Blood.
Thick, warm, and metallic on his tongue.
Kael spat the crimson mess across the glistening glass floor, painting it in arcs of pain and defiance. His legs trembled beneath him, his back screaming from where he'd slammed into a shard-pillar. Yet his fingers still twitched with readiness, his breathing slowed, measured.
'Pain means I'm alive. That freak didn't kill me… yet.'
The echo of the last clash still reverberated through the glass coliseum — a melody of destruction, the harmony of a soul refusing to die.
Kael stood up slowly, his boots scraping against the blood-slick floor. Across from him, the Hunter had risen — a towering specter draped in flowing remnants of cloaks that seemed stitched from shadow and shattered light. More of its mask had fallen away, leaving jagged, glimmering shards clinging to a formless void beneath.
That void… it unnerved him more than the strikes.
It was like staring into a wound in the world. Not darkness, not shadow — nothingness. Emptiness made manifest.
Kael grinned, despite the pain, despite the fear.
"You're ugly as hell under there, you know that?" he rasped, wiping blood from his mouth. "Was hoping for some horrific face to punch. Not… whatever the hell that is."
The Hunter tilted its head slightly. No sound. No movement beyond that faint, almost curious angle. Its presence was oppressive. It didn't breathe, didn't shift. It simply was, like the inevitability of entropy.
Kael's Gauntlet flared, a weak warning pulse flickering across the temporal weave.
Another strike incoming.
Kael bent his knees. "Come on then. Let's dance again."
---
It happened instantly.
No wind-up. No charge.
The Hunter disappeared.
One second it stood, and the next—reality simply sliced apart as it phased forward in a flicker of corrupted time.
Kael dove without hesitation, instincts overriding thought. Time bent behind him as a black-bladed claw passed through the space his throat had occupied a moment before, tearing a scream from reality itself.
Glass exploded.
Shards whipped past his arms as he rolled.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck—'
He slammed against another spire, eyes wild.
The Hunter reappeared ahead of him, floating inches above the floor, still silent, still watching.
Kael growled and flicked his wrist. The Gauntlet responded — a pulse wave that distorted the flow around him, creating a localized time stutter. A desperate attempt to slow the beast.
For a moment, everything near him froze by 0.4 seconds.
Kael lunged.
The Hunter tilted its head mid-air, seemingly unaffected by the slowed field. It didn't move — it just let him charge.
Kael noticed too late.
As he reached striking range, the Hunter stepped through time again — and appeared behind him.
A slicing pain tore down Kael's back.
He dropped to one knee, panting, blood pouring down his spine.
"Fuck," he hissed. "Fuck me…"
His thoughts were loud in his head, pounding alongside his heartbeat. This thing… It's not just fast. It's skipping time like a goddamn record. No windup. No logic. No cooldown.
The Gauntlet buzzed furiously. Overheated. Its chrono-core was destabilizing. He couldn't keep this up.
Kael gritted his teeth. "Think, idiot. You hit it before. It bled. You can hurt it again."
But how?
---
(Hunter's POV)
Subject: Kael Viren.
Pulse Fluctuation: +17% Sync.
Tactical Shift: Aggressive. Reckless. Adaptive.
Result: Probability Delta – Threat Level +2.3.
The Hunter analyzed the distortion trail Kael had left behind during his evasive blink.
The echo flickered still — like a ghost caught between frames.
And the Hunter reached for it.
Its fingers pierced the echo's core — and across the coliseum, Kael screamed.
The feedback lanced through his spine, a neural aftershock from his own broken time echo.
'He's learning,' the Hunter thought.
But so was it.
Kael's aggression was dangerous. Not just for him, but for the Tower's design. Too many deviations. Too many unstable pulses. If left unchecked…
The Hunter flexed its arms, and five razor-thin threads emerged, coalescing from rips in the surrounding time.
These weren't weapons.
These were cages — designed to ensnare movement across timelines. Invisible traps. One misstep, one blink, and Kael would anchor himself into his own doom.
---
Kael sensed it.
Not visually. Not through the Gauntlet.
Through the wrongness in the air. Like walking into a room moments after someone screamed. The scent of fear. The weight of threat.
He staggered upright, coughing blood. "You trying to box me in, huh?"
The Hunter didn't respond. It never did.
Kael clenched his teeth, eyes darting across the floor.
He couldn't see the trap, but it was there. Subtle temporal inconsistencies. Micro-glitches where the floor shimmered out of sync. He counted at least five. Maybe more.
His fingers twitched.
And something shifted inside him.
Not in his limbs. Not in the Gauntlet.
Deeper.
His Core.
That faint heartbeat buried in the center of his soul — the part Riven had said was still half-formed, half-dormant.
It was no longer asleep.
Kael froze as the sensation surged.
Heat poured from his center. Then ice. Then nothing. A strange, pulsing wave that vibrated through the Gauntlet and pushed into the world around him.
'It's reacting.'
His eyes widened.
'No. I'm reacting.'
His synchronization was changing. Improving. It wasn't just the Gauntlet anymore. It was him.
Kael whispered, "Break it…"
---
The next moment happened in silence.
Kael vanished.
But not like before. This wasn't a blink.
This was a break — he tore a hole in time and slid through.
The Hunter's threads triggered — three detonated in a burst of shredded echoes, ripping apart Kael's fake trails.
But they missed.
Kael dropped behind the Hunter mid-air, momentum carried by raw time fracture, and slammed the Gauntlet into the creature's back.
WHAM!
The explosion sent them both flying.
Glass shattered in every direction as the Hunter spun through pillars, crashing through a half-dozen of them.
Kael hit the floor hard, bounced, and coughed violently — his lungs on fire, his leg twisted under him.
He rolled onto his back, vision blurring.
But he smiled.
Because for the first time—
The Hunter was down.
---
Silence hung for a long, agonizing second.
Then the void creature rose.
Slowly. With no sound. No fury.
It stood.
Half of its form was gone. Torn open.
But not bleeding.
That empty wound pulsed with... unreality.
As if Kael had punched a hole into the concept of the thing, and something deeper was looking back.
Kael's smile faltered.
"Well... shit."
---
Kael pushed himself to one elbow, his chest heaving, ribs shrieking with every breath.
The pain was blinding, but his eyes refused to shut.
He had to keep them open. Had to see it.
The Hunter—whatever it was—wasn't finished.
The hole in its chest gaped wider than before, like a forgotten tear in the fabric of space. Not bleeding. Not healing.
Just empty.
Kael's heart thudded harder, and he didn't know if it was fear or the aftershock of what he'd just done.
'I didn't just skip time. I tore through it.'
The Gauntlet's runes burned bright now, not red like before—but white, flickering with unstable streams of chrono-light. The feedback loop between the Gauntlet and his Core wasn't just syncing anymore. It was merging.
He felt it.
A rhythm pulsing with each beat of his heart. Each breath felt like it was threading through the weave of time around him.
"Shit…" he whispered, half in awe, half in horror. "Am I turning into one of those monsters?"
His fingers trembled. Not from fear. From too much energy.
It didn't feel like power. It felt like being inside a storm—wind, lightning, chaos—and somehow being the one holding the storm together with sheer will.
"Kael Viren," he muttered under his breath, trying to center himself. "Still human. Still breathing. Still alive."
Across the battlefield, the Hunter began to move.
But slower.
Its void-flesh shifted awkwardly. Jerking. It looked less like a predator now—and more like a puppet straining to mimic life.
The hole in its chest shimmered.
Kael's vision warped for a split-second, nausea hitting hard. He felt like he was going to fall through the floor, through the world—like gravity had been turned inside out.
Then the void closed.
No sound.
No warning.
The Hunter stood whole again.
'You've got to be shitting me.'
Kael grit his teeth, pulled himself upright, and checked the Gauntlet's feedback. Warnings everywhere. Overclocked, overheated, unstable.
But alive.
He tapped a control node. "Diagnostics?"
> [Chrono-Core Sync: 91%]
[Echo Fracture: ACTIVE – Unsafe Exposure Risk: HIGH]
[Temporal Echo Trail: SEVERED]
[Warning: Chrono-Burn Imminent]
"Great. So I'm basically a ticking time bomb."
He cracked his neck. "Good. I've got one more blast left in me."
The Hunter's eyes—if you could call those void slits eyes—narrowed. The battlefield was no longer a place of dominance.
It was a test site.
Kael could feel it in his bones.
'It's trying to learn me.'
And now?
Now it was curious.
---
(Hunter's POV)
Adaptation: 77%
Kael Viren – Subject Status: Flux Resonance Detected
New Directive: Evolution Stimulus Required
The Hunter's form began to melt.
No—shift.
Its limbs elongated. Its structure collapsed and rebuilt. Armor flaked off like burnt paper. Tendrils of chrono-thread emerged from its back and sides, weaving through the air like a marionette's wires.
Not an enforcer anymore.
Now it looked like a fragmented god.
A being made of broken moments.
This was no longer a fight to kill.
This was a catalyst.
The Hunter's role had changed. Now it would break the subject—or force him to ascend.
---
Kael blinked sweat from his eyes as the thing rebuilt itself before him.
"What the hell are you?" he asked the wind. "A test? A teacher? A fucking nightmare?"
No answer, of course.
Didn't matter.
He was done asking questions.
He'd felt it before—the moment of something more. The spark in his chest. The truth lingering at the edge of his mind, whispering:
"Break the loop."
Kael exhaled slowly.
Let the noise fall away.
Focused.
Time slowed—not from the Gauntlet, but from him.
He moved forward.
One step.
Two.
Then vanished.
---
The world twisted.
Not from speed.
Not from a blink.
Kael broke into a frame between time—a pocket only he could enter, a slice of static frozen mid-beat.
He could see everything now. The Hunter's threads. The trap fields. The damage trails. Even echoes of his own past positions, like translucent ghosts fading through the battlefield.
He was everywhere and nowhere.
His Core screamed in protest. The Gauntlet hissed and sizzled, trying to anchor him.
He didn't care.
He moved.
And reappeared mid-air, spinning, fist cocked back.
"BURN, YOU TIME-EATING BASTARD!"
The punch connected with a roar.
A shockwave split the air.
The Hunter's face cracked—literally cracked—like glass under pressure.
For the first time, the beast staggered backward.
Kael landed on one knee, coughing black-red blood. His body felt like it had aged five years in one heartbeat.
He couldn't even feel his left hand.
Still, he rose.
He looked the monster in the eyes.
And smiled.
"Who's the predator now?"