Dimensional Trigger Arts – Chapter 1: The Vein Below
The air in the training hall was perpetually acrid with the scent of ozone and hot metal, a reminder that each of its walls had been ripped open by a portal at some point.
Kairo Akanni clenched his fist on his practice staff and scowled into the boiling oval of light in front of him. The borders of the portal undulated like water, but inside was black as black could be — the kind of dark that made you wonder if you were in freefall just looking into it.
"Five seconds." Instructor Raven bellowed down from the observation deck above. "First through the Rift gets bonus points. Last one buys cafeteria lunch."
Kairo looked to his left. Jax Wynn — six foot two, smug grin, and shoulders like a brick wall — secured the gloves on his hands.
"Don't trip, Rookie," Jax said, voice oozing with the sort of mock sympathy that indicated he'd been waiting all morning to embarrass someone.
Kairo faked a smile. "Don't choke, Big Guy. Hate for you to lose to a 'rookie.'"
To his right, Aela Veyra was silent, arms crossed, black hair tied back neatly behind her ear. She was already staring at the portal, eyes narrowing as if she could already see the other side. She didn't even deign to respond to their trash talk — which, in a way, was more insulting.
Their last squad member, Minji Han, bobbed up and down on her toes, grinning like a child at a fair.
"Race you all!" she squeaked. "I've been dying to stretch my legs."
The countdown began.
Three.
The black oval hummed.
Two.
Kairo's hand closed tight.
One.
They shifted.
Jax's size didn't slow him — he plowed ahead, a human battering ram. Minji zipped along beside him in a blur, laughing. Kairo took two quick steps and slapped his Trigger Point awake.
A burning spark burst in his chest and coursed through his veins like a bolt of lightning. The air before him tore apart, hardly big enough for his arm to fit through — and when he stepped forward, his foot hit a floor a heartbeat earlier there wasn't.
He came out the far side of his personal portal three meters ahead of Jax.
"See you at the finish," Kairo called back.
The world inside the Rift was not natural.
Sound distorted here; every step resonated twice, once in his ears and once in his bones. The "ground" looked solid but felt like he was walking on a frost-covered trampoline. Above, shattered fragments of color hung in mid-air like broken stained glass.
It was beautiful — and incorrect. Like a dream that had lost its memory of reality.
A faint hum vibrated in Kairo's skull. He'd been inside training Rifts before, but this one felt… different. Off somehow.
"Kairo!" Minji's voice cut through. She was a streak of silver hair ahead, bounding over a jagged shard that jutted from the ground. "Quit sightseeing!"
"Yeah, Rookie," Jax grunted from behind, "try to keep—"
He didn't finish, because the Rift rippled and spat something out.
The beast was compact at first — no bigger than a dog — but its body was made up of overlapping plates that shifted like pieces of a puzzle. Where its face would have been was a smooth obsidian mask with a vertical slit, glowing faint white.
A Rift Beast.
Training simulations used low-level ones, but the instructors always warned — if one leaked in from a wilder dimension, the problem got a lot tougher fast.
It scuttled towards Minji, plates rattling.
---
---
Kairo didn't wait. His Trigger Point burned again, and he flung a palm aside. Space tore with a whip-crack, creating a hand-sized portal beside the creature. His other hand tore a portal in front of his own staff, aligning the ends like a spear through two mirrors.
The staff lunged, stabbing through the first portal and into the side of the Rift Beast.
It screamed — metallic and loud — and lurched sideways. Jax didn't waste a moment; he planted a foot in its chest and shoved it back into a glittering fissure in the Rift's floor. It fell through and was lost in the darkness.
"Not bad," Jax said, shoving through Kairo. "Still buying lunch, though."
---
They reached the end of the Rift — a shimmering curtain of light suspended in the void. They stepped through it individually and appeared in the arrival circle of the training hall, the air here thick and warm in comparison to inside.
Raven stood at the boundary, arms folded. His left sleeve was pinned back where an arm would have been — rumor was that a collapsing portal claimed that. His gaze swept over the four of them.
"Two minutes, thirty seconds. Not bad. But…" He tilted his head in Kairo's direction. "You hesitated."
Kairo blinked. "Sir?"
Your mind was on the Rift Veins above instead of the exit. Pretty colors get Hunters killed." Raven's tone wasn't severe, but it was final.
Kairo bit his tongue. He had seen the veins — strips of color winding through the Rift sky, almost like rivers under glass. There was something about them that appeared… alive. But there was no use arguing.
"Sir," Aela said, "that creature wasn't standard sim stock."
Raven's eyes narrowed. "You sure?
"Armor plates weren't academy pattern. And the mask was obsidian, not chrome."
Minji turned her head. "So… what, something broke in?"
Raven didn't respond. His gaze darted up to the observation deck overhead, where Head Examiner Sylis Drae rested on the railing. Tall, white hair, silver glyph-lined coat — and eyes that seemed to have already read your destiny and found it wanting.
Sylis smiled — just a little — and departed in silence.
---
The rest of the day went by in a haze of lectures and drills. The last bell tolled, and Kairo slung his bag over his shoulder. Jax took up a position at his side, forcing a credit chip into his hand.
"For lunch," Jax said. "I'm not listening to you complain about losing on a technicality."
Kairo grinned. "So you're admitting I won."
"No way," Jax said, but without passion.
Minji bounced ahead, calling over her shoulder. "I'm getting dumplings! See you guys there!"
That left Aela walking with Kairo, silent as always. He glanced over at her.
"You really think that Rift Beast was… I don't know, loose? Wild?"
Her gaze stayed forward. "I think Sylis Drae was taking too much notice for it to be an accident."
Kairo frowned. "You don't like him?"
"I don't trust anyone who looks at people like they're just moves on a game board."
---
That night, Kairo lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The veins of the Rift repeated in his mind — glittering rivers twisting overhead. He'd always noticed them in every simulation previously, but this time they'd pulsed when he looked at them. Like they'd looked back.
His Trigger Point still buzzed faintly, hours later.
Sleep, when it came at last, was not refreshing.
He was in the Rift once more. Alone. The Veins overhead glowed brighter than they had previously, tendrils of light extending into the infinite.
A voice — low and multilayered, as if spoken by a thousand versions of the same individual — rumbled through the void.
"Kairo Akanni. You are… misplaced."
He spun. "Who's there?"
A shape stepped out of the darkness. Not human, not animal. Its body was a shifting lattice of portals, each of which showed another place — a rain-soaked alley, a burning field, a starless sky. Eyes of liquid silver locked onto his.
"Find the Vein Below… before they do.".
Before Kairo had a chance to speak, the shape unraveled, all of the portals slamming shut with the sound of breaking glass. The void imploded, and he fell.
He awakened, perspiring, heart pounding.
---
In the night outside his dorm window, Sylis Drae waited.
He pressed the side of his neck, where a pale blue tattoo momentarily glowed — a Trigger Mark.
"Found you," Sylis whispered, and vanished into a vertical slit of light.