The Cataclysm whispered louder that day.
Silas could feel it before he heard it—the pressure in the air, the static charge prickling across his skin. Kaelen felt it too, her shoulders tense as her hand rested lightly on the hilt of her blade. The fractured horizon stretched ahead of them, a labyrinth of floating highways, shattered towers, and fragments of a city that no longer belonged to the living.
They moved carefully along a spine of broken roadway. Silas' shards floated in loose orbit, scanning the periphery, their subtle hum echoing like faint chimes. Kaelen's eyes darted between the edges of the road and the yawning void below.
"Something's wrong," she murmured.
"It's always wrong here," Silas answered. His tone was calm, but his eyes tracked the horizon. The colors there weren't stable; they pulsed in irregular patterns, like the heartbeat of a dying world.
"No," she said more firmly. "It's… quieter. Too quiet."
That was when the HUD flickered.
[ERROR WARNING] [Detection Field Interference Detected] [Signal Scrambling…]
Silas stopped dead. His shards froze, then snapped into a tight defensive ring. Kaelen nearly walked into him but halted at the sharp look he cast her way.
"They're here," he said flatly.
Kaelen drew her blade, the steel whispering as it left the sheath. "Conclave?"
He nodded once.
The air split with a resonance like glass cracking underwater. From the void edges, figures emerged—not like the glitch-creatures they had fought before, but purposeful, armored, human in silhouette. The Conclave had found them.
Their armor shimmered with an unstable light, a mix of dark plating and runic veins that pulsed in rhythm with the Cataclysm's chaos. There were at least a dozen, spread across the floating platforms, boxing Silas and Kaelen into a kill zone.
One stepped forward, helm retracting to reveal a face too sharp, too perfect, as though it had been reconstructed from code and memory. His eyes glowed faintly red.
"Unauthorized Entity," he said, voice ringing like a synthetic choir. "Silas Renvar. By Conclave decree, your existence is a violation."
Silas' shards sharpened to blades, orbit tightening. "Then come enforce it."
The leader's lips curved in something like a smile. "Gladly."
The Conclave moved as one.
Shards of light, different from Silas' but equally lethal, ripped through the air. Kaelen barely deflected the first strike, sparks screaming as metal met corrupted energy. Silas darted forward, his shards intercepting three more beams, then arcing outward in a flurry of counterstrikes.
The battle exploded into chaos.
Kaelen's blade caught a descending Conclave soldier mid-swing, steel screeching against runic plating. The impact nearly drove her to her knees, but she twisted, rolling and slashing upward into the gap between helm and shoulder. The soldier's form flickered, light shattering, before dissolving into static fragments.
Another soldier lunged at Silas, weapon glowing like a broken lance of energy. Silas met him with a shard to the chest, then three more in a spiraling thrust that ripped through his armor. The body fell, crumbling like corrupted data.
But for each one that fell, another closed in.
The leader watched calmly, not moving, as if testing Silas, measuring his limits.
Kaelen's breath was ragged as she parried a strike aimed at her throat. "There's too many!"
"There's enough," Silas corrected coldly, his shards detonating outward in a shockwave that sent three soldiers flying into the void.
But the Conclave adjusted. They began moving in patterns, their strikes coordinated, their timing impeccable. Silas realized they weren't just soldiers. They were a net, designed to hem him in, to choke the space around him.
His HUD flickered again.
[Zone Lock Engaged] [Escape Probability: 14%]
Silas bared his teeth.
One soldier broke through Kaelen's guard, his blade slashing across her arm. She cried out, stumbling back. Blood streaked down her sleeve, and Silas felt something sharp and unfamiliar twist inside his chest.
His shards responded before thought did, screaming outward in a spiral of killing arcs. Three Conclave fell in seconds, their bodies bursting into fragments of broken code.
The leader tilted his head. "There it is. The hybrid's surge."
Kaelen pressed her wound, her teeth gritted. "Don't… stop."
Silas stood before her, shards flaring with raw energy, eyes locked on the leader. "Stay behind me," he said.
She almost argued, but the look in his eyes silenced her.
The leader finally stepped forward. His armor shimmered as his hand reached into the void itself, pulling forth a blade formed of fractured light. It vibrated with distortion, reality bending around it.
"This is the end of your anomaly, Renvar."
Silas' shards responded to his pulse, aligning into a lattice of weapons, each one vibrating with hybrid resonance. His blood thrummed, fire and static burning in his veins.
The leader charged.
Their clash ripped the air apart. Blade met shard in detonations of light that split the floating platforms, cracks spidering through stone and steel. Silas moved faster than Kaelen could follow, his shards swarming like a living storm, clashing against the leader's distorted weapon. Every strike felt like a thunderclap.
The Conclave soldiers circled tighter, forcing Kaelen to defend herself against the encroaching net. She fought desperately, each swing more frantic, but she refused to fall.
Silas pressed the leader, shards striking from every angle. The man was skilled—more skilled than the others—parrying and twisting with precision that felt inhuman.
But then, a break. Silas feinted with a double arc, shards spiraling wide before converging suddenly, stabbing through the gaps in the leader's guard. One shard slashed across his helm, tearing away the mask of perfection to reveal… nothing human at all. His face flickered with static, a hollow shape filled with runes and light.
The leader staggered, his voice cracking in a distorted chorus. "Entity corruption—confirmed."
Silas' shards hovered at his throat. "You talk too much."
The final strike drove through, shattering the leader's body into a storm of static shards that dissolved into the Cataclysm's void.
The remaining soldiers froze, their coordination broken, their movements stuttering. Silas wasted no time. His shards fanned out in a deadly bloom, cutting them down one by one until silence reigned again.
Kaelen collapsed onto one knee, clutching her wound. She looked up at him, her face pale but steady. "You killed him."
"I kill what stands in my way," Silas replied.
Her lips parted as if to argue, but instead she gave a shaky laugh. "You make it sound so simple."
He turned his gaze toward the horizon, where the void was already closing around the remnants of the battle, swallowing the evidence.
"It is simple," he said quietly.
But deep inside, he knew it wasn't. Every clash with the Conclave confirmed what he already suspected: they weren't chasing him just because of what he was. They were afraid. Afraid of what he might become.
He extended a shard toward Kaelen. She hesitated, then used it as support to stand. Their eyes met for the briefest moment—hers fierce despite the pain, his unreadable but sharp.
The void shifted again, the horizon trembling with unstable light. More would come. Always more.
"Come on," he said. "We move before the next net tightens."
Together, they stepped into the broken light of the Cataclysm, sparks of battle still fading behind them, shadows of war looming ahead.