Kahn's apartment sat like a forgotten shoebox on the ninth floor of a concrete hive. Inside, it smelled faintly of dust and cooled coffee grounds—a scent of things left waiting. The living room was small but carefully kept: a gray sofa with a faint sag in the middle, a narrow bookshelf leaning ever so slightly toward the door, a low table scattered with unopened mail. The floor was pale wood, scuffed where the chair legs dragged, and a single lamp cast a soft amber glow that made the air feel thicker than it was. Muted city noise seeped through the windows: the occasional honk, the slow churn of distant traffic, a dog barking two buildings away. It was the kind of space that held its breath when empty, as if listening for someone to come home.
Kahn dropped his keys in the ceramic bowl by the door. Nothing stirred. The refrigerator hummed in its steady rhythm, and the walls held their quiet like a sealed envelope. He hung his coat, kicked off his shoes, and stood for a moment in the hush. No flicker. No omen. Just the small relief of four walls holding back the city.
He walked to the bathroom, the tile cool beneath his socks. The air smelled faintly of soap and old plaster. When he tugged the light cord, the bulb buzzed awake, throwing a clean, sharp white across the cracked mirror. He leaned in to splash water on his face.
The first ripple was almost nothing—a faint warping in the glass, as though the mirror were breathing. His reflection blinked a fraction too late. Water in the sink trembled without sound.
A low vibration crawled through the tiles, soft as a held note. The edges of the room blurred; straight lines curled into hesitant arcs. The scent of soap soured into brine and iron, like a harbor in winter. The air thickened until each breath tasted metallic, damp, electric.
The mirror quivered. Behind his reflection, something vast unfolded—a silhouette robed in darkness deeper than shadow. The robe itself writhed with impossible patterns: spirals of shifting color—indigo bleeding into sickly green, crimson melting into black—hues that seemed to carry their own gravity. Every fold of the fabric bent inward, swallowing light, revealing brief flashes of churning void. Beneath the robe, where a body should have been, endless coils of living geometry spiraled and unspiraled, like galaxies folding into themselves. Angles formed and collapsed before the eye could name them. It was not flesh, not bone—only the mathematics of chaos given skin.
A sound pressed against Kahn's ears, not quite a chant, not quite a machine: Father of Distortion… the hinge of endings… bearer of the spiral. The words had texture—like wet paper tearing inside his skull.
His five senses fractured at once. He smelled salt and rotting wood. He tasted copper and burnt sugar. The floor under his feet felt both slick and dry, a shifting skin. His eyes filled with colors no language had ever held. His ears caught whispers layered beneath whispers, each syllable sliding against the next until meaning bled away.
Pain stabbed through his chest. His body convulsed.
His arms twitched first, jerking forward as though pulled by invisible strings. Bones elongated with a damp crack. Fingers thinned into long, spidery limbs, nails blackening and sharpening like wet obsidian. His skin blanched to a marble pallor, veins rising like ink beneath paper. The mirror showed a creature halfway between man and the robed infinity behind it. His own mouth stretched wider than its hinges should allow, teeth slick and too many.
The fragment inside him throbbed, exultant. You are the distortion. You are the axis. All order bends to you.
His knees buckled. The bathroom swam with colors that had no names. Light pulsed like a heartbeat. The creature in the mirror leaned closer, its robe brushing against the edges of perception. Where the fabric grazed reality, tiles warped and curled like burning paper.
Kahn tried to scream, but his voice broke into a hiss of static. His elongated fingers clawed at the counter, nails scoring deep grooves into the porcelain. A warm mist slicked his skin, tasting of salt and blood. Every sense sang with the terror of becoming.
And then—silence. The colors snapped away. The robe collapsed into plain reflection. His arms were normal. His nails were blunt. The bathroom smelled only of soap again.
He stood there, panting, trembling. Water still dripped from the faucet with a slow, steady rhythm, as though nothing had happened.
Kahn stared at his own exhausted face, pale but human. He did not notice that he had been twitching, or that faint grooves remained in the porcelain beneath his fingertips. The fragment under his skin pulsed once—soft, satisfied—like a heartbeat smiling in the dark.
His hands trembled as he dug out his phone. The screen glared too bright against the gloom, his reflection warped across the glass. He forced his breathing even and dialed.
"Report," Voss's voice rasped after a single ring.
Kahn hesitated, the bathroom's silence crowding in on him. "Symbols," he said finally. "Floating. They weren't painted or carved—they were alive, hidden in the shadows."
Voss said nothing at first, only the faint scratch of a lighter clicking. Smoke hissed across the line. "Describe."
Kahn closed his eyes, pressing a palm against the counter as though to steady himself against the memory. "Decay. Not just rot—time itself was… fragile. Everything around it broke down. Metal, wood, even breath. It was like watching seconds crumble. The fragment… it wanted it. Pulled me closer. And for a moment—" His throat tightened. "For a moment it showed me. Not a creature. A principle. Entropy wearing a mind."
The silence stretched, broken only by Kahn's unsteady breathing.
"You stayed too long," Voss said at last. The commander's tone was flat, but beneath it ran a current of something Kahn couldn't name—unease, or calculation. "You let it notice you ."
Kahn's nails traced unconsciously over the grooves he had left in the porcelain. "It was already noticing me. Through the fragment. I think…" His voice dropped. "I think it was waiting."
Voss exhaled smoke, sharp and deliberate. "Then don't make it wait again. We'll move at dawn. I want every detail written down before then."
The call ended without farewell. The screen went black, leaving only Kahn's reflection, pale and hollow-eyed. The fragment pulsed once more, gentle as a heartbeat, satisfied in its silence.