The city was quieter than usual that evening. Streetlights flickered over cracked asphalt, their glow catching on puddles from a late spring drizzle. The air smelled of ozone and damp concrete. Takumi moved through the alleys with practiced awareness, hood up, head low. His team, Temporary Unit 47, followed a few steps behind—silent, tense, awkward with inexperience.
The mission briefing had been brief. Low-risk rift. Supposedly, a Dire-class anomaly trapped inside a partially collapsed warehouse in the Industrial Sector. Nothing extraordinary on the sensor logs. Yet Takumi felt the weight of anticipation in the back of his skull. Something about "low-risk" never sounded low-risk anymore.
"Keep your eyes open," Ryo said, voice low. "These things—Dire or otherwise—they aren't forgiving. Not for us, not for civilians nearby."
The warehouse came into view, looming like a hulking carcass. Windows shattered, walls caved, rusted steel beams jutting out like broken ribs. Takumi's eyes swept every angle, instincts humming. The System interface blinked faintly at his wrist—status stable, no anomalies detected yet.
He remembered the first day at orientation: "The weak are removed."
A sudden crack of concrete drew his attention. A shadow moved. Not a normal shadow. Wrong angles. Wrong dimensions. His senses screamed.
"Something's off," he muttered.
Before anyone could reply, the ground beneath them shivered. A low hum vibrated through their boots, through the alley walls. Air thickened. The team froze.
Ryo's hand went to his weapon. "On my mark—cover the perimeter."
Takumi's eyes caught a flicker in the corner of the broken warehouse—a humanoid silhouette, but its edges blurred unnaturally. The figure didn't step; it shifted, sliding over broken beams as if the floor were liquid.
The first strike came without warning.
A tendril of dark energy lashed from the shadow, piercing the wall behind Takumi's head. Concrete splintered, dust choking the air. The team scattered, but instinctively, Takumi dove forward, rolling under the strike, and felt a strange sensation—like the air itself resisted him, bending around his movement.
[Warning: High-dimensional fluctuation detected.]
The System blinked a single line before flickering out. Takumi frowned. Systems didn't misread. Not like this.
"Target confirmed?" he asked, voice low.
Ryo's response was a grunt. "Too unstable. Sensors can't track it."
The Dire-class Demon emerged—or what resembled one. Its form was semi-humanoid, face distorted like melted wax, claws too long to be natural. But something about its movement was… wrong. Glitches in its shadow, arcs of red-black energy flowing around its limbs, fading then appearing where it shouldn't.
"Engage!" Ryo barked.
Takumi didn't. His instincts screamed wait. Something about the way the Demon moved… it wasn't following normal rules.
He wasn't wrong.
A wide slash from the creature tore through the open space, bending light and sound. The team flinched, staggered back. One of the B-ranks tripped over a beam, falling onto sharp debris. Takumi caught him instinctively, pulling him up, feeling the unnatural pull on his muscles, his body almost bending against physics itself.
The creature turned. Its gaze—if it could be called that—seemed to pierce deeper than vision, reaching into Takumi's chest.
[Warning: Cognitive Anomaly Detected.]
The System interface blinked frantically, trying to catch up. But Takumi didn't wait. He moved—faster than he thought he could. Instincts honed over weeks of brutal training took over. Ducking, weaving, countering the Demon's attacks in a blur of calculated movements.
"Unit 47, report!" Ryo shouted, but Takumi ignored him. The fight had become singular, private.
The Demon's energy pulses bent reality around them. Walls twisted slightly, the air shimmered. Takumi noticed small cracks in the floor expanding, not from weight but from something deeper, a resonance with the creature's presence. His pulse quickened. This… isn't natural.
He swung his weapon—a reinforced pole picked up in haste. It connected, but the creature absorbed the strike, energy rippling into his arms. Pain shot through his shoulders, but not enough to stop him. Not yet.
A sudden flash of red-black light sparked at the far corner of the warehouse, and for a split second, the creature recoiled. It hissed, a sound that twisted the chest like broken metal. Takumi's head turned toward it, curiosity pricking through his adrenaline. The light vanished as quickly as it appeared.
He shook his head. "What the—"
Another attack, faster than his vision, forced him to roll into cover. When he peeked, the creature wasn't where he expected. It wasn't just moving—it was bending space, stretching the distance between itself and him.
[Warning: Spatial Integrity Compromised.]
Takumi's body responded before his mind could process. He jumped, twisting midair as the floor behind him exploded into shards of steel and concrete. The team screamed, but he didn't stop. He didn't think about Ryo, the B-ranks, or even his own safety. Survival instinct fused with an untrained awareness that something bigger was at play.
The creature lunged, claws extended, aiming to strike through him—but Takumi caught its momentum with the pole, swinging it with everything he had. Sparks of energy flared as metal met distorted flesh. The creature hissed, staggering back. It didn't retreat—it paused. Observed. Calculated.
That pause was enough. Takumi realized it wasn't attacking him randomly. It was testing him. Measuring.
He breathed hard, chest rising and falling in rapid bursts. His System blinked erratically, struggling to recalibrate. [Adaptive Combat Response: Detected.]
And then, faintly—at the edge of perception—he sensed it. Something watching beyond the Rift. Not the Demon. Something else. A presence older, deeper, not in the same dimension.
Takumi swallowed, feeling the hairs on his neck stand on end. "This… isn't just a Dire-class anomaly," he muttered under his breath.
The creature surged forward again. Takumi met it head-on, pivoting, dodging, blocking, every move an instinctive dance of survival. Behind him, a beam collapsed, throwing a shadow across the warehouse floor. In that shadow, his peripheral vision caught a flicker—a shape that didn't belong.
It vanished before he could focus.
The fight continued, brutal and silent. Takumi's limbs ached, his muscles burned, but he pushed forward. Every strike, every evasion, every pulse of awareness pulled him deeper into something unfamiliar.
Finally, the creature faltered. It retracted slightly, retreating to a corner. Takumi didn't relax. His eyes scanned the environment. He knew it hadn't fled. Not really. It was still testing, still observing, waiting.
[Mission Outcome: Partial Success. Anomaly Contained.]
Ryo appeared at his side, panting. "You… you handled that better than I expected."
Takumi only nodded, gaze drifting to the far shadows of the warehouse. There was something wrong with that fight, something the System couldn't measure, something outside human comprehension.
He didn't know it yet, but what he had felt—the pull, the wrongness, the flicker of red-black light—was the precursor. The whisper of something ancient stirring. Something that would shatter every rule he thought he knew.
The night ended, but Takumi didn't feel victory. Only anticipation. Only the slow, creeping certainty that survival was no longer about skill alone. It was about noticing the impossible and living through it.
As he lay in the barracks that night, staring at the ceiling, the shadows outside the window shifted ever so slightly. Not from the streetlights, not from passing clouds. Something deeper. Something aware.
And far beyond the city, in a dimension untouched by time, a presence stirred. Its hibernation deepened, but faint ripples reached across reality—ripples that would one day meet Takumi.
For now, all Takumi knew was that the world had grown stranger. And he would have to grow stranger too.