The sound of clinking metal was the only thing filling the silence.

  Bash stood at the edge of the clearing, arms folded, watching as the others scoured the ground for

  fragments. He hated wasting time, but Darik was right, coming back empty-handed after a slaughter

  like that would raise questions with the Nexus.

  He stared off into the distance while the others worked. The air shimmered faintly under the pull of the

  black hole, light stretching into impossible angles across the landscape. The sound of the river carried

  oddly, distant and hollow, like it was being dragged through another dimension before reaching their

  ears.

  He exhaled through his nose and brought up the map.

  A small pulse blinked to life about a klick away, near the curve of a river that glowed faintly blue under

  the refracted sky.

  “Alright,” he said finally as the others returned, loading the last of the fragments into a crate. “Another

  individual type. About a klick out, right next to a river. Probably water-based.”

  “Lovely,” Rixor grunted, slinging his hammer over his shoulder. “I could use a bath anyway.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t try to give you one,” Nyra muttered.

  Fifteen minutes later, the landscape shifted again. The river wound through cracked stone and half

  suspended debris fields, like time itself had forgotten how to flow properly. Water didn’t ripple right, it

  moved in thin, mirrored ribbons that caught the light and split it into distorted colors. Every few

  seconds, parts of the stream appeared to pause mid-current before surging forward again.

  When they reached the bank, they spread out, scanning. The water was impossibly clear, yet every

  reflection came back warped.

  “Anything?” Bash asked quietly.

  “Nothing moving,” Calen said, crouched near a drift of rock. “Just...”

  A blur erupted from the shallows.

  Rixor barely had time to flinch before a slick, turquoise shape lunged from the river, teeth flashing like

  glass shards.

  He jumped back, hammer coming up, but before it could strike, Bash’s hand flicked. One of his knives

  cut through the air, slicing cleanly through both of the creature’s eyes. The blade exited in a spray of

  mist and light.

  The beast hit the ground in a twisting spasm and went still, body twitching as its color dimmed.

  S-C’s voice echoed in Bash’s head.

  “Confirmed. Tier One Greater. Water classification.”

  “Figures,” Bash muttered, retrieving the knife. “Grab the fragment and move. There’s another signal

  where the river hits that lake.”

  They harvested quickly. The creature’s scales still shimmered faintly in the light as its essence

  solidified into a faint blue shard.

  The walk to the lake took longer, about two klicks across warped terrain where gravity bent just enough

  to make footsteps uncertain. Every so often, a small stone would drift up from the ground and hang

  motionless before slowly descending again.

  When they reached the lake, the air grew heavy and still.

  The surface wasn’t like any normal water, patches of it were perfectly mirror-smooth while others

  rippled outward as if struck by invisible rain. Near the far shore, long ropes of liquid hung midair

  before rejoining the surface, the gravitational flux locking parts of the lake in slow motion.

  Calen whistled quietly. “That’s… unnatural.”

  “Everything here is unnatural,” Bash said.

  They split up along the bank, scanning. Minutes passed. Nothing.

  When they looped back toward where the river met the lake, Nyra raised her rifle slightly. “Still

  nothing. Maybe the signal’s underground?”

  Rixor stepped closer to the water’s edge, peering into the distorted reflection. “I don’t like how still it

  is...”

  The surface exploded.

  A long, translucent body shot from the water, two meters of coiling muscle and shimmering gel. It

  arced like a whip, barely missing Rixor as it struck. Droplets hissed in the air before freezing midfall.

  Nyra’s shot cracked a heartbeat later. The round hit the serpent’s midsection, bursting through its side.

  The creature spasmed, tail slapping against the rocks before sinking back into the lake with a dull thud.

  “Contact neutralized,” Taren said, though her voice sounded more surprised than sure.

  Bash turned to the water. The ripples froze again, then smoothed.

  S-C confirmed softly, “Tier One Greater, water.”

  “Grab the fragment,” Bash ordered. “Let’s keep this pace.”

  Rixor knelt, prying a faintly glowing shard from the serpent’s remains.

  Bash already had his map open again. Another pulse flickered to life, an individual marker deeper

  inland, roughly two klicks through the forest beyond the lake.

  “Another one. Let’s move.”

  Thirty minutes later there were woods ahead of them that weren’t like the others.

  The trees were impossibly large, ancient pillars of blackened wood and glassy bark, each trunk easily

  ten meters across. The surface of the bark looked molten in places, as though it had been scorched and

  then frozen mid-melt. A faint shimmer ran through the wood when the light hit it, like the trees were

  absorbing more than just sunlight, bending it inward.

  Branches hung low and wide, sagging unnaturally toward the ground, their weight drawn downward by

  a force none of them could see. Even the leaves drooped in slow motion, drifting through the air as if

  the world itself had forgotten how to let go.

  Bash lifted a hand. “Slow down.”

  The group came to a stop. The crunch of boots softened to silence. Each step ahead felt heavier, pulling

  their legs lower into the soil.

  They spread into a staggered formation automatically, instincts guiding their placements like clockwork

  drilled through endless battles.

  Liora, Rixor, and Darik moved to the front, forming the melee line, three silhouettes braced for impact,

  each step deliberate in the thickening gravity. Behind them, Bash shifted to the right flank, midline,

  blades loose in his hands, eyes sweeping every shadow between the blackened trunks. Opposite him,

  Taren took the left mid flank, pistols raised, her healing resonance humming faintly as she tracked the

  space between the melee fighters.

  At the rear, Calen set up on the left, bow drawn and half-ready, the string vibrating with faint wind

  essence. Nyra mirrored him on the right, her rifle balanced against her shoulder, the red glare of her

  targeting lens cutting a thin beam through the murk.

  They were a perfect fan of motion and coverage, every angle locked, each one knowing exactly where

  the others stood even without words.

  The air grew thick. Sound dulled. Even breathing seemed to take effort, as if gravity itself was clinging

  to the inside of their lungs.

  “Anyone else feel that?” Darik muttered, voice strained.

  Rixor grunted, his hammer shifting uncomfortably in his grip. “Feels like the world’s trying to sit on

  my shoulders.”

  Before anyone could respond, Nyra’s sharp voice cut through the haze. “Contact, right side!”

  They turned, instinctively the wrong way, to the left, and that hesitation nearly cost them.

  A shape burst from the gloom, silent and immense. It didn’t crash through the underbrush; it glided, as

  though it had never been bound by the same gravity that held them. A sleek, pantherine form laced with

  flickering essence veins, three meters tall mid-leap. The air warped around it, branches bending inward,

  dust spiraling in its wake.

  Bash saw the distortion before he saw the creature. The bend in the air, the pressure pulling inward

  toward an invisible point. His instincts screamed before his mind could catch up.

  “Move!”

  He waited until the last instant. The moment the distortion peaked, he slammed a heel down and

  activated his Echo Step Amplifiers. The world blurred sideways. Bash vanished five meters in a streak

  of blue light just as the creature landed where he’d been standing.

  The impact was cataclysmic.

  Soil buckled. Trees bent inward. The ground cratered under a weight that no living thing should have

  been able to generate.

  A wave of dust rolled outward in silence, crushed flat under invisible force.

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  “Gravity field,” Bash muttered, sliding to a stop. His boots sank a few centimeters into the warped soil.

  “Stay back!”

  The creature raised its head. Six eyes burned faint gold in the shadows, each tracking movement

  independently. Its hide rippled with matte charcoal fur, streaked through with veins of faint blue light

  that pulsed in time with the shifting air pressure. Every pulse distorted the air around it further.

  It wasn’t roaring. It didn’t need to. The silence it brought was its voice.

  Bash hurled a knife, watching it cut through the dim light. The blade met an invisible wall halfway and

  pinged harmlessly away, snapping through the trees with a ricochet.

  S-C’s tone sharpened in his mind.

  “Beast identified: Hollowgrasp Lorian. Tier Two Greater. Gravity classification.”

  “Summary,” Bash hissed, eyes tracking the creature’s movements.

  “Localized gravity manipulation. Alternates between heavy and light fields to attack or defend.

  Vulnerable during transition states.”

  Bashed relayed the information immediately. “It drops its guard between moves, hit it when it lands!”

  The creature crouched low again. The ground beneath it rippled like liquid, the air trembling with a low

  hum that vibrated through their bones.

  “Spread out!” Bash shouted.

  It leapt.

  The Lorian’s body stretched impossibly, limbs slicing through the air in eerie silence. The leap wasn’t

  physical, it was gravitational. One instant it was grounded, the next it had pulled itself through the air

  like a collapsing star, dragging nearby debris in its wake.

  Rixor reacted first, slamming his hammer into the ground. Lightning burst upward in a pillar, catching

  the Lorian’s silhouette mid-flight. The creature twisted, deflecting part of the blast, but static arced

  along its body as it landed.

  Liora and Darik countered with volleys of mineral shards, shaping them from the ground itself, jagged

  stone projectiles that ripped through the haze, fracturing when they hit the field around the beast.

  Sparks flared as the shards disintegrated mid-air.

  Taren’s pistols barked behind them, each shot marked by a flash of pale green healing resonance. The

  energy threaded between the frontliners, patching burns and bruises in real-time.

  Nyra fired next, flames spiraling from her rifle’s barrel. Her rounds curved through the dense air, each

  one exploding in a ripple of orange that distorted the field even further. Calen followed, loosing arrows

  wrapped in spinning wind resonance. The arrows bent, redirected, their trajectories unpredictable, but

  enough found their mark to stagger the beast backward.

  Bash moved through the chaos, reading the creature’s rhythm. The Hollowgrasp didn’t fight like an

  animal; it fought like gravity itself had learned intent.

  The air around it warped in pulses. When it pressed forward, everything seemed to lean toward it.

  When it shifted back, the weight lifted, but only for a breath.

  He counted the intervals.

  Light field… heavy field… transition.

  The third pulse hit, and he moved.

  Three knives left his hands in rapid succession.

  One low, skidding across the Lorian’s leg, cutting through the distortion field just as it dipped. The

  second buried into its neck, slicing clean through a cluster of faintly glowing veins. The third found

  purchase in the joint of its shoulder, and Razorvein pulsed.

  Two echoes followed instantly, carving deeper along the wound. The gravitational field shuddered

  visibly.

  The creature screamed for the first time, a warped sound that made the air tremble.

  It dropped back to the ground hard, dust erupting around it. The gravity veil flickered and collapsed.

  “Now!” Bash yelled.

  The forest exploded in sound and light.

  Rixor’s lightning carved through the haze, detonating across the beast’s flank. Nyra’s rifle spat burning

  rounds that ignited the dust-laden air, each shot blooming into fireballs. Calen’s wind arrows fanned the

  flames, driving them deeper. Liora and Darik hurled more shards, dense, compressed pillars of mineral

  essence that shattered like shrapnel against the creature’s hide.

  The Hollowgrasp reeled, its movements stuttering as it tried to stabilize its field. The ground vibrated

  underfoot; trees groaned as gravity fluctuated wildly between crushing weight and sudden nearweightlessness.

  Taren shouted something, her voice lost in the roar, as she fired another burst of resonance, the green

  light cutting through the fire to knit wounds mid-combat.

  Bash surged forward.

  His body felt like lead, every motion forced through invisible resistance. But he pushed, sliding under a

  sweeping tail strike that tore a gash through the air where he’d stood. He rolled, came up low, and

  threw again.

  This time, the knife hit the base of the Lorian’s neck, directly into the flickering light at its core.

  Razorvein pulsed once, then twice.

  A hum built in the air, a subsonic growl that crawled through the earth.

  The beast convulsed. Its defense shattered.

  The entire team again fired at once.

  Lightning. Fire. Stone. Wind. Poison. Every strike found home. The Lorian’s body erupted in flares of

  light and energy, its internal veins bursting one by one.

  It staggered, stumbled, and fell.

  Gravity surged outward in a last reflexive pulse, flattening grass and bending nearby trunks before

  collapsing completely.

  For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then the pressure lifted.

  Leaves rose and drifted again like they were meant to. The air felt thin, almost free.

  Bash stood over the fallen creature, chest heaving. The Hollowgrasp’s eyes still glowed faintly,

  dimming by degrees, the light flickering like dying embers under glass.

  Then it hit him.

  A pulse, slammed through his chest like a collapsing star. His muscles locked for a breath, teeth

  grinding as his vision blurred white. The ground seemed to tilt beneath him, the gravity of the world

  folding inward, dragging at his bones.

  For a moment, he felt as if his heart had stopped, and then it surged back to life in perfect rhythm with

  the fading glow of the beast’s core.

  S-C’s voice whispered through the static in his mind, calm and clinical against the ringing in his ears.

  “Essence assimilation complete. Tier Two Greater, Gravity classification. No unlock detected.”

  The aftershock faded. Bash exhaled shakily, his heartbeat settling into a dull thrum beneath his ribs.

  The weight in the air eased, replaced by the faint echo of wind moving freely again through the forest

  canopy.

  He stood still a moment longer, staring down at the creature’s inert form, feeling the last trace of its

  resonance dissolve into nothing.

  He stayed quiet, the words sinking in.

  Around him, the others regrouped slowly. Rixor leaned on his hammer, still sparking faintly from

  overuse. Liora wiped a streak of soot from her cheek. Taren exhaled hard, lowering her weapons, the

  pale green shimmer of her healing field flickering out.

  For a long moment, no one spoke. The forest crackled faintly as the distortion field continued to

  dissipate.

  Bash stared down at the Hollowgrasp’s remains, its veins pulsing one last time before fading

  completely.

  “Did it?” Nyra asked softly, stepping closer, her voice carrying more hope than expectation.

  Bash didn’t answer right away. He just stared at the blackened wound across the creature’s neck, the

  faint reflection of his own face distorted in the cooling essence. Then he shook his head once.

  “No.”

  The single word carried the weight of every disappointment since their first dive.

  Nyra nodded quietly, lips pressing together. No one else spoke.

  Bash brought up his wrist display. The map shimmered to life in faint blue light, glowing against the

  shadows. Another beacon pulsed faintly in the distance, further into the forest, deeper into the distortion

  field that blanketed this world.

  He exhaled through his nose, eyes narrowing. “Let’s move.”

  Rixor groaned, slinging his hammer over his back. “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I was,” Bash said.