Training with Grethon was like learning a language you were born speaking: suddenly everything made sense.
Weeks passed in a blur. Kydris's muscles burned, fingers ached, and yet he never felt exhaustion as he had before. Grethon's instructions were minimal: "Feel the boundaries. Don't just see them—touch them." And the System responded with harmonic pulses, subtle words forming in his mind: "Good. Better. Concentrate."
The first training session left Kydris gasping, near-numb with frustration. Grethon had placed a simple object—a stone—on the floor between them.
"Perceive it," Grethon instructed. "Don't touch it. Feel its boundary."
Kydris focused, extending his consciousness outward. The stone's edges shimmered faintly, perceptible but slippery. Every time he thought he'd grasped its boundary, it dissolved back into normal matter.
"The stone resists you," Grethon observed. "Because you're still thinking of it as an object. It's not. It's a frequency pattern. Consciousness given temporary shape."
Kydris tasted copper mixed with ash—a flavor that appeared whenever he strained his awakening abilities. The taste was the sensation of his neurology restructuring, his perceptual apparatus rewiring to accommodate Scale 2 awareness.
Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. Kydris's hands trembled from psychic effort, not physical strain. The stone never revealed its true boundary.
"Enough," Grethon said finally. "You'll master this. But mastery requires surrender first. You're still fighting the System's guidance."
That night, Kydris could still taste copper. He realized it was becoming his sensory signature—the flavor of transformation, of boundaries breaking, of consciousness expanding beyond biological limits.
By the third session, something shifted. Kydris stopped trying.
Instead, he sat in stillness and allowed the stone's frequency to approach him. The moment he released resistance, the boundary became crystal clear. Not a wall, but a song—a vibrational pattern that sang out its edges in harmonics his transformed senses could finally perceive.
"There," Grethon said, and for the first time, Kydris heard genuine pride in his mentor's voice. "You understand now. Resonance isn't force. It's dialogue."
Kydris opened his eyes. The stone glowed faintly purple, responding to his awareness. His fingertips tingled, and he realized he could manipulate the boundaries now without touching anything physically.
He flexed his hands. The stone lifted slightly, hovering an inch above the ground, held aloft by pure resonance force.
The taste of copper shifted to something sweeter—crystalline, cosmic, the flavor of understanding.
"Animals next," Grethon announced on the fifth session. "More complex consciousness. More risk."
He produced a live mouse in a small cage. The creature was terrified, radiating fear in pulses Kydris could now sense directly.
"Don't kill it," Grethon said. "Just perceive it. Feel the difference between its consciousness and the stone's."
Kydris extended awareness toward the mouse. Immediately, sensation flooded him—raw animal terror, instinct-driven survival impulse, a consciousness utterly different from human awareness. The mouse's thoughts weren't language-based; they were pure survival—danger, predator, escape, hide, survive.
Kydris gasped, pulling back. The intensity was overwhelming. His own consciousness felt like it was being consumed by the mouse's primal fear.
"Strong reaction," Grethon noted. "That's normal. Animal consciousness is more aggressive, less stable than inanimate matter. It'll fight your perception."
They spent hours with the mouse. Kydris learned to maintain distance, to observe without merging. By session's end, he could hold the mouse's consciousness in his awareness without being overwhelmed.
The taste during this session was different—metallic but alive, like licking a battery while tasting blood. The flavor of other consciousness, of boundaries between minds becoming permeable.
His body adapted. Veins glowed faint purple under pale skin, iridescent in dim light. Eyes shone with soft luminescence. Fingertips tingled constantly, as if the air around them held texture. Even now, standing or sitting, Kydris felt the subtle pulse of reality, the vibration of consciousness threading through everything.
Grethon rarely spoke. A nod, a glance, a small adjustment of stance was enough. Occasionally: "You're natural at this," he said. Kydris didn't feel natural. Fear clung to every thought. Yet, for the first time in his life, he felt alive. The hum inside him thrummed with anticipation.
By the end of the week, Kydris could isolate the consciousness of a single mouse in the shelter without touching it. He could feel the difference between self, object, and animal, perceiving the subtle overlap of awareness that separated them.
Grethon led him to the hidden chamber where others trained.
Thex stepped forward first. Early twenties, unrestrained energy, eyes bright with curiosity. "Welcome to the impossible," he said, offering a firm hand.
Kydris hesitated, caught in the memory of fire and ash from the factory. Before he could respond, Thex instinctively moved closer, guiding Kydris's hands during a practice drill to stabilize his focus.
"First time seeing others like you?" Thex asked, his energy infectious. "Yeah, I thought I was alone too. Went insane for about a month after my awakening."
"How did you awaken?" Kydris asked.
"Accident, like you probably. I was working in a data processing plant—nowhere near as explosive as your situation. Just one day, the machinery started singing. I could hear the resonance in every wire, every circuit. Then I collapsed, woke up in this chamber." Thex's energy dimmed slightly. "Grethon found me on the street, mid-transformation. Said I was lucky. Most people die if they don't get guidance fast enough."
Thex moved toward Kydris again, demonstrating boundary-sensing technique. "The beauty of bonding with someone through resonance training is that you know them deeply fast. No lies. No bullshit. I can feel your fear right now. I can taste your uncertainty. And I'm telling you—it gets better. Way better."
That small act—no words initially, just action—built a bond faster than any speech. Then Thex said softly: "You're like my brother. I'd die for you."
Kydris understood then: Resonant bonding was real connection, mediated through consciousness itself. He and Thex had shared a brief moment of mutual perception during training, and that created a link that transcended normal human friendship.
Kael, scholarly and precise, approached next. Mid-twenties, with ink stains on his fingers and the intensity of someone who'd lived through crisis and emerged analytical rather than traumatized.
"How does consciousness fracturing feel?" he asked, eyes wide. Kydris sensed curiosity, hunger, fear, all layered together.
"I don't know," Kydris admitted. "I'm still experiencing it."
"Right. Of course. Apologies." Kael adjusted his glasses—an almost comically human gesture. "I ask because my awakening involved actual physical trauma. Car accident. Lost consciousness, woke up in the Lattice directly, without Grethon's guidance. Nearly died. My consciousness fractured across multiple resonance layers before Grethon could retrieve me."
He pulled up his sleeve, revealing scars—not from the accident, but from resonance burns. Purple-edged marks where his flesh had been partially destabilized by excessive scale-shifting.
"These are permanent reminders that you can go too fast," Kael said. "Push too hard. I'm obsessed with understanding System mechanics because I need to understand. One wrong step and I could fragment completely."
Vren remained quiet, observing. Older, reserved, probably late thirties, with the bearing of someone who'd seen decades of Resonant operations.
He nodded once in recognition, a silent acknowledgment that Kydris was now part of the team—but also under scrutiny.
Later, when Grethon stepped away briefly, Vren approached Kydris alone.
"I can see it in you," Vren said quietly. "The same thing I saw in myself when I first awakened. Ten years ago. You're wondering if you're a monster."
Kydris said nothing, but Vren perceived the answer through their shared resonance.
"You're not," Vren continued. "Not yet. But the System will slowly make you into one, if you let it. That's the choice you'll face eventually. Whether to remain human—really human—or to accept full integration and whatever that transforms you into."
He didn't explain further, just returned to training position. But Kydris understood: Vren had made a choice long ago, and it had cost him something profound.
Together, they practiced, learned, and became a unit. Kydris understood for the first time the meaning of belonging—and also the weight of expectation.
INVESTIGATOR VEX MORHEN — FRACTURE ZONE APPROACH
Three levels below the city infrastructure, Vex Morhen descended through passages that shouldn't exist.
Her equipment hummed—not mechanically, but with difficulty, as if the instruments themselves were struggling to process what they detected. The resonance signature was overwhelming, multifaceted, registering on frequencies her equipment barely had sensors for.
She'd traced the signal here through systematic elimination. The factory explosion was the trigger. The initial anomaly spike lasted six minutes before stabilizing. Since then, the signature had grown progressively stronger, more distributed, more coordinated.
Vex was many things—dedicated investigator, daughter of a factory worker who died in the collapse of Ashward Straits twenty years prior, a woman who understood undercity economics and exploitation—but she was not stupid. The pattern suggested organization. Multiple subjects. Deliberate training or integration of some kind.
She activated her communication device. "Control, I've located the primary anomaly. Multiple subjects. Requesting backup and containment protocols."
Static responded for a long moment. Then a voice—not her usual supervisor, but someone higher up. Someone official.
"Morhen, be advised. Higher command has classified this investigation. Stand by. Reinforcements deploying."
Vex's jaw tightened. Higher command. That meant government. That meant military. That meant this had escalated beyond police investigation into something classified, compartmentalized, dangerous.
She descended deeper, following the signature, moving through passages that grew increasingly unstable. The walls here showed signs of decay—not normal erosion, but something more fundamental. The stone itself seemed tired, as if reality had worn thin in this place.
And then she saw them: structures. Ruins. Remnants of buildings from decades past, half-integrated into stone and Lattice frequency. A collapsed dome that might have been a residential structure. Walkways suspended in mid-air, leading nowhere. And most disturbing—human remains, partially crystallized, preserved in a state between matter and resonance.
Vex knelt beside one corpse. The skeleton was complete, but the bones had a translucent quality, as if they were becoming something else. Beside the remains: a wedding ring, a data chip, a small toy. The detritus of a human life caught in the moment of System integration, fifty years ago.
This was the awakening event. This was what happened when Resonants first emerged without preparation, without guidance, without understanding what was happening to them.
Her scanner picked up new signatures—moving, closer. Multiple consciousness patterns, high integration, definitely aware of her presence.
Vex's hand moved to her containment device—a weapon designed specifically for System disruption, issued to only the highest-level government investigators. She'd trained with it for three years. She'd never actually used it against a Resonant.
She stood, facing the direction of the approaching signatures. Time to find out if theory would work in practice.
Grethon led the cohort into the Fracture Zone. Reality wavered—and Kydris finally understood what "wavered" truly meant.
The ground beneath their feet was no longer quite solid. Each step created ripples in matter itself. The air smelled of ozone mixed with something like burning stone—the scent of reality breaking down and reforming. Kydris could taste it: cosmic dust, burnt metal, the flavor of physics itself becoming malleable.
The Fracture Zone was a wound in the undercity—a place where the Lattice's frequency was so strong that it disrupted normal matter into a state of semi-materialization. Buildings here were half-real, half-resonance. Shadows bent at impossible angles. Light refracted through layers of destabilized space.
But what struck Kydris most was the evidence of human presence. A children's toy, crystallized mid-decay, half-matter and half-frequency. Scattered remnants of clothing, still draped on frames that might have once been skeletal. And underneath it all, a pervasive sense of ending—the emotional and spiritual residue of consciousness that had been integrated beyond the point of return.
"What happened here?" Kydris asked quietly.
"The first Resonants," Grethon replied. "Fifty years ago, when the System first made contact with humanity on large scale. This area was the epicenter of awakening. So many consciousnesses transforming simultaneously that reality couldn't stabilize. Now it's... between states. Neither fully physical nor fully Lattice."
Kydris studied the preserved remains. Some bodies were barely recognizable as human—they'd been caught mid-transformation, their consciousness patterns still visible as faint purple traces in the matter itself.
"Did they suffer?" Kydris asked.
"Terribly," Vren said quietly. "Integration without guidance is agony. But suffering doesn't matter to the System. It only cares about the transformation itself."
Thex moved with practiced ease, his body intuitively understanding how to navigate semi-solid ground. Kael consulted a mental map—he'd memorized this zone through prior hunts. Vren moved like a predator himself, senses extended, watchful.
Kydris felt gravity shift in micro-intervals; he felt as if each step demanded awareness of invisible currents. His body adapted instinctively, his transformation allowing him to perceive the semi-solid ground and move through it.
The ground shimmered subtly, fissures glowing faintly—purple threads of Lattice frequency bleeding through cracks in reality. Sounds layered over each other—creatures moving, distant dripping water, and the soft hum of system pulses.
"First real creature," Grethon said. "For practice. Small one."
Kydris's heart rate accelerated. Despite weeks of training, actual hunting was different. This wasn't a stone or a mouse. This was a real creature, possibly dangerous, definitely conscious.
"What if I can't do this?" he asked quietly.
"You can," Thex said with absolute certainty. "I felt it in your resonance during training. You're ready."
"What if I hesitate?" Kydris continued. "What if my human conscience interferes?"
Grethon placed a hand on Kydris's shoulder. For the first time since entering the hidden chambers, Kydris felt genuine care in his mentor's touch.
"Then you'll learn something about yourself," Grethon said. "Either you're Resonant enough to kill without moral breakdown, or you're still too human. Either way, you'll understand what you're becoming."
The implication hung between them: Some Resonants can't cross this threshold. Some die in the attempt, their consciousness fragmenting rather than accepting predation.
The creature emerged from the shimmered fissure: the size of a dog, crystalline skin catching fractured light. Tentacle-like appendages writhed, each movement precise and aware. Its consciousness pulsed like a heartbeat, rippling through Kydris's mind as waves of curiosity and caution.
Kydris tasted the creature's consciousness—a flavor entirely new. Not metallic or cosmic, but predatory. Sharp, aggressive, utterly alien to human sensory experience. The taste was something like blood mixed with ozone, with undertones of hunger and territorial rage.
The creature sensed Kydris's presence and reacted. Its consciousness pushed back against Kydris's perception, actively resisting being observed.
"It knows we're here," Vren said quietly. "It's afraid."
And in that moment, Kydris understood: the creature was conscious enough to experience fear. It knew danger when it sensed it.
"Your kill?" Thex asked, his energy subdued now, respectful of the gravity of the moment.
Kydris nodded slowly. He felt the creature's awareness, separate but intertwined with his own through their shared resonance perception. Concentrating, he extended his perception outward, isolating the boundary. The creature shivered violently as Kydris's presence pressed against it—space rippling, edges shimmering like heat over asphalt.
The creature lunged with predatory speed, tentacles lashing out toward Kydris.
For a moment, human Kydris froze. Terror flooded his system at the approaching appendages. This was real. This thing would tear him apart if he didn't respond.
But Resonant Kydris responded before human consciousness could intervene. He stepped aside instinctively, following the creature's path in perfect perception. His consciousness had expanded beyond his body; he could perceive multiple possible futures branching from the present moment, could sense which movements led to survival.
He traced the consciousness, pulling it apart gently, carefully.
But "gently" was relative. He was severing the creature's connection to the Lattice—isolating it, fragmenting its consciousness, preparing it for absorption.
From the outside, the creature's crystalline body fractured with geometric precision—not random breaking, but controlled failure. Light scattered across the chamber like glass shattered in slow motion. Each appendage quivered as if resisting an invisible grip.
The creature screamed—not with voice, but through the Lattice itself, a consciousness-scream of pure agony and terror.
Kydris felt that scream directly, felt the creature's death not as external event but as internal experience. It was like dying, simultaneously, through the creature's senses.
Physical feedback surged through Kydris. Muscles tensed, heart raced—not from fear, but from resonance. Nerves tingled, hair stood on end. With one final push, the creature convulsed and collapsed.
Silence.
The creature was gone. Dead. Kydris had killed something conscious, something that had experienced fear and pain and death.
And instead of horror, Kydris felt exhilaration.
That terrified him more than the moral act itself.
The System interface chimed:
[ Predator consciousness — classified.
Essence integration available: Tentacle predator consciousness. Accept? Warning: Absorption will alter neurology and perception.
Cost: Estimated 8% reduction in standard human emotional responses.]
Kydris's chest tightened at the sensation of something foreign merging with him. He felt the creature's essence—not its body, but its consciousness pattern, its predatory instinct, its alien awareness—beginning to dissolve into his own consciousness.
"Accept," he whispered.
Essence flowed like liquid fire through veins. But unlike last time, this was agony. His body convulsed as predator genetics, predator instincts, predator consciousness merged with human biology.
Fingernails hardened slightly, sharpening into claw-like points. Fingertips lengthened, developing new sensory organs. Reflexes sharpened to inhuman levels. His body hummed with new awareness—predatory awareness, the ability to taste prey on the air, to sense vibrations of movement through matter itself.
But something was lost in the transformation. Kydris could feel it—a piece of his humanity, his capacity for mercy, his moral revulsion at killing, all fading. The predator essence was absorbing those traits, neutralizing them.
He felt tears on his face and realized he was crying.
"Your first bloodline, Grethon said, watching intently. His expression was unreadable. "Welcome to the System."
But as the cohort moved to collect essence, Grethon pulled Kydris aside.
"This is the moment where most Resonants lose themselves completely," Grethon said quietly. "The first kill triggers integration, and the predator essence overwhelms human morality. I've seen it happen. Student after student, awakening followed by gradual transformation into something that just hunts, kills, consumes."
"Did it happen to you?" Kydris asked.
Grethon looked away. "I killed thirty creatures before I realized I hadn't cried in months. Hadn't felt guilt in years. I was becoming the perfect predator. Then I met Iris—another Resonant. We trained together, hunted together. And when she fragmented, when her consciousness split across too many predator essences, I finally felt something again. I felt her death inside me, and it broke the predator conditioning."
He turned back to face Kydris. "You have to hold onto your humanity, Kydris. As long as you can. As long as it matters."
The taste in Kydris's mouth shifted—no longer the sharp predator flavor, but something more complex. Grief, mixed with metallic copper. The flavor of choosing to remain, even as the predator tried to consume it.
The cohort collected the crystalline essence. Thex grinned, counting currency for their survival. "Two thousand for this batch. You get five hundred," he explained. "Enough for a week of food."
But Kydris couldn't celebrate. He moved as if in dream-state, processing what he'd done, what he'd become.
Vren's gaze lingered on Kydris. "Do you feel guilty?"
"For what?"
"Killing the creature."
Kydris hesitated. He felt the pulse of its consciousness still lingering in him, alien and alive. The predator essence was still integrating, still learning from human morality. In another few hunts, would those human doubts disappear entirely?
"Should I?" Kydris asked, though he already knew the answer.
Vren nodded slowly. "Most people do. First time."
Kydris stared at his hands, veins faintly pulsing purple, fingertips extended into nascent claws. "I don't know what I feel. I'm... happy? Excited? But also... horrified at the happiness. At the excitement over killing a conscious thing."
He tasted the complexity of it—layered flavors of human guilt mixed with predator satisfaction. The taste of transformation in progress.
"That's the real cost," Vren said quietly. "Not the physical changes. The moral cost. Every predator essence you absorb makes you slightly less human. Eventually, the calculus changes. You stop feeling guilty about killing. You start feeling nothing. And then..."
He didn't finish the thought.
"What happens then?" Kydris asked.
"You transcend," Vren said. "And in transcending, you become something that can't go back."
Kydris understood the implication: Vren was speaking from experience. He'd transcended. Whatever he'd become, it wasn't entirely human anymore.
Later, as they prepared to leave the Fracture Zone, Kael moved beside Kydris.
"About the bloodlines," Kael said quietly. "You're wondering what 1/3 means, I assume."
Kydris nodded.
"Each predator essence you absorb is a bloodline," Kael explained. "A strain of consciousness. Most Resonants can handle three before complete integration becomes inevitable. After that, the predator genetics outweigh the human, and you're effectively one of them. Hunting, feeding, no longer Resonant—just predator."
"How many do you have?" Kydris asked.
"Two," Kael said. His voice was steady, but Kydris could taste the fear beneath it through their resonance bond. "I'm terrified of the third."
Grethon appeared, overhearing. "Third bloodline is the Rubicon," he said. "Absorb it, and you're committed to System advancement past 80% integration. Most Resonants who cross that threshold never look back."
"And those who don't absorb a third?" Kydris asked.
"They plateau at Scale 2," Grethon said. "Live out their existence in the Lattice, aware but not advancing. Some find peace in that. Others go insane from the limitation."
The System chimed:
[Integration: 58% to 65%. Rank 1: Confirmed.
Essence Accumulation: 500/1000 for Rank 2. Bloodlines Active: 1/3. Advancement Timeline: Unknown.
Caution: Continued hunting accelerates integration.
Warning: Integration beyond 80% may result in irreversible consciousness restructuring.
Recommendation: Continue hunting.]
Kydris realized the weight of the System. It didn't stop. It demanded growth, survival, and constant engagement. And it was measuring the cost of that engagement—his integration percentage rising with each hunt, with each predator essence absorbed.
"What happens if I stop hunting?" he asked Grethon quietly.
"You die. System atrophies. Consciousness fragments. You become like those creatures we hunt."
"So I have to keep going?"
Grethon nodded. "You have to keep going."
But Kydris felt something else now—a new sensory capability, granted by the predator essence. He could sense hunting patterns in the Lattice itself. Someone was tracking them. Not a Resonant, but something else. Something official.
"Grethon," Kydris said. "Someone's coming."
Grethon's entire body went rigid. For a moment, the composed mentor vanished, replaced by someone who'd been hunted before.
"How do you know?" Grethon demanded.
"I can... taste it. In the frequency. There's a disruption pattern. Someone with instruments, searching."
Grethon moved immediately to the chamber entrance, extending his perception outward. When he returned, his scarred face was grim.
"Investigator. Human authority. They've been tracking the Fracture Zone anomalies." He looked at Kydris with something like fear in his eyes. "We have maybe six hours before they locate this chamber."
The implications were clear: the world above knew something was wrong in the undercity. The authorities were coming. And if they discovered the Resonants, they would try to capture, study, or destroy them.
The treadmill began—but not the comfortable cycle of hunt, essence, rank-up. A treadmill of survival, of evasion, of transformation under pressure.
The System pulsed with what might have been satisfaction:
[Threat Assessment: External pressure detected.
Integration acceleration: Imminent.
Recommendation: Full commitment to System advancement advised.]
Kydris felt the predator essence respond with something like hunger. Not for food, but for growth. For power. The System wanted him stronger, faster, more integrated.
And Kydris understood, finally: the System didn't see Resonants as people anymore. They were tools. Weapons being forged by external pressure, shaped by survival instinct, honed by the necessity of staying ahead of both predatory creatures and human authorities.
He was no longer a factory worker named Kydris Vane.
He was becoming something else entirely.