They hit like a storm.
The creatures surged forward—blurs of teeth, talons, and molten shadow. Caleb didn't think. His body moved on instinct, Riftlight pulsing through him as his blade snapped to full length—six feet of humming, jagged energy that bent light around it.
The first monster lunged. Caleb sidestepped, swung low, and severed its legs in one clean motion. The creature screeched, dissolved into smoke, and reformed—until Mira blew its head off with a focused plasma round.
"Nice swing," she called out. "Try aiming for things that stay dead next time!"
Caleb ducked under another slash, pivoted, and stabbed his blade backward. The Riftlight reacted to his emotion—growing sharper, brighter, more vicious the angrier he got.
Elara darted past him, sliding beneath a hulking brute's claws and tagging its neck with a seismic charge. Boom. Its upper half disintegrated. She was like a shadow with tech—efficient, precise, and deadly.
Caleb, by contrast, was all instinct and noise.
His movements were sloppy but fueled by raw power. The bracelet on his wrist blinked wildly, struggling to contain the fluctuations in his energy.
"I can't hold this much!" he shouted.
"Yes, you can!" Elara yelled back. "Feel it, don't fight it! You were born in the Rift!"
A monster leapt at him—a serpentine horror with wings made of knives. Caleb's pulse spiked. Time slowed. The Rift around him pulsed.
In one clean motion, he raised his free hand—and everything stopped.
Literally.
The air froze. The monsters halted mid-lunge. Mira's bullet hovered in the air like a crystal bead. Even Lys, the red-coated enemy, was locked in place, his mouth open in mid-command.
Caleb stood alone in the center of the breach.
What... is this?
Then, a voice whispered. Not from around him. From within.
"You touched the Heart too soon. Now you see it. Now you're cursed."
The sky above cracked. The Rift gravity expanded, revealing what looked like a second world beyond it—a mirror Earth, twisted and silent.
Caleb's breath caught in his throat.
His blade pulsed, but it was changing—becoming something more. Thicker. Darker. A second edge split from it, forming a double-sided weapon glowing with ancient glyphs.
Time resumed.
A shockwave exploded from Caleb's body, knocking back every monster in a ten-meter radius.
Lys stumbled, face wide with surprise. For the first time, he looked afraid.
"You're not supposed to be able to do that," Lys said quietly. "The Rift obeys no one."
Caleb took a step forward. "Then I guess I'm not no one."
He raised the blade. "You knew my father. Then you know what comes next."
Lys growled. "You think you're a hero, boy?"
"No," Caleb said. "I think I'm your mistake."
And with that, he charged.