the dark. Dr. Rivera pulled at Elian’s arm. "We o—"

  But Elian wasn't listening.

  His vision blurred. The guardian's hum had turned into a roar in his mind, pulling at him, dragging his focus inward. He felt the creature before it struck.

  A shadow moved in his periphery. The beast was ing straight for him.

  Instinct kicked in. He reached out. Not with his hands, but with something deeper.

  The moment his fingers brushed the base of the guardian statue, reality fractured.

  Falling.

  Not physically. Not in any way he could uand. It was as if his body had bee behind, and what remained was his mind—his sciousness—plummeting through something vast and endless.

  For a moment, he saw nothing but darkness.

  Then, the visions came.

  Fshes of civilizations long lost. Cities carved into mountains, towers stretg toward alien skies. People—not human—kneeling before the guardians. Rituals performed in fotten tongues.

  He saw them fail. Again and again. Their worlds colpsing, devoured by time, by war, by forces beyond their trol. The vergence had e before, and it had never been stopped.

  Then, a presence.

  Not a voiot words. A question.

  "Will you fall as they did?"

  Elian gasped. The weight of the visions pressed down on him, the enormity of what he was seeing threatening to drown him.

  Then he was ripped back.

  The Link

  Elian’s sciouseetered on the edge of something vast, something inprehensible. His mind lit—one part reag outward, the other ging desperately to what was familiar. There was no immediate realization, no moment of uanding.

  At first, there was only sensation.

  The weight of the guardian’s body, the rigid pull of a stone moving against unseen forces, the sheer immensity of its prese wasn’t just a vessel—it was alive. And it was in trol.

  The guardiaed to the beast’s movements, but it wasn’t fighting. Its responses were instinctive, its strikes wild and unfocused, as if it wasirely aware of itself. And Elian, still drowning in the fions of a body that wasn’t his own, couldn’t do anything but watch from somewhere deep within.

  Then, the beast struck. Hard.

  A massive cwed arm smmed into the guardian’s side, sending it skidding across the temple floor, a stone groanih its weight. The impact rattled something inside Elian—not pain, but something deeper, a pull at his very existence.

  For the first time, fear crept in.

  The guardian staggered. The beast lunged again, faster this time. Elia its presehe violent hunger behind its attack. He tried to move, to react, but the guardian’s limbs barely responded.

  I don’t…

  His mind was slipping, pulled somewhere else. The chamber, the fight—it all blurred.

  And suddenly, he was falling again.

  The Other Pne

  A void stretched before him, infinite ay. But he was not alone.

  A shape loomed ihingness. Massive. A. A presence beyond time.

  The guardian.

  It did not speak, yet Elian could feel its awareness. The weight of its existence pressed against his mind, a challenge, a demand.

  Who are you?

  The thought struck him not as words, but as a force. He felt small. Insignifit. A mere flicker before something that had existed for eons.

  He felt its instincts, its purpose, its drive to protect, to fight. Yet, at its core, there was something more primal—something not meant for human minds to prehend.

  A test. A challenge.

  The guardian’s form rushed toward him.

  Elian didn’t fight. He couldn’t. Instead, he braced himself, feeling the weight of its presence crashing into his very being. He wasn’t trying to trol it. He couldn’t. Instead, he reached out—not with power, but with uanding.

  And the guardian stopped.

  Something shifted. The void trembled. A e fed—not through dominance, but through acceptance.

  Elian uood, then. It had chosen him, but he had to choose it baot as a master, not as a tool, but as something iween.

  A link.

  The guardian lowered its head. And for the first time, Elia its will bee his own.

  Ba the Fight

  Elian’s mind snapped bato the guardian’s body.

  The beast was mid-strike. But this time, the guardian moved differently. Not blindly, not wildly—but with purpose.

  The guardian’s arm shot up, catg the beast’s attack before it could nd. A crack of stone against flesh. The creature recoiled, momentarily stunned.

  For the first time, Elian wasn’t reag. He was leading.

  Then, the sound of stone crag.

  The temple floor trembled beh him. Fractures ran along the guardian’s surface. ks of stone, ohought to be its true form, split away, breaking off in jagged shards. But beh them—

  Something else.

  The guardian’s true body was no longer ehe stone fell away, revealing a sleek, obsidiaallic surface, dark as the void, refleg the dim light in strange, fluid patterns. It looked nothing like the statues that depicted it. It was alive.

  The power surged through him, intoxig, overwhelming. The guardian’s instincts were a, predatory. The link wasn’t just synizing their minds—it ulling him deeper.

  The beast lunged again, and Elian gave in.

  The guardian moved like a force of nature, its blows devastating, relentless. It no longer fought—it hunted.

  The creature howled in agony as the guardian’s massive hand tore through its ribcage, ripping out sinew and boh horrifying ease. A primal roar shook the temple. The beast thrashed, struggling against something far greater than itself.

  Then, the guardian sank its cws into its throat.

  Elian could feel the raw instinct, the overwhelming urge to tear, to crush, to annihite. The guardian’s mind was vast, uned, urained. And for a terrifying moment—

  So was he.

  The beast gave one final, strangled gasp before the guardian ripped its head from its body.

  Blood. Viscera. The remains hit the stone floor with a siing thud.

  Elian’s breath caught. This wasn’t him. This was something else. Something monstrous.

  The temple was silent once more.

  He turned, instinctively seeking out the survivors. But what he saw was fear.

  Not at the beast.

  At him.

  The guardian’s breath came slow and deep, its chest rising and falling with unnatural rhythm. But Elian’s thoughts were a storm, crashing, splintering. He could still feel the blood on his hands—the guardian’s hands. The link was strohan before. To.

  Someone fired a shot.

  The bullet ricocheted off his obsidiaallic exterior, but the sound jolted something in him. A panic. A realization.

  He was still inside.

  And he didn’t know how to get out.