The screens lit every face in the room.
Blue.
Cold.
Eyes fixed.
Nobody spoke.
On the monitors—
Fifteen shadows swallowed by the rift.
Bodies stretching for just a moment.
Distorting.
Then whole again.
Gone.
Inside—
Darkness.
Total.
The kind that has weight.
Then the drone lights came on.
Small beams cutting through black.
The helmet flashlights following.
Thin white lines finding walls that went up and up.
Finding a ceiling that didn't come back.
Just darkness above.
Endless.
The place was enormous.
Built for something larger than people.
Corridors wide enough to swallow them.
Turns that bent without warning.
A maze that hadn't been made for anyone to find their way through.
Minjun didn't speak.
He raised his hand.
Two fingers.
Forward.
They moved.
The drones swept ahead.
Cameras reading the dark.
A voice came quiet into Minjun's ear.
Flat.
Technical.
"Careful. Minor traps ahead. Floor level."
He raised his fist.
They stopped.
Eyes down.
The flashlights found the tiles.
Some slightly raised.
Some discolored.
The wrong kind of different.
They moved around them.
One step chosen at a time.
Slow.
Patient.
The dark pressing in from every side.
Then—
Sound.
Distant first.
Running.
Then screaming.
Not human screaming.
Something else wearing the shape of it.
They stopped.
No order needed.
The circle formed on instinct.
Shields up.
Swords out.
The guns raised.
Glowing faintly at the barrel.
Alien looking.
Pointed at every corner.
At every turn ahead and behind.
The screaming got closer.
From ahead.
From behind.
From both.
The echo of it bouncing off walls that went too high.
Surrounding them.
Then voices from inside the circle.
Overlapping.
Fast.
"Skill activation — Unbinding Defense."
"Skill activated — Heavenly Defense."
"Mana flow. Pending. Processing. Achieved."
"Skill unification successful."
"Unbinding Heavenly Defense — greatest fusion skill — activated."
The circle ignited.
White.
Then every color at once.
A bubble of it.
Consuming all fifteen.
Pressing outward.
The shadows arrived.
Fast.
Faster than the eye wanted to track.
They hit the barrier.
Sparks.
Bright.
Bouncing off.
Some tried to climb over.
The light took them.
Repelled them.
The white rainbow held.
Then the light found the creatures.
Pulled them out of shadow into something visible.
Lizard men.
Gray green skin.
Long.
Built wrong.
Teeth sharp enough that the mouth couldn't fully close around them.
Claws wet.
Already wet.
White yellow eyes that blinked sideways.
Folded.
Opened again.
Shrieking at the light.
Shrieking at the barrier.
Minjun's voice.
One word.
"Attack."
The barrier dropped.
Everything happened at once.
Gunfire.
The smell of it immediate.
Sharp.
Chemical.
Blades finding bodies.
Sparks from claws meeting shields.
Creatures leaping over the formation.
Others rushing straight through it.
One came over the top.
Minjun tracked it.
His ax already moving.
He met it in the air.
The water energy moved through him first.
Up from the stomach.
Through the chest.
Down the arm.
Into the weapon.
It gathered at the blade like something being poured.
The ax landed.
Clean.
The creature came apart at the middle.
Two pieces.
Falling separate.
The blood hit his face warm.
He didn't stop.
He was already turning.
Three more came at once.
He went down under them.
The ground hard against his back.
Their weight on his chest.
Claws finding gaps.
Teeth finding his arm.
The taste of blood in the air.
His blood.
The sound of it was close.
Everything close.
The energy in his stomach burned.
Not the pain kind of burning.
The other kind.
The kind that answers.
His leg came up.
Connected with the nearest one.
Sent it back.
The power in it crackling through the armor.
Through the creature's body.
It hit the wall.
Didn't get up immediately.
He used his shield on the second.
Edge first.
Into the side of its skull.
A sound like a walnut cracking.
But wetter.
It dropped.
The third one had his hand in its mouth.
Teeth through the gauntlet.
Through skin.
He felt it.
Felt exactly where each tooth was.
He brought the shield down on the back of its head.
Once.
The jaw went slack.
He pulled his hand free.
Stood.
Two more in front of him now.
He charged.
The ax coming down on the shoulder of the first.
The energy following the blade through.
It cut deep.
Through bone.
The creature folded sideways.
Fell.
The second lunged.
Mouth open.
Light running along its teeth.
He swung.
The creature caught the ax blade in its mouth.
Held it.
Pushed him back.
Pushed him back far.
His boots sliding.
Then the gunfire.
Multiple shots.
From behind him.
The creature released.
Fell.
He turned.
Found the shooter.
Nodded once.
From somewhere in the chaos—
"Skill activated — Unraveled Presence."
Every creature in the corridor stopped.
Just for a moment.
A single beat of stillness.
The soldiers used every second of it.
Minjun moved to the one he'd half finished.
The shoulder wound still open.
Still trying to close.
He hit the same shoulder again.
The ax went through this time.
All the way through.
The body separated.
Fell in two directions.
Then his legs went.
One knee hit the ground.
Just one.
He caught himself.
His breathing ragged.
Too fast.
Too loud in his own ears.
The pain in his stomach moved outward.
Up into his chest.
Down into his thighs.
Fire moving through channels it had carved open.
His vision softened at the edges.
The noise of the fight still filling everything around him.
Screaming.
Gunfire.
Metal on bone.
It continued without him for a moment.
He looked at the ground.
One breath.
Two.
Then he pushed himself up.
Slow.
His legs taking the weight back reluctantly.
He lifted his ax.
The blade dripping.
He raised his shield.
And looked at what was still moving.