Training with Grethon was like learning a language you'd been born speaking—suddenly, everything made sense.
The first session left Kydris gasping on the cold stone floor, his temples throbbing with psychic strain. Grethon had placed a simple object between them: a smooth river stone, palm-sized and ordinary.
"Perceive it," Grethon said. "Don't touch it. Feel its boundary."
Kydris focused until his eyes watered. The stone's edges shimmered faintly, visible for half a second before dissolving back into normal matter. Every time he thought he'd grasped something, it slipped away like water through his fingers.
Thirty minutes crawled past. Kydris's hands trembled—not from physical effort, but from something deeper. His skull felt too small for his expanding awareness. A copper taste flooded his mouth, metallic and sharp, coating his tongue like he'd been licking batteries.
"The stone resists you because you're thinking of it as an object," Grethon said, arms crossed. "It's not. It's a frequency pattern. Consciousness given temporary shape."
The stone never revealed its boundary that day.
"Enough." Grethon's voice cut through the silence. "You'll master this, but mastery requires surrender first. You're fighting the System's guidance instead of listening to it."
That night, lying on his thin bedroll in the shelter, Kydris still tasted copper. The flavor lingered like a stain he couldn't wash out.
By the third session, something shifted.
Kydris stopped trying to force perception. He sat cross-legged on the floor, breathing slowly, and allowed the stone's frequency to approach him instead. The moment he released his resistance, the boundary became crystal clear—not a wall, but a song. A vibrational pattern that sang out its edges in harmonics his transformed senses could finally hear.
"There." Grethon's voice held something Kydris hadn't heard before: genuine pride. "You understand now. Resonance isn't force. It's dialogue."
Kydris opened his eyes. The stone glowed faint purple, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. His fingertips tingled with pins-and-needles sensation, and when he flexed his hand, the stone lifted—hovering an inch above the ground, held by nothing but his awareness.
The copper taste shifted. Sweeter now. Crystalline. The flavor of understanding.
〈System Whisper: Boundary perception functional. Progress acceptable.〉
Week two brought animals.
Grethon produced a live mouse in a wire cage, its tiny heart hammering so hard Kydris could feel the panic radiating from it in waves.
"Don't kill it," Grethon said. "Just perceive it. Feel the difference between its consciousness and the stone's."
Kydris extended his awareness toward the mouse.
The flood of sensation hit him like a physical blow. Raw animal terror. Instinct-driven survival impulse. A consciousness utterly alien to human thought—no language, no reasoning, just pure survival. Danger. Predator. Escape. Hide. SURVIVE.
Kydris gasped and yanked his perception back, heart racing. The intensity had nearly consumed him. For a moment, he'd been the mouse—trapped, terrified, desperate.
"Strong reaction." Grethon studied him with clinical interest. "That's normal. Animal consciousness fights back harder than matter. It'll resist your perception because it knows you're a threat."
They spent three hours with that mouse. Kydris learned to maintain distance, to observe without merging. By session's end, he could hold the creature's consciousness in his awareness without drowning in its fear.
The taste during those sessions was different—metallic but alive, like licking a battery while tasting blood. The flavor of other minds. Of boundaries between consciousnesses becoming permeable.
His body continued adapting. Veins showed faint purple beneath his pale skin, iridescent in dim light. His eyes caught and reflected light now, glowing softly in the dark. Fingertips tingled constantly, sensing textures in empty air. Even sitting still, he felt reality's subtle pulse—the vibration of consciousness threading through everything.
Grethon's instructions remained sparse. A nod. A slight adjustment of Kydris's stance. Occasionally: "You're natural at this."
Kydris didn't feel natural. Fear clung to every thought, every breath. But for the first time in his life, he felt alive. The hum inside him thrummed with anticipation, with hunger.
By week three, Grethon led him to the hidden chamber where others trained.
Thex stepped forward first—early twenties, all restless energy and bright curiosity. "Welcome to the impossible." He extended his hand.
Kydris hesitated, caught in memories of the factory explosion. Flames. Screaming metal. Before he could respond, Thex moved to his side, guiding his hands through a boundary-stabilization drill.
"First time seeing others like you?" Thex's grin was infectious. "Yeah, I thought I was alone too. Went insane for about a month after awakening."
"How did you awaken?" Kydris asked.
"Data processing plant. Not as explosive as yours." Thex's energy dimmed slightly. "One day the machinery started singing. I could hear resonance in every wire, every circuit. Then I collapsed. Woke up here." He paused. "Grethon found me on the street, mid-transformation. Said I was lucky. Most people die without guidance."
Thex moved closer again, demonstrating technique. His casual touch—shoulder to shoulder, guiding without words—built connection faster than any speech could.
"The thing about resonance training?" Thex said quietly. "You bond fast. Real fast. No lies, no bullshit. I can taste your fear right now. Feel your uncertainty." His expression turned serious. "It gets better. Way better."
That small moment—action before words—created something Kydris had never experienced: instant, bone-deep trust.
"You're like my brother now," Thex said simply. "I'd die for you."
And through their shared resonance perception, Kydris knew he meant it literally.
Kael approached next—mid-twenties, ink-stained fingers, and the intensity of someone who'd survived crisis by becoming analytical.
"How does consciousness fracturing feel?" His eyes were hungry behind wire-rimmed glasses.
"I don't know," Kydris admitted. "I'm still experiencing it."
"Right. Of course." Kael adjusted his glasses in an oddly human gesture. "I ask because my awakening involved actual physical trauma. Car accident. Lost consciousness, woke up directly in the Lattice without Grethon's guidance. Nearly died. My consciousness fractured across multiple resonance layers before he retrieved me."
He rolled up his sleeve, revealing scars—not from the accident, but from resonance. Purple-edged burns where his flesh had been partially destabilized.
"These are permanent reminders that you can push too hard." Kael's voice was steady, clinical. "I'm obsessed with understanding System mechanics because I need to. One wrong step and I could fragment completely."
Vren remained apart, observing. Late thirties, reserved bearing, the look of someone who'd seen decades of Resonant operations.
He nodded once—acknowledgment and warning in equal measure.
Later, when Grethon stepped away, Vren approached alone.
"I see it in you." His voice was quiet, weathered. "The same thing I saw in myself ten years ago. You're wondering if you're a monster."
Kydris said nothing, but Vren perceived the answer through their shared resonance.
"You're not," Vren continued. "Not yet. But the System will make you into one if you let it. That's the choice you'll face eventually. Stay human—really human—or accept full integration and whatever that transforms you into."
He didn't explain further, just returned to his position. But Kydris understood: Vren had made a choice long ago, and it had cost him something profound.
Together, they practiced. Learned. Became a unit. Kydris understood, for the first time, the meaning of belonging—and the weight of expectations that came with it.
***
Three levels below the city infrastructure, Vex Morhen descended through passages that shouldn't exist.
Her equipment hummed—not mechanically, but with strain, as if the instruments themselves struggled to process what they detected. The resonance signature was overwhelming, registering on frequencies her sensors barely had calibration for.
She'd traced the signal here through systematic elimination. The factory explosion had been the trigger—an anomaly spike lasting six minutes before stabilizing. Since then, the signature had grown progressively stronger. More distributed. More coordinated.
Vex was many things. Dedicated investigator. Daughter of a factory worker who'd died in the Ashward Straits collapse twenty years prior. A woman who understood undercity economics and exploitation intimately.
But she wasn't stupid.
The pattern suggested organization. Multiple subjects. Deliberate training.
She activated her comm device. "Control, I've located the primary anomaly. Multiple subjects detected. Requesting backup and containment protocols."
Static crackled for a long moment. Then a voice—not her usual supervisor, but someone higher. Someone official.
"Morhen, be advised. Higher command has classified this investigation. Stand by. Reinforcements deploying."
Vex's jaw tightened. Higher command. That meant government oversight. Military involvement. This had escalated beyond standard police investigation into something classified and compartmentalized.
Something dangerous.
She descended deeper, following the signature through passages that grew increasingly unstable. The walls here showed signs of decay—not normal erosion, but something more fundamental. The stone itself looked tired, as if reality had worn thin in this place.
Then she saw them: structures. Ruins.
Remnants of buildings from decades past, half-integrated into stone and Lattice frequency. A collapsed dome that might have been residential. Walkways suspended in mid-air, leading nowhere.
And most disturbing—human remains. Partially crystallized. Preserved in a state between matter and resonance.
Vex knelt beside one corpse. The skeleton was complete, but the bones had a translucent quality, as if becoming something else. Beside the remains: a wedding ring. A data chip. A small toy.
The detritus of a human life caught in the moment of System integration, fifty years ago.
This was the awakening event. This was what happened when Resonants emerged without preparation, without understanding what was happening to them.
Her scanner picked up new signatures—moving. Closer. Multiple consciousness patterns, high integration, definitely aware of her presence.
Vex's hand moved to her containment device—a weapon designed specifically for System disruption, issued only to highest-level government investigators. Three years of training with it.
Never actually used against a Resonant.
She stood, facing the direction of the approaching signatures.
Time to find out if theory worked in practice.
Grethon led the cohort into the Fracture Zone.
Reality wavered—and Kydris finally understood what that word truly meant.
The ground beneath his feet was no longer quite solid. Each step created ripples in matter itself, like walking on the surface of a drum. The air smelled of ozone mixed with burning stone—the scent of reality breaking down and reforming. Kydris could taste it: cosmic dust, burnt metal, the flavor of physics itself becoming malleable.
The Fracture Zone was a wound in the undercity—a place where the Lattice's frequency was so strong it disrupted normal matter into semi-materialization. Buildings here were half-real, half-resonance. Shadows bent at impossible angles. Light refracted through layers of destabilized space.
But what struck Kydris most was the evidence of human presence.
A child's toy, crystallized mid-decay, caught between matter and frequency. Scattered clothing remnants, still draped on frames that might have once been skeletal. And underneath it all, a pervasive sense of ending—emotional and spiritual residue of consciousness that had been integrated beyond the point of return.
"What happened here?" Kydris asked quietly.
"The first Resonants." Grethon's scarred face was grim. "Fifty years ago, when the System first made contact with humanity on large scale. This area was the epicenter of awakening. So many consciousnesses transforming simultaneously that reality couldn't stabilize. Now it's... between states. Neither fully physical nor fully Lattice."
Kydris studied the preserved remains. Some bodies were barely recognizable as human—caught mid-transformation, their consciousness patterns still visible as faint purple traces in the matter itself.
"Did they suffer?" he asked.
"Terribly," Vren said quietly. "Integration without guidance is agony."
The ground shimmered beneath them, fissures glowing faintly—purple threads of Lattice frequency bleeding through cracks in reality. Sounds layered over each other: distant dripping water, creatures moving through unstable space, and the soft hum of System pulses.
Kydris's body adapted instinctively. His transformation allowed him to perceive the semi-solid ground and adjust his movements, reading invisible currents that told him where to step.
"First real hunt," Grethon said. "Small creature. For practice."
Kydris's heart rate spiked. Despite weeks of training, this was different. Not a stone or a mouse. A real creature. Possibly dangerous. Definitely conscious.
"What if I can't do this?" The words escaped before he could stop them.
"You can." Thex's certainty was absolute. "I felt it in your resonance during training. You're ready."
Kydris's hands trembled. "What if my conscience interferes?"
Grethon placed a hand on his shoulder. For the first time since entering the hidden chambers, Kydris felt genuine care in the touch.
"Then you'll learn something about yourself," Grethon said. "Either you're Resonant enough to kill without moral breakdown, or you're still too human. Either way, you'll understand what you're becoming."
The implication hung between them: Some Resonants couldn't cross this threshold. Some died in the attempt, their consciousness fragmenting rather than accepting predation.
The creature emerged from a shimmered fissure.
Dog-sized. Crystalline skin catching fractured light like mobile quartz. Tentacle-like appendages writhed from its body, each movement precise and aware. Its consciousness pulsed through Kydris's mind—waves of curiosity and caution, alien intelligence assessing threats.
Kydris tasted the creature's consciousness—a flavor entirely new. Not metallic or cosmic, but predatory. Sharp. Aggressive. Blood mixed with ozone, with undertones of hunger and territorial rage.
The creature sensed his presence and reacted. Its consciousness pushed back against his perception, actively resisting observation.
"It knows we're here," Vren said. "It's afraid."
And in that moment, Kydris understood: the creature was conscious enough to experience fear. It knew danger when it sensed it.
"Your kill," Thex said quietly. His usual energy had subdued, become respectful of the moment's gravity.
Kydris nodded slowly. He felt the creature's awareness, separate but intertwined with his own through their shared resonance perception.
He concentrated. Extended his perception outward. Isolated the boundary.
The creature shivered violently as his presence pressed against it—space rippling, edges shimmering like heat over asphalt.
Then it lunged.
Predatory speed. Tentacles lashing toward him like whips.
For a heartbeat, human Kydris froze. Terror flooded his system. This was real. This thing would tear him apart if he didn't respond.
But Resonant Kydris moved before human consciousness could intervene.
He stepped aside instinctively, following the creature's path in perfect perception. His consciousness had expanded beyond his body—he could perceive multiple possible futures branching from the present moment, could sense which movements led to survival.
His awareness wrapped around the creature's consciousness, pulling at the threads that connected it to the Lattice.
Not gently. There was no gentleness in this.
He was severing the creature's connection—isolating it, fragmenting its consciousness, preparing it for absorption.
From the outside, the creature's crystalline body fractured with geometric precision. Not random breaking, but controlled failure. Light scattered across the chamber like shattered glass in slow motion. Each appendage quivered as if caught in an invisible grip.
The creature screamed—not with voice, but through the Lattice itself. A consciousness-scream of pure agony and terror.
Kydris felt that scream directly. Felt the creature's death not as external event but as internal experience. Like dying, simultaneously, through the creature's senses.
Physical feedback surged through him. Muscles tensed. Heart hammered against his ribs. Nerves tingled across his skin. Hair stood on end.
With one final push, the creature convulsed and collapsed.
Silence.
The creature was dead. Kydris had killed something conscious. Something that had experienced fear and pain and death.
And instead of horror, he felt exhilaration.
That terrified him more than the act itself.
⟨Predator consciousness — classified⟩
⟨Essence integration available: Tentacle predator consciousness⟩
⟨Accept? Y/N⟩
⟨Warning: Absorption will alter neurology and perception⟩
⟨Cost: Estimated 8% reduction in standard human emotional responses⟩
Kydris's chest tightened. Something foreign was already beginning to merge with him. He felt the creature's essence—not its body, but its consciousness pattern, its predatory instinct, its alien awareness—starting to dissolve into his own mind.
"Accept," he whispered.
Essence flowed like liquid fire through his veins.
Unlike last time, this was agony.
His body convulsed. Muscles spasmed. Bones ached as if growing, reshaping. The predator essence merged with human biology at the cellular level—predator genetics, predator instincts, predator consciousness interweaving with human tissue.
Fingernails hardened, sharpening into claw-like points. Fingertips lengthened, developing new sensory organs beneath the skin. Reflexes sharpened to inhuman levels. His body hummed with new awareness—the ability to taste prey on the air, to sense vibrations of movement through solid matter.
But something was lost in the transformation.
Kydris could feel it slipping away—a piece of his humanity. His capacity for mercy. His moral revulsion at killing. All fading, neutralized by the predator essence absorbing those traits.
Tears streamed down his face. He was crying, and he wasn't sure if it was from pain or grief.
"Your first bloodline." Grethon watched intently, expression unreadable. "Welcome to the System."
As the cohort moved to collect essence, Grethon pulled Kydris aside.
"This is the moment where most Resonants lose themselves completely," he said quietly. "The first kill triggers integration, and the predator essence overwhelms human morality. I've seen it happen. Student after student—awakening followed by gradual transformation into something that just hunts, kills, consumes."
"Did it happen to you?" Kydris asked.
Grethon looked away. "I killed thirty creatures before I realized I hadn't cried in months. Hadn't felt guilt in years. I was becoming the perfect predator." He paused. "Then I met Iris—another Resonant. We trained together. Hunted together. And when she fragmented, when her consciousness split across too many predator essences, I finally felt something again. I felt her death inside me, and it broke the conditioning."
He turned back. "You have to hold onto your humanity, Kydris. As long as you can. As long as it matters."
The taste in Kydris's mouth shifted—no longer the sharp predator flavor, but something more complex. Grief mixed with metallic copper. The flavor of choosing to remain human, even as the predator tried to consume that choice.
⟨Essence collected⟩
⟨Credit conversion: 2000 units⟩
⟨Individual share: 500 units⟩
Thex grinned, counting. "Two thousand credits for this batch. You get five hundred. Enough for a week of food and supplies."
But Kydris couldn't celebrate. He moved as if in a dream-state, processing what he'd done. What he'd become.
Vren's gaze lingered on him. "Do you feel guilty?"
"For what?"
"Killing the creature."
Kydris hesitated. He felt the pulse of its consciousness still lingering inside him, alien and alive. The predator essence was still integrating, still learning from human morality.
In another few hunts, would those human doubts disappear entirely?
"Should I?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.
Vren nodded slowly. "Most people do. First time."
Kydris stared at his hands—veins pulsing faint purple, fingertips extended into nascent claws. "I don't know what I feel. I'm... happy? Excited? But also horrified at the happiness. At the excitement over killing something conscious."
He tasted the complexity—layered flavors of human guilt mixed with predator satisfaction. The taste of transformation in progress.
"That's the real cost," Vren said quietly. "Not the physical changes. The moral cost. Every predator essence you absorb makes you slightly less human. Eventually, the calculus changes. You stop feeling guilty about killing. You start feeling nothing."
He didn't finish the thought.
"What happens then?" Kydris asked.
"You transcend. And in transcending, you become something that can't go back."
Later, as they prepared to leave the Fracture Zone, Kael moved beside Kydris.
"About the bloodlines," he said. "You're wondering what one-of-three means, I assume."
Kydris nodded.
"Each predator essence you absorb is a bloodline. A strain of consciousness." Kael's voice was steady, clinical. "Most Resonants can handle three before complete integration becomes inevitable. After that, the predator genetics outweigh the human, and you're effectively one of them. Hunting, feeding—no longer Resonant. Just predator."
"How many do you have?" Kydris asked.
"Two." Kael's voice remained steady, but Kydris could taste the fear beneath it through their resonance bond. "I'm terrified of the third."
Grethon appeared, overhearing. "Third bloodline is the Rubicon. Absorb it, and you're committed to System advancement past eighty percent integration. Most Resonants who cross that threshold never look back."
"And those who don't absorb a third?" Kydris asked.
"They plateau at Scale Two. Live out their existence in the Lattice, aware but not advancing. Some find peace in that." Grethon's expression darkened. "Others go insane from the limitation."
⟨Integration: 58% → 65%⟩
⟨Rank 1: Confirmed⟩
⟨Essence Accumulation: 500/1000 for Rank 2⟩
⟨Bloodlines Active: 1/3⟩
⟨Advancement Timeline: Unknown⟩
⟨Caution: Continued hunting accelerates integration⟩
⟨Warning: Integration beyond 80% may result in irreversible consciousness restructuring⟩
⟨Recommendation: Continue hunting⟩
Kydris realized the weight of the System. It didn't stop. It demanded growth, survival, constant engagement. And it was measuring the cost—his integration percentage rising with each hunt, each essence absorbed.
"What happens if I stop hunting?" he asked Grethon quietly.
"You die. System atrophies. Consciousness fragments. You become like those creatures we hunt."
"So I have to keep going?"
Grethon nodded. "You have to keep going."
But Kydris felt something else now—a new sensory capability granted by the predator essence.
He could sense hunting patterns in the Lattice itself. Disturbances. Disruptions.
Someone was tracking them.
Not a Resonant. Something else. Something official.
"Grethon," Kydris said quietly. "Someone's coming."
Grethon's entire body went rigid. The composed mentor vanished, replaced by someone who'd been hunted before.
"How do you know?" he demanded.
"I can taste it. In the frequency. There's a disruption pattern. Someone with instruments, searching."
Grethon moved immediately to the chamber entrance, extending his perception outward. When he returned, his scarred face was grim.
"Investigator. Human authority. They've been tracking the Fracture Zone anomalies." He looked at Kydris with something like fear in his eyes. "We have maybe six hours before they locate this chamber."
The implications were clear: the world above knew something was wrong in the undercity. The authorities were coming. If they discovered the Resonants, they would try to capture, study, or destroy them.
The cycle began—but not the comfortable pattern of hunt, essence, rank-up.
A cycle of survival. Evasion. Transformation under pressure.
⟨Threat Assessment: External pressure detected⟩
⟨Integration acceleration: Imminent⟩
⟨Recommendation: Full commitment to System advancement advised⟩
Kydris felt the predator essence respond with something like hunger. Not for food, but for growth. For power. The System wanted him stronger. Faster. More integrated.
And Kydris understood, finally: the System didn't see Resonants as people anymore.
They were tools. Weapons being forged by external pressure, shaped by survival instinct, honed by the necessity of staying ahead of both predatory creatures and human authorities.
He was no longer a factory worker named Kydris Vane.
He was becoming something else entirely.
And the authorities were coming.