The sewers beneath the dead city stank of sulfur and rot. Pipes groaned in the dark like something alive, and puddles shimmered with the oil-slick colors of corruption. Valen Creed knelt near a crumbling ledge, his hand resting on the damp concrete, his eyes fixed on the warped air just ahead.
The Riftborn were spawning again.
"You sure it's here?" Lira whispered behind him. Her short blade glinted faintly, and the dark streaks under her eyes told him she hadn't slept.
Valen didn't answer immediately. The Echo of the End pulsed under his skin like a second heartbeat, dragging his senses through the veil of reality. He could feel it now—something wrong, something hungry beneath them.
He stood up slowly. "It's not just here," he said. "It's breathing."
The team moved in silence, navigating through collapsed maintenance tunnels. Old warning signs peeled from the walls. Above them, somewhere in the ash-covered city, the world still clung to the illusion of survival. But down here, in the bones of the past, something ancient stirred.
The smell of Riftborn residue grew thicker.
Valen's mind was racing, but not with fear. This pit—this spawning site—was more than just another infestation. It was old. Too structured. He recognized the layout, faint memories flashing back to his first life. He'd died not far from here, surrounded by fire and those same hissing shadows.
Lira's voice cut in. "The others are setting charges. When we're ready, we collapse it."
"No." Valen stepped forward, eyes burning. "If we just bury it, it comes back. We overload it with Echo. Burn it from inside."
She stared at him. "You sure you can handle that?"
He didn't reply.
The Pit
It opened like a wound in the earth—a circular cavity with stone walls slathered in black slime. Riftborn crawled along the sides, grotesque things with too many limbs and eyes that shimmered red in the dark. At the center of the pit, a pulsing mass of flesh and crystal throbbed, birthing twisted life with each breath.
Lira gagged. One of the rebels behind them whispered, "That's not natural…"
Valen ignored them. He walked to the edge, let the Echo rise through him like wildfire. His hands glowed with dark light, fingertips laced with violet-black veins. The whispers were already starting—faint, curling around his mind like smoke.
Burn it, Valen. Burn it all.
He shut them out.
Then he jumped.
He fell like a streak of darkness, landing with a dull thud beside the core of the pit. Riftborn hissed and screeched, pulling away from him as if they sensed what was coming. The ground cracked beneath his feet as he focused.
His Echo surged—raw and unstable. His arms split with glowing fissures. Darkness poured from his chest, twisting in unnatural spirals as it raced through the pit.
The core screamed.
"Now!" Lira's voice echoed from above. "Get out of there!"
Valen didn't move.
He poured more Echo into the core, ignoring the way his vision flickered. The flesh around him melted and folded in on itself. Riftborn exploded in bursts of black ichor. The very air warped, pulled inward like a vacuum.
Then—
Boom.
Reality cracked.
When he opened his eyes, everything was quiet.
He lay at the center of a scorched crater, surrounded by ash and glass. The spawning pit was gone. Nothing remained except twisted shadows etched into the walls, burned into place by Echo overload.
Lira was the first to reach him. "Valen! Hey—look at me!"
He blinked. "…Did it work?"
She nodded, breathless. "Yeah. You collapsed the entire pit. They won't be spawning here again."
Valen sat up slowly. The world around him looked… wrong. Colors bled into one another. The air had weight. His fingers trembled—not from exhaustion, but from something else.
The Echo inside him had changed.
It had tasted too much.
Consequences
Back at the surface, the rebels moved quickly to evacuate. No one spoke of what happened down there. Some were scared. Others just stared at Valen like he wasn't human anymore.
He didn't blame them.
In the mirror of a broken truck, he caught a glimpse of himself. The markings on his chest had deepened—burned like black lightning across his heart. His eyes had taken on a faint glow, like embers refusing to die.
Lira leaned beside him. "You went too far."
"I had to," he muttered.
"Yeah. But next time… will you come back from it?"
Valen didn't answer.
That night, he stood alone on a rooftop, watching the flickering lights in the distance. Cities still burned. The sky remained cracked, like something waiting to shatter completely.
Then he felt it.
A ripple in the Echo.
A presence watching him.
He turned his head, eyes narrowing.
Far beyond the horizon, buried in Riftborn territory, something stirred. A massive shape, hidden in shadow, looked toward him through the tear in the sky.
It knew his name.
And it smiled.