Aiden didn't stop moving until the city swallowed him whole.
He weaved through alleyways like a ghost fleeing its own body, the neon haze smearing into streaks of violet and blue around him. His shoulder burned from the Harvester's blade. His heartbeat staggered. His shadow-mantle twitched in erratic, violent beats as if still tasting the kill.
He forced it still.
"Not again," he muttered under his breath. "Not another forced evolution. Not another memory lost."
The parasite pulsed with a low, indulgent hum.
**Host survived because of evolution.
Memory loss: acceptable.
Repeat: recommended.**
Aiden pressed his palm hard against the nearest wall, breathing through the pain.
"I said no."
The parasite quieted—but not in obedience.
It quieted like a wolf waiting for its next opening to bite.
Above him, the twin moons cast their pale glow over the rooftops, catching the faint shimmer of Guild drones combing the district for the anomaly.
For him.
Aiden lowered his hood and slipped deeper into the industrial underbelly.
He needed stabilizers.
He needed Eldran's insight.
He needed something that gave him even a sliver of control.
Because if the parasite kept evolving early—
if he kept fighting Shardborn and Harvesters—
if Lyra kept remembering—
Then that vision from the Rift Heart wasn't a warning.
It was a prophecy.
He clenched his fists and began the descent into the place where laws and futures both went to rot:
**The Shadow Market.**
The entrance wasn't a door but a decision.
A dried-out fountain.
A missing panel on a freight lift.
A narrow stairwell that spiraled downward into heat and secrets.
Aiden took the stairwell.
Each step dimmed the world above until the neon lattice of the metropolis gave way to gloomy heat, flickering torch-screens, and the quiet murmur of people who had sold more than their souls to survive.
The Shadow Market breathed around him.
The air shimmered with corrupted Rift energy.
Vendors muttered incantations beneath their breath.
Stall owners haggled over relics carved from the bones of things that shouldn't have ever lived.
It was crowded tonight.
Bad sign.
Crowded meant people were desperate.
Desperate meant the world was changing faster than the Guild could hide.
His presence did not go unnoticed.
A cloaked trader stepped forward, sniffing the air like a beast.
"Host," she rasped, voice thick with distortion. "Your parasite reeks of early mutation. Fresh. Hungry. Unstable."
Aiden tightened his hood.
"Not interested."
She slid back into the shadows, muttering.
**"No one escapes the cost."**
He ignored her.
But her words throbbed in his mind like an old bruise.
He made his way toward Eldran's stall, the clinking of vials echoing ahead.
But before he reached it—
His parasite froze.
**Host—
Behind you.**
Aiden's breath stilled.
He turned slowly.
A child—
no more than ten—
stood in the aisle staring directly at him.
But it wasn't her expression that made his stomach drop.
It was her eyes.
Silver.
Bright.
Reflecting moonlight that wasn't present here.
Like Lyra.
Aiden swallowed.
The girl whispered, "Mister… why are you cracked?"
Aiden blinked. "What?"
She reached out a hand, not touching him—but tracing the air.
And Aiden felt it.
The fractures in reality that had been following him since Day Zero.
The cracks only he was supposed to see.
The cracks he thought were invisible to everyone else.
The girl saw them.
Every. Single. One.
He forced his voice steady.
"Who are you?"
But she only tilted her head sweetly.
And then whispered:
"You shouldn't have come back."
Aiden froze, breath evaporating in his throat.
The parasite recoiled violently.
**Unregistered entity.
Threat classification: UNKNOWN.
Directive: Retreat. NOW.**
Aiden didn't argue.
He took a step back—
But the girl blinked—
And was gone.
Vanished.
No footsteps.
No distortion ripple.
Nothing.
Only a single phrase lingered in the air:
"You're breaking faster this time."
Aiden staggered forward, pulse stuttering.
No one else had noticed her.
Not a single stallkeeper.
Not a single passerby.
Just him.
The parasite trembled.
**Timeline fracturing.
Entities slipping through.
Host connection unstable.**
Aiden clenched the railing beside him.
He didn't have the luxury of processing this.
Not yet.
Not when he was running out of memories, sanity, and time.
He pushed forward.
Eldran was waiting.
And Aiden needed answers before the next fracture swallowed him whole.
Eldran's stall flickered into view like a mirage stitched from rusted metal and Rift-glass. Blue flames hovered in suspended lanterns, illuminating the alchemist's gaunt features. His fingers moved with unsettling precision as he poured viscous, shimmering liquid into crystalline vials.
He didn't look up when Aiden approached.
"You're late," Eldran said, voice dry. "And bleeding."
Aiden exhaled shakily. "Ran into a Harvester."
"Ah." Eldran's hand paused mid-pour. "That explains the spike in the southern grid. And your limp. And your aura."
Aiden frowned. "My aura?"
Eldran pointed at him with the pipette.
"You're dripping corruption waves like a burst pipeline. Half the Market thought a Dominion creature slipped in."
Aiden swallowed. "I didn't mean to—"
Eldran cut him off with a gesture.
"No one _means_ to destabilize the ecosystem, Crowe. Not the first time, anyway."
Aiden took a steadying breath. His shoulder throbbed, shadows twitching involuntarily.
"I need stabilizers," he said. "Now."
Eldran finally met his gaze.
"No," he replied.
Aiden stiffened. "What do you mean, no?"
"You need stabilizers," Eldran clarified, "but without the shard I asked for, you lack both the currency and the leverage. I don't do charity. Not even for regressors risking their own minds."
Aiden's jaw tightened.
"I barely survived that dungeon," he said. "The timeline's accelerating. Shardborn are showing up years early. Lyra—"
Eldran raised an eyebrow. "Lyra?"
Aiden's voice faltered. "I… ran into her."
"Your anchor, then." Eldran's lips twitched with amusement. "Bad for your emotions. Excellent for your corruption curve."
Aiden's shadow flared defensively.
"Don't talk about her."
Eldran nodded, surprisingly unmocking. "Then bring me the shard. Only that will buy you the stabilizer set strong enough to hold your parasite down."
Aiden stared at him.
He had known this was coming.
But now that the world was collapsing faster than any projection, the cost felt heavier.
"Where," Aiden asked quietly, "am I supposed to find a Dominion-tier shard tonight?"
Eldran smiled thinly.
"You won't."
Aiden's stomach dropped.
"But something close enough slipped into the Crossline Rift," Eldran continued. "Tier-1 Awakening grade. Too strong for the local hunters. Perfect for a desperate regressor clinging to sanity."
Aiden's heart pounded.
"The Crossline Rift is unstable," he said. "It wasn't supposed to open until next month."
"Mm." Eldran drummed his fingers against a vial. "Then consider it a gift of accelerated fate."
Aiden exhaled. "You're sending me into a premature mid-tier Rift."
"Yes."
"With a parasite that's mutating out of control."
"Yes."
"And without stabilizers."
"Yes."
Aiden stared. "You're insane."
Eldran shrugged. "I'm an alchemist. Same thing."
He pushed a small metallic disk across the table.
"This sigil will get you through the Crossline barrier tonight. Bring me the shard it guards, and the stabilizers are yours."
Aiden took the disk, shadows curling around his fingers.
The parasite pulsed with anticipatory hunger.
**Higher-tier biomass available.
Evolution incentive: significant.**
Aiden hissed, "Shut up."
Eldran lifted the final vial, checking its glow.
"One last thing," he added. "Your parasite's resonance is destabilizing. If it reacts to the shard, you may lose far more than a memory."
Aiden's chest tightened.
"How much more?"
"Something structural," Eldran said simply. "Identity. Emotion. A bond."
Aiden froze.
Lyra.
Eldran's eyes softened just slightly.
"If you value whoever that bond belongs to," he warned, "control your parasite during extraction. Or the shard will eat through more than your mind."
Aiden's fingers tightened around the sigil until it cut into his palm.
"I won't lose her again."
Eldran gave him a long look.
"That depends," he said, "on whether you're stronger than your parasite."
Aiden turned away.
He didn't know the answer.
Aiden moved deeper into the Market's lower alleys, past stands selling Rift-born ink, ossified monster cores, and shadows in jars that shifted away from the light.
His shoulder throbbed with every step.
His breath fogged in the stale, humid air.
His shadow-mantle trembled in small, involuntary spasms—erratic echoes of the parasite's excitement.
He whispered through clenched teeth:
"You don't touch the shard. You don't steal anything from me this time."
The parasite ignored him.
But its silence wasn't resistance.
It was anticipation.
Aiden hated that.
He passed through a dim archway into a quieter section of the Market. The heat subsided, replaced by cold air swirling around metallic pillars etched with runes.
A strange, familiar sensation brushed the back of his neck.
A presence.
Someone watching.
Aiden spun.
Nothing.
But the feeling didn't fade.
It grew.
The shadows thickened.
The air trembled.
The world dimmed.
Aiden's breath caught.
"Not again…"
Behind him, the alley lights flickered violently—
And a violet-glow fracture split open in the air, thin as a paper cut, humming with the same wrongness he'd felt in the Rift Heart vision.
Aiden took a step back.
The parasite stiffened.
**Host—
This is not dungeon energy.
This is not temporal energy.
This is—**
A voice slipped through the fracture.
Soft.
Female.
Familiar.
"Aiden…"
Lyra's voice.
But not Lyra's.
Older.
Broken.
Echoing with something ancient.
Aiden's blood turned to ice.
"No," he whispered. "This isn't real. This can't—"
The fracture widened—
And a silhouette reached out.
Not a hand.
Not flesh.
A shadow shaped like someone he once held as she died.
Aiden stumbled backward, shadows flaring like wings behind him.
The parasite screamed inside him.
**RUN.**
He didn't need telling twice.
He sprinted out of the alley as the fracture snapped shut behind him—
Leaving only silence.
And a single, haunting truth:
Something in the timeline had awakened.
And it remembered him.
Aiden didn't stop running until the Shadow Market's deeper tunnels thinned into a narrow service corridor, a place where even smugglers hesitated to walk. The hum of voices faded. The neon torches sputtered and went dark behind him.
Only the sound of his footsteps and the parasite's accelerated pulse remained.
He braced a hand against the wall, lungs burning.
Lyra's voice—
No, not Lyra—
_an echo_ of something wearing her voice—
had slipped through a fracture in reality.
Aiden squeezed his eyes shut.
"Why are you here?" he whispered to the empty corridor, but his voice trembled.
The parasite responded first.
**Host resonance is unstable.
Echo contamination probability: 41%.**
Aiden opened his eyes.
"Echo… what kind of echo?"
The parasite hesitated.
Not out of caution—
but because it didn't have a word for the thing that had reached through the crack.
**Shadow-state variant.
Resonance signature resembles target Lyra Everen…
but elevated.
Fragmented.
Displaced in time.**
Aiden's breath hitched.
Displaced in time.
So that thing—
that voice—
that silhouette—
It wasn't Lyra from _this timeline._
It wasn't Lyra from the _last timeline._
It was Lyra from some corrupted, broken shatter of possibility.
A Lyra that had lived and died in a timeline Aiden never survived to see.
His chest ached.
He pressed a hand—still bloodied—to his sternum.
"Why is she bleeding into this timeline?" he whispered.
The parasite pulsed cold and sharp.
**Host instability attracts temporal anomalies.
Your presence is creating fractures.
Cycle degradation accelerating.**
Aiden's stomach dropped.
He wasn't just witnessing the timeline collapse.
He was causing it.
His regression—
his parasite—
his refusal to evolve—
his emotional connection to Lyra—
was tearing holes through probability itself.
He staggered forward, using the wall for support.
He couldn't afford to break.
Not here.
Not when everything depended on staying ahead of the decay curve.
But the corridor in front of him blurred.
Not visually—
not physically—
but in a way that made the walls feel too close, too hollow, like reality was glitching around him.
He blinked.
A second corridor flickered over the first—
one he recognized—
a ruined hallway from the final hours of the previous timeline, where Moonfall ash had buried every window and the screams of dying citizens echoed through the walls.
Aiden took a step back, heart spiraling.
"No. No. Stop this. STOP."
The parasite shuddered violently.
**Host!
Reality bleed detected!
RETREAT—**
The vision snapped away—
leaving Aiden shaking, breath ragged.
He needed stabilizers.
He needed that shard.
He needed something, _anything,_ to ground him before he dissolved into the fractures pulling at his mind.
He pushed forward.
The corridor opened into a metal stairway spiraling deeper underground.
At the bottom waited a rusted door lined with runes that pulsed faintly.
Aiden recognized it instantly.
The Crossline Rift passage.
One of the illegal gateways the Market used to bypass Guild surveillance.
A hooded guard stepped from the shadows, holding a lantern shaped from a hollow bone. It glowed faint blue.
"Travel pass," the guard rasped.
Aiden slid Eldran's metallic disk forward.
The guard studied it, then him.
"There's a Rift surge tonight," the guard said. "Something is stirring on the other side. Most hunters avoid unstable Rifts."
Aiden felt the parasite twitch.
"I'm not most hunters," he said quietly.
The guard nodded, stepped aside, and unlocked the rune door.
"Then may your death be meaningful."
Aiden didn't respond.
He stepped into the passage and descended into the blue-lit tunnel, the air growing colder with each step.
The Crossline Rift pulsed at the tunnel's end like a beating heart carved from starlight and bone.
Its swirl was deep blue rather than violet—
a sign of mid-tier awakening.
Too early.
Too powerful.
Too unstable.
Aiden's shadow-mantle shuddered in reaction.
He stared into the Rift's roiling surface.
It hummed with energy that crawled across his skin, tugging at something ancient, something that didn't belong to this timeline.
The parasite whispered:
**Shard detected.
High-value.
Extraction mandatory.**
Aiden closed his eyes.
He knew what awaited him inside.
The Crossline Rift in his original timeline had been a nightmare even seasoned Guild hunters feared.
A Tier-1 Awakening Guardian.
A monster capable of reshaping shadows into physical form.
A creature that devoured minds before bodies.
He had died here once.
He tightened his grip on his coat.
He wasn't dying tonight.
Not again.
Not with Lyra flickering and the timeline tearing and the parasite mutating too fast.
He whispered to the Rift:
"You took everything once.
You won't get a second chance."
Shadows rose behind him like wings.
Aiden stepped into the blue fire—
And the Rift swallowed him whole.
The world twisted.
Blue shattered into darkness.
Darkness cracked into moonlight.
Moonlight bled into a battlefield built from broken shadows—
And something enormous moved in the distant gloom.
A voice, ancient and echoing, whispered from every direction:
**"Regressor."**
Aiden's blood froze.
The parasite screamed—
**HOST—DANGER—RUN—**
Aiden lifted his head—
And saw eyes the size of suns open in the dark.
Not a monster.
Not a beast.
A god-shaped void.
The Guardian of the Crossline Rift had awakened early.
And it remembered him.