I didn't say goodbye.
Didn't leave a note.Didn't leave a trace.
I just walked.
The shelter was still, dimly lit by emergency rigs Chase had strung across the ceiling. Booker slept in a far corner, barely moving. Maddie dozed beside him, one hand on his shoulder. Jacob leaned against a support beam, arms crossed, pretending not to sleep. Rev muttered quietly in his sleep, fingers twitching like he was still building something in his dreams.
I stood in the entryway, shadows curling along the walls behind me.
The map in my mind—the Nexus imprint I'd unlocked in the crater—still pulsed. Still pointed downward. A red thread through stone and shadow. And at the end of it… her.
Aaliah.
I could feel her. Not physically. Not emotionally.Something deeper. Like a name whispered through the bones of the earth.
Whatever the Harbingers had buried down there—it had her.
And I wasn't about to wait for permission to get her back.
The tunnels grew stranger the deeper I went.
Stone gave way to alloy. Then alloy to something older. Something that hummed without moving. The air smelled like dust and ozone, but there was… a taste to it too. A coppery bitterness that danced across my tongue.
The walls weren't flat. They were curved. Alive. Like a structure built by instinct instead of logic.
And beneath my feet, the Nexus lines responded to me.
Each step I took lit a new sigil in the ground—some language older than language, drawn in red veins. Not energy. Not tech.
Intention.
I wasn't walking through a facility.
I was walking through a memory. A place that remembered me before I was born.
Then I felt him.
No sound. No pressure. No warning.
Just… absence.
A single corner of possibility snapped shut—like the world decided a thousand outcomes and erased them all at once.
I stopped walking.
And in the silence ahead, a figure stepped into view.
Barefoot. Eyes faintly glowing gold. Hair soft and silver-blonde, moving like it caught breezes that didn't exist.
He looked my age.
But felt older than the planet we were standing on.
"Hello, anomaly," he said.
I didn't respond. My hands curled at my sides, instinct pulling energy into them.
"You're Kaleb. The Nexus." His head tilted slightly. "I've seen your wake. The moments that fracture behind you. You break well."
"Who are you?" I asked.
He smiled—like it was a secret.
"I go by Orion," he said. "Though I've had other names. Most of them lost in timelines that no longer apply."
He stepped forward. His foot touched one of the red Nexus lines—and it recoiled from him like a flame from water.
"You're standing between me and my sister," I said.
"She's already in motion," he replied. "You can't stop it. But you were never meant to. Your role is consumption. Mine is persuasion."
"What the hell does that mean?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Because the next moment broke.
It started with a flicker.
My vision jumped—just for a second.
In one frame, he was in front of me. In the next, he was behind me.
Then next, beside me—smiling like it was a joke he'd already heard a hundred times.
Probability collapse.
He wasn't moving.
He was rewriting the odds of where he should be.
And every time I tried to predict him, the answer got more impossible.
I launched a blast of energy anyway.
It missed.
Orion didn't dodge.
He simply wasn't there anymore.
"You're so loud," he murmured behind me. "Even your restraint screams."
The fight wasn't a fight.
It was a storm of stutters. Of moments repeating out of order. I swung before I knew I meant to. He replied before I spoke. We traded positions mid-breath, like reality was skipping frames.
And then—
He touched my forehead.
Just one finger.
The world split.
I saw versions of myself—endless, distorted, disfigured.
Kaleb with no eyes.Kaleb with wings of wire. Kaleb crowned in flame, ruling a world made of ash.
"See it?" Orion whispered. "The shadow beneath the skin. The version you keep trying to avoid."
"No," I choked.
But the Nexus inside me stirred.
Not in fear.
In agreement.
Finally, it said.
I didn't remember making the decision.
Didn't remember the breath.
But I let go.
The red veins across the ground rose to meet me.
My body lifted off the floor—hovering just slightly.
And then… I wasn't Kaleb anymore.
I was The Dark Nexus.
And I stopped caring.
I surged forward—not walking, not flying. Just moving through space like gravity gave me permission. Energy folded around me in spirals that didn't obey physics. Sigils lit across my skin, crawling like ink made of starlight.
I reached for Orion.
And he moved.
Not away.Not defensively.
With me.
Like he wanted this.
The impact was indescribable.
Reality folded. Stone liquified. My energy hit something not solid—not flesh—but intention. Like I was punching a concept.
And for one second, I felt him flinch.
I pressed harder.
Energy bent inwards. Space crumpled. The air hissed with paradox. But I didn't care.
I devoured everything he offered.
And I wanted more.
I could've ended him.
Right there.
Right then.
And that's when he smiled.
"Good," Orion whispered."Now we're aligned."
The energy snapped.
He was gone.
Just—gone. No flash. No step. No dimensional rip.
He had never been here, the way I understood it.
And I was left hovering above a crater of my own making, red light bleeding from my palms, my body shuddering with aftershock.
I fell to my knees.
The silence afterward was worse than the fight.
Because I didn't remember the last ten seconds.
I didn't remember who won.
I only remembered the hunger.
And for the first time since I woke up three years ago—
I was afraid of myself.