The air shimmered above the settlement like heat haze. Except it wasn't heat — it was the world itself flickering, as if someone kept trying to delete reality and failing.
Silas stood on the outer ridge, eyes tracing the glitching skyline. Each flicker carried a pulse he could feel in his bones — the Sleeper stirring. The earth muttered under his boots, whispering warnings only he could hear.
Serina climbed up behind him, light armor clinking. She didn't need to ask what he was watching. "It's closer again, isn't it?"
He nodded once. "Every pulse is stronger. The Sleeper's influence isn't spreading anymore — it's folding back toward us."
Serina frowned, brushing wind-tangled hair from her face. "So it's focusing. On you."
Silas didn't deny it. He couldn't. The entity's whispers weren't just echoing in his mind anymore; they were syncing with his heartbeat, like a corrupted rhythm trying to overwrite his own.
Below them, the settlement worked in silence. Men carried scrap metal to reinforce the wall; Mira knelt beside a wounded scout; Daren argued with Tovak over how to distribute weapons. Everything looked ordinary, but the air was wrong. Every breath carried static. Every sound came half a second late.
Serina rested her hand on his arm. "You can't keep doing this alone, Silas. You've held it back long enough—"
"I'm not holding it back anymore," he interrupted quietly. "I'm negotiating."
Her grip tightened. "With it?"
He turned to her, silver eyes faintly glowing with internal fracture light. "With myself."
The settlement's warning bell shattered the silence before she could answer.
A sound like tearing metal rolled across the fields — not just loud, but dimensional. The horizon rippled, and through the distortion stepped figures clad in chrome armor marked with the insignia of the Conclave. Their boots sank into the earth as if reality resisted their presence.
"Third wave," Serina breathed. "We just survived the second."
"Then this one won't be patient." Silas unsheathed his weapon — not a sword, but a jagged construct of light and code, the shards orbiting it humming with volatile resonance.
Below, chaos erupted. Daren shouted for the east line. Mira screamed for the wounded to be moved. The settlement, fragile yet fierce, surged into motion.
Silas moved first.
He descended the ridge like a falling star — shards spiraling around him in streaks of silver and blue. The first Conclave unit opened fire, bolts of plasma slicing the air. Silas deflected each one, the shards bending space as they turned trajectories midair.
"Unauthorized Entity located!" a Conclave commander roared. "Engage suppression protocols!"
But suppression was a fantasy.
Silas hit the ground among them, every movement clean, precise — too fast to track. His blade sliced through armor that sparked and fragmented into pixels. For every soldier he felled, two more emerged from distortion gates, their visors flashing with system runes.
Serina's voice came through the comm-link. "North defense failing! We need cover!"
"I'm on it."
He flung a hand toward the ridge, and his shards obeyed like a storm of light, embedding into the ground and erecting a fractal barrier. The barrier shimmered — not solid metal, not pure energy, but something in-between, a digital structure that refused to decide if it belonged to this world.
"Daren, fall back!" Serina shouted. "Mira, the med tent!"
The rhythm of battle blurred into something surreal. The Conclave weren't fighting to kill — they were fighting to capture. Every strike, every coordinated push aimed to corner him, to drive him toward their nullifiers.
And then he heard it.
The whisper beneath the chaos.Let them. You know what they deserve.
His pulse spiked. The world bled light.
For an instant, he saw himself reflected in a fragment of a fallen visor — eyes glowing, veins lit like circuitry, a being caught between system and soul.
Serina's voice snapped him back. "Silas, answer me! You're slipping!"
He clenched his jaw. "Still here."
The whisper smiled. Not for long.
He slammed his blade into the ground. The shards exploded outward, fracturing the terrain into floating geometry. For the first time, the Conclave hesitated.
And then the Sleeper moved.
The sky cracked. Not metaphorically — literally. A seam opened across the heavens, glowing with impossible light. The Conclave's helmets glitched. Their systems screamed error codes.
Silas staggered back, shielding his eyes. The whispers became a roar.
Judgment must resume.
Serina's hand grabbed his wrist. "Silas! Look at me!"
He did — and the noise dimmed. Her presence cut through the static like clean air through smoke. Her voice grounded him, slow and deliberate.
"You're not a weapon," she said. "You decide what you are."
He blinked once. The shards around him calmed, their rotation slowing, light stabilizing. "I know," he whispered. "But they don't."
The Conclave regrouped, forming a containment ring. A massive nullifier unit descended from the crack above, its shadow stretching across the battlefield.
Serina drew her shortblade, standing beside him. "So we show them."
Silas smiled faintly — a rare thing, sharp and almost tragic. "Then let's begin the demonstration."
They moved as one — Serina darting between soldiers, slashing through circuits with surgical precision; Silas behind her, shards orbiting like celestial blades, cutting down anything that dared approach. Every motion was synchronized, unspoken — practiced through instinct, not words.
For a moment, they pushed the Conclave back.
But the nullifier's descent changed everything. The ground trembled as it hit. Its core unfolded — a black sphere covered in runes that pulsed in time with Silas' heartbeat. It wasn't just designed to trap him; it was tuned to him.
Serina realized it first. "They copied your signature."
Silas' expression hardened. "They learned."
He stepped forward, shards rising like wings. "Then so will I."
The world flashed. The Sleeper's whisper became a steady tone — no longer persuasion, but connection. He reached inward, grasping that forbidden rhythm — and twisted it, forcing it into his own pattern.
The nullifier's light flickered. Conclave visors cracked.System alert: [Entity Sync Failure — Authorization Reversed.]
Reality shook.
When the light cleared, Silas stood amid a wasteland of data-fragments and melted stone. The Conclave had retreated through the fracture they came from. Only the hum of residual energy remained.
Serina limped toward him, breathing hard, covered in dust and static burns. "You— You turned their nullifier back on them?"
He nodded, still glowing faintly. "Not entirely. I made it forget who it was supposed to contain."
She gave a broken laugh. "You're insane."
"Efficient," he corrected. "But close enough."
The battle was over — for now. But as Silas turned to face the horizon, he saw something worse than enemies. The sky itself was no longer stable. The crack remained open, widening, spilling light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Serina followed his gaze. "That's not them."
"No," Silas murmured, voice low. "That's it."
The Sleeper was waking — and this time, it wasn't whispering. It was calling.