The sound was deafening. It rattled the thin glass windows in their frames and vibrated through the wooden floorboards. The primary La Paz emergency siren—a wailing, rising scream Cardo had only ever heard during supervised daytime drills.
Outside the living room window, the dark sky to the west ignited with a pulsing, blood-red glow.
"The Mini-Gate," Uncle Jun whispered in horror, his dormant military instincts instantly overriding his panic. He spun away from Cardo and limped with practiced speed toward the hallway utility closet.
"It's not leaking anymore—it's fully ruptured. The Rustfang Company failed to contain the breach."
Chaos erupted in the streets outside. Cardo heard car alarms blaring, people screaming in every direction, and the guttural, echoing screeches of multiple void-beasts spilling from the drainage systems and flooding into the residential blocks. The local Enforcers and the low-tier Guild faced overwhelming odds. The Outer Rim was under siege.
Aunt Maria was working the late-night shift in the inner-city laundry district—safe behind the Fortified Walls. But they were out here, exposed and vulnerable.
"Clarissa!" Cardo yelled, forcing himself upright and ignoring the sharp, stabbing pain in his ribs.
His little sister appeared in the hallway, fully dressed in her bright yellow pajamas. She was clutching a heavy cast-iron frying pan with both hands. Her usual bossy arrogance had vanished, replaced by wide, deeply serious eyes
.
"I'm ready," Clarissa announced, raising the pan above her head. "I'll bash their ugly rat brains in."
"Absolutely not," Uncle Jun barked, emerging from the closet. He was holding a battered pre-Awakening Benelli M4 that looked like it hadn't been cleaned or fired in a decade, held together by faded duct tape and sheer stubbornness.
"Into the bunker. Both of you. Right now."
Jun kicked aside the living room rug, revealing a perfectly cut seam in the floorboards. He grabbed a concealed brass ring and hauled open a thick trapdoor, exposing a cramped, concrete-lined crawlspace beneath the house—a standard government-mandated feature for all Outer Rim homes—a dark, claustrophobic last resort for when the city shields inevitably failed.
"I'm not hiding in there," Cardo said, stepping between Jun and the front door. "Your leg is acting up. That shotgun is going to jam after three shots at most. If a beast breaches the porch, you can't hold it alone."
Uncle Jun glared at him, protective instincts flaring. "You barely survived an F-Rank rat tonight. You are not a registered combat Awakener. Hide in that bunker with your sister."
"I have the Body Tempering Aether Fist," Cardo said. His voice was steady—and threaded with a quiet, unshakeable conviction he hadn't known he possessed until this moment. "I have my foundation. I have the clones. We can hold the chokepoint at the front door together. I can do this, Uncle Jun. I have to."
Before Jun could argue, a massive CRASH shook the street directly in front of the house.
They both snapped toward the front window.
The flickering streetlight outside illuminated a low, hunched silhouette on the lawn. It was a rat beast—smaller and less mutated than the creature from the alley, without the protruding bone spurs or overwhelming bulk. An F-rank void beast, the absolute lowest tier, separated from the main swarm, hunting quiet neighborhoods for easy prey.
It sniffed the air. Its glowing red eyes locked on their front door. Then it let out a high-pitched screech and bounded onto the overgrown lawn.
"Clarissa — in the bunker. Now." Cardo's older brother's voice left zero room for debate.
For once in her life, his sister didn't argue. She scrambled down the wooden ladder into the dark crawlspace. But just before she disappeared, she poked her head back out, gripping the frying pan so hard her knuckles went white.
"Hey, big brother," she called up, her voice trembling only slightly despite her best effort. "If you die out there and leave me doing the dishes alone for the rest of my life, I will personally climb out of this hole and kill you myself. Do you hear me?"
Despite everything, Cardo cracked a small, tense smile. "Loud and clear, ma'am. Stay quiet. Stay down."
Uncle Jun slammed the trapdoor shut and dragged the heavy couch over it, sealing the bunker. He racked the rusty bolt of the Benelli M4 and aimed the scarred barrel at the center of the front door.
"If it breaks through, I fire," Jun said grimly.
"It's not breaking through," Cardo replied, rolling his aching shoulders.
He threw the front door open and stepped onto the porch.
The dire rat hissed, its claws digging into the wooden steps as it coiled to pounce on this foolish, unarmed prey that had so willingly presented itself.
"Manifest," Cardo said. Cold. Steady.
Two pitch-black shadows peeled out of the darkness on either side of him—Clone One and Clone Two. His Aether pool had been nearly drained in the alley, but the brief rest on the couch had recovered just enough ambient energy to summon them both for a narrow, critical window.
The rat leaped—a blur of matted fur and razor teeth aimed straight for Cardo's chest.
Cardo didn't flinch. His mind shifted into cold, efficient focus.
Clone One, high guard. Clone Two, low leg sweep.
The dual command was transmitted instantly through the mental tether. The half-second delay was still there — but Cardo had built an entire week of training around compensating for it. It was no longer a weakness. It was a predictable rhythm he could conduct like a beat.
A split second before the rat reached him, Clone One stepped into its flight path and raised its dark, featureless arms. The beast collided hard with the shadow, its jaws snapping uselessly on dense, solidified void energy. The impact arrested its momentum for a single, suspended fraction of a second.
Simultaneously, Clone Two dropped low and swept a brutal kick at the rat's hind legs as it fell back toward the boards.
The coordinated maneuver stripped the beast of its balance entirely. It hit the porch on its exposed side, scrambling wildly on the slick wood.
The opening Cardo had engineered.
He stepped over the fallen Clone Two, dropped his weight, and aligned his hips, shoulders, and knuckles in one fluid motion. He drew a sharp breath, syncing it with the thin spark of Aether still circulating through his veins. The phantom pain from the alley evaporated, replaced by the pure, locked-in focus of the Body Tempering Aether Fist.
He drove a crushing downward punch directly into the base of the F-Rank rat's skull.
The Aether pulsed into his knuckles on impact.
CRACK.
The sound cut sharply over the distant wail of the city sirens. The concentrated kinetic force shattered the beast's cervical spine instantly. Its red eyes dimmed to a dull, lifeless black—and its body dissolved into ash, leaving a small, cloudy Aether core resting on the wooden planks.
Cardo remained crouched over the floorboards, fist pressed to the spot where the monster's head had been, breathing hard. Sweat poured down his face. His muscles trembled from the adrenaline.
Slowly, he stood and dispelled the two clones, conserving what little energy he had left. The familiar mental feedback washed over him—sensory data confirming the trap, the timing, and the execution.
The sirens still wailed. The sky still bled red. The night was far from over, and the Outer Rim was still a warzone.
But as Cardo looked down at his hands, a fierce, undeniable fire ignited in his chest. He had protected his home. He had outsmarted and overpowered a real monster—not by brute force alone, but by thinking, adapting, and trusting the foundation he had bled to build.
He was an E-Rank nobody who spent his days hauling crates.
But standing on his porch under the blood-red sky, he felt like something more.