They crouched low behind a rooftop ledge, eyes fixed on the shimmer hovering just above the distant house.
The Veil flickered faintly in the daylight—barely noticeable unless you were looking for it. A dome of distorted air, subtle as a heatwave, wrapped tightly around the house and half the street.
Lucan squinted. "Can we see anything from here?"
Lyra shook her head, eyes narrowing. "No visual from outside. It's dense… like a double-layer veil."
She tapped her wristwatch, holding it up as a small panel slid open on its surface. A few glitched-out lines of static ran across the screen before stabilizing.
"Entering Veil in Sector G-11." she said softly, speaking into the comm-link. "Mutant unknown. Risk level pending."
The watch beeped once. Then silence.
Lyra stood. "Come on. We need to move before drones seal the perimeter."
Lucan followed her across the rooftop. One jump. Another. They reached the edge of the final building and stopped.
The house below stood eerily still—windows closed, door ajar. The surrounding air shimmered, just like Lyra said, like light trying to escape.
Without a word, Lyra dropped over the edge, landing in a crouch near the fence. Lucan jumped down behind her, knees bending clean this time.
They slipped through a side gate, pushed the warped wooden door open, and stepped into the Veil.
It was like walking through gel—air thickened instantly. The world muffled. Colors dulled.
A line flickered into Lucan's vision:
[Environmental Shift Detected]
[Stealth Mode: Stable]
[High-Risk Entity Within 20m Radius]
He glanced at Lyra. She gave a small nod, eyes already scanning every corner of the dim hallway.
The floor creaked beneath their steps, but no echo followed. The Veil was smothering all sound outside its field.
They moved slowly through the corridor—each step calculated.
Lucan's breathing slowed.
The Vein pulsed again:
[Anomaly Nearby]
[Distance: 9.2m… 8.6m… 8.1m]
No words passed between them.
The deeper they moved into the house, the more the walls seemed to close in. Wallpaper peeled. A static buzz—barely audible—hung in the air like something breathing too quietly to hear.
Lucan's pulse was steady, but the atmosphere wasn't.
They crept down the narrow hallway, shoulder to peeling wallpaper, the air stale and clinging to their skin like a film.
The Vein updated quietly in Lucan's vision:
[Distance: 6.3m… 5.4m…]
The house whispered beneath their feet—wood bending, walls breathing.
Then—
CRACK.
A section of the wall exploded outward, wooden slats and wallpaper bursting into splinters as something lunged through.
Lucan flinched—no time to think.
A pale, distorted humanoid figure surged forward, limbs twitching violently. Its skin was paper-white and stretched like it had grown too fast, veins glowing faintly beneath the surface like molten scars. Its jaw hung loose, eyes black and lidless, twitching in opposite directions.
Instinct took over.
Lucan swung his leg up and kicked with everything he had.
THWACK.
The mutant was launched back like a ragdoll, its body skidding and slamming into the far wall at the end of the hallway. The impact left a dent, dust and plaster falling around it.
It twitched upright again, limbs folding in reverse, neck tilting at a sickening angle.
Lucan's breath caught.
"What the hell…"
"That is a Zeron that mutated past its rejection point." Lyra said, eyes locked on the thing.
The creature let out a warped, gurgling shriek and charged, sprinting full-speed with its arms flailing unnaturally—joints cracking like breaking branches.
"Just watch." Lyra said coldly.
She didn't wait.
In a blur of speed, she vanished—and the next instant, Lucan saw her slam into the creature mid-charge, faster than his eyes could follow.
The Zeron barely processed what happened—its head turned just slightly before—
CRACK—!!
Lyra's knee came down with brutal precision. Her hand gripped the side of its jaw, twisting and ripping it clean off with a brutal jerk. The sheer force sent the head flying like a cannonball.
It smashed into the ceiling with a wet crunch and stuck there, blood sizzling lightly against the Veil-infused air.
The body collapsed with a twitch, light bleeding from its veins, fading fast.
Lucan stood frozen, eyes wide.
Lyra flicked blood from her hand and turned back toward him.
"Like I said—most don't survive the awakening. But when they do… they become monsters."
The creature's body was still twitching on the ground, its severed head embedded in the ceiling like some ugly ceiling lamp. Thin trails of black-red blood spidered down from where it stuck.
Lucan didn't answer. His gaze shifted slowly from the ceiling, to the mangled body at the end of the hallway, then down to his own hands. His fingers were shaking. Not with fear, exactly—but something else. Adrenaline? Shock? Disbelief?
A familiar chime flickered across his vision.
[Zeron Neutralized]
[Analyzing Core Residue…]
[Mutation Type: Class-D]
[Instability Level: RED]
[Deviation from Standard Rejection: 17.2%]
"Deviation…" Lucan whispered. "Seventeen point two…"
Lyra stepped past him toward the body.
"That's too high."
She knelt beside the twitching corpse, eyes calm and methodical. She reached into what remained of the Zeron's chest—ribs splintered, light flickering weakly through tissue—and pulled something out. It was a shard the size of a broken thumb, dull grey, crusted with congealed blood. The moment it hit the air, it glowed faintly, like dying embers inside black glass.
"What the hell is that?"
"Mutation core." Lyra said flatly. "It's what's left when the Vein fails to stabilize them. Sometimes it carries data. Neural feedback. Traces of the rejection process."
"Like… memories?"
"Sometimes..... but mostly pain, breakdown patterns or genetic corruption paths. The kind of stuff only machines understand."
She wrapped the shard in a cloth and slipped it into her jacket pocket like she'd done it a dozen times before.
Lucan stared at the disfigured corpse. His stomach twisted slightly—not because it was grotesque, but because… it used to be human. Maybe even someone like him.
"You killed it like it was nothing." he said softly.
Lyra stood, meeting his eyes.
"I had to."
Lucan's brow furrowed. "I mean… I didn't even think. It came through the wall and I just kicked it. If you weren't here…"
"Then you'd be dead." she said flatly.
It wasn't cruel. It wasn't meant to scare him. She was just being honest.
Lucan looked down. "Right."
She paused a second longer, then said quietly:
"You hesitated."
He flinched.
"Yeah…"
"That's good."
Lucan blinked.
"Wait, what?"
Lyra walked past the corpse toward the now-fading shimmer of the Veil near the door.
"Hesitation means you're still thinking like a person. Zerons don't hesitate. They react on instinct and hunger."
She stopped at the threshold, glancing over her shoulder.
"You've got a bit of time left before that goes away. Use it."
Lucan didn't follow immediately.
He stayed still for just one more breath—long enough to let the chill in his bones settle—and for the first time, really felt the weight of what she said.
Lyra raised her wrist and tapped something on the Vein's interface.
"Deactivate stealth."
The glow around her shimmered briefly and faded into full visibility.
Lucan followed, speaking softly.
"Vein—deactivate stealth mode."
His own Vein flickered once, then dimmed. The thin shimmer of camouflage dispersed from his skin like static pulling off silk.
He took a few steps behind her, still shaken.
"If stealth mode hides us… then how did that thing attack us?"
Lyra didn't look back.
"Because he's just like us." she said quietly. "Only… not human."
Lucan blinked.
"What?"
"The Veil protects us from drones, normal tech, unawakened eyes. But a Zeron? They were made from the same thing we are. They see like us. Hunt like us."
She stepped through the broken doorway.
Lucan said nothing, the answer sitting heavy in his chest.
He finally followed Lyra out of the hallway, boots crunching faintly over broken debris. The Veil was already thinning—its edges curling like burned paper, the air becoming breathable again. The eerie weight that clung to the atmosphere was slowly lifting, replaced by a strange, static-like hum in his ears.
As they stepped through the front door, the shimmer snapped behind them with a soft whoomp, folding inward like a glass sphere collapsing in on itself. The moment they crossed the threshold, the difference was immediate. The temperature evened out. Colors regained their saturation. Sound returned in faint echoes.
And then came the hum.
Low. Mechanical. Growing.
Lucan looked up.
"We've got company."
Overhead, a formation of drones descended in silence, almost too quiet for their size. Four of them—sleek black orbs about half the size of a barrel—drifted down in a slow, calculated arc. Their undersides pulsed red with circular scanner-lights, rotating like radar dishes.
Two of the drones immediately began scanning the area, red beams crisscrossing the front yard, the walls, even the roof.
The third hovered toward Lyra.
The fourth—locked directly onto Lucan.
It stopped two meters in front of him, holding position mid-air with perfect stillness.
Then—
Beep.
A red pulse swept over his body from head to toe, leaving a prickling sensation on his skin.
Another beep.
Then a third. This one longer, lower.
The drone didn't move. Its scanner paused on Lucan's chest, right where the Vein interface floated, dimmed in stealth mode.
Lucan tensed.
"Is it… scanning the Vein?"
Lyra didn't look surprised.
"Just stay still. Let it finish."
"It's not moving…"
"They usually don't, if something catches."
Lucan's heart thumped once—hard. His vision pulsed with a new set of Vein notifications:
[Gene Signature: Confirmed]
[Abysswalker – Tier 0]
[Activity Status: Active]
[Monitoring Status: FLAGGED]
His throat went dry.
"'Flagged? What the hell does that mean?"
Lyra finally turned toward him, her eyes narrowing as she glanced at the same message projected in his field of view.
"It means you're on their list now."
Lucan blinked. "What list?"
"The kind where they track your heartbeat while you sleep."
The drone let out one last chirp, then tilted slightly and ascended, rising smoothly into the air to rejoin the others. Within seconds, all four disappeared behind a nearby building, vanishing as if they were never there.
Lucan exhaled, only now realizing how tightly he'd been clenching his jaw.
"Is that… normal?"
"You've been activated less than twenty-four hours and already ambushed a Zeron. You think they won't notice that?"
He didn't answer.
"Relax." she added, already turning away. "It just means they'll be watching now. No pressure."
[End of Chapter 4]