“Hi Lyra, this is Matt speaking,” the swordsman spoke into his phone. “Yeah, I’m going to break into a building. Yes, it’s a good reason. We’re suspecting Echo research.”

  The chattering on the other end went silent. When the voice spoke again, it was a lot more serious. Matt smiled and nodded along. “Yes, yes. I’ll turn on my gps. Just send a squad our way. Yes, I’ll avoid load bearing walls to break through.”

  And then he hung up. Took a deep breath.

  His feet touched down on solid ground. He’d hung in the air for long enough. It was time for action. Marie gave him a nod, already having started the operation. She stood with her arms crossed.

  The door clicked open from the inside, Liam giving them a shy smile as he stepped out. His scar caught the light, but he waved them inside. “Let’s go,” he said simply.

  Liam had turned the inside of the building pitch black. It was like a power outage turned up to eleven. The windows let in no light, the lamps weren’t functioning, and yet, all of them could find their way without trouble. With their supernatural senses, picking their way through the crowd was child’s play.

  People were scrambling, trying to find the switch, use their phones, but no light was permitted to exist. Everything was wrapped in thick, suffocating shadow - and that was scary. Yet, at the same time, it was less scary than it could have been.

  Another door stood in their way. A quick swipe of Matt’s sword soundlessly cut through the lock, and he pushed it open. Deeper into the facility. The welcoming colours of the visitor room faded away to sterile whites and long hallways. Doors stood out, and behind each, Matt could feel a faint flicker.

  Someone inside, tiny flames of Qi burning in them. People who had barely just set out on their path. Most of them were unharmed. Most of them were completely fine, and yet some… He sighed, softly, and the noise was swallowed by the darkness.

  The doors to the individual rooms were more reinforced than the one in the hallway. They were made of solid steel, with multiple bolts, as if to hold caged beasts. They did not hold Matt. He simply reached a hand to the metal, and pushed.

  Around the bolts, the walls crumbled to nothing. Marie cast a silencing spell to ensure it went off without a hitch, and the heavy metal fell to the floor noiselessly. Taking Reya’s hand, Liam guided the saintess further into the room, and a gentle, golden light pierced the darkness.

  “It hurts,” the woman inside the room moaned. “It hurts so bad.”

  Matt watched the Echo churn in her core, through her veins. Like an oil film on the ocean, it simply stuck there, gumming up her veins. It corroded her Qi, eating into it. There was no proper containment, no method to the cultivation.

  He’d fought usurpers, and he knew that their methods were anything but crude. Higher tier ones wielded Echo like the weapon it was - a supernatural resonance that built upon itself with each release. A sort of vibrating heartbeat that made his bones rattle. They shaped it into techniques of their own, they grew it within themselves, listened to the world.

  None of that happened here. The woman was used as a breeding ground for something she could not contain. Host to something she wasn’t even aware off.

  “You will be alright in a moment, Ma’am,” Matt assured her, and he hoped that even in the dark, his voice sounded kind. Reya’s golden light touched the oil-slick resonance, and it hissed away from the golden bit of divinity.

  A soft gasp came from the woman’s lips. She blinked into the darkness. “The pain… it’s gone,” she whispered. There was a want there. To thank them, to see her saviours, but Matt couldn’t indulge that.

  Instead, he simply gave her a short platitude. “Please, continue to stay healthy, Ma’am,” he said in the dark. And then they were off.

  More doors, more people, more Echo to purge. And Matt took a perfectly reasonable amount of pleasure in pushing the door of his hinges with a simple touch, letting the metal crumple inward.

  - - -

  Half a dozen doors later, they came into a lab. For the first time, Liam’s darkness abated, because they really did need to see with their eyes this time. It was a bizarre thing to see, the way Echo was being put to use.

  Vials and crystals, dissolving bits of usurpers from the gates, being distilled down into something that wasn’t quite a cultivation elixir. It was so strong the entire room hummed with faint resonance - something that weaker cultivators wouldn’t notice, yet it stuck out to Matt as clearly as a rotting carcass in a field of flowers.

  The ambient Echo crashed against his field, much like the air in Eden did. It was a faint sort of feeling - an uncontained power, grinding at his skin. Hostility bubbling in the air. And yet, it was not the only thing in the room that was wrong.

  A doctor regarded him with curiosity.

  She wore a large pair of spectacles, and her unremarkably brown hair was done up in a bun. Her head, however, was tilted ever so faintly, and while her eyes screamed of panic, her lips did not. “You are not meant to be here, swordsman,” she spoke.

  On an operating table in the middle of the room was Lars. Lars Desum, Fio's father. The man who had thrown away his life and relationships at the bottom of a bottle, who had gone from casual drinking to addiction, and gotten lost for years. A strong man, with shaggy blonde hair, a prominent nose, and deep, dark eyes. His face twisted in a grimace of pain.

  His arms were strapped down with thick leather belts. Multiple of them wrapping around his wrists, and upper arm, ensuring that he could not squirm away. His veins bulged painfully with a pallid grey beneath his skin. He was breathing in gasps, ragged noises that spoke of suffering. His face glistened with sweat and his throat ragged from screaming.

  Matt clenched the sword. “Why are you experimenting with Echo?” he asked.

  Even as he spoke, Reya approached the table, holding out a hand as her eyes filled with pain at the sight. The doctor shot her a look of contempt, one of deep disgust. “We demand it,” she said. “We demand this.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  And then the ripples crashed against him. Waves of force, of resonance, so faint that they were little more than a whisper.

  No, that was wrong. They didn’t even touch him, they touched his sword. Only its edge - because it cut through them. [World Rend], he realized, was interfacing with them, and unveiling the brutally clever trick.

  This whole place was infected in parallel. A step removed from the ordinary world, something hovered out there. And with the realization came sight. Matt saw the strings. The tiny threads that turned the doctor into a puppet. The reason her eyes quivered with fear while her face remained neutral.

  “Puppeteer,” Matt whispered.

  Instantly, Liam tensed. The shadows grew deeper. The doctor tilted her head further, inhumanly. “Oh?” she asked. “You see us. You see us.” There was a note of surprise and amusement in that tone.

  Matt saw Liam close his eyes. His darkness spread along the edges, suffocating the outside. He built walls of shadow on the door. But in response, the puppeteer only chuckled. Its voice now resonated, echoing through the room. “You build walls when you cannot even find where we are. You lock yourselves in a cage of space and cannot see between the bars.”

  With a deep breath, Matt paused. Lars was still whimpering in pain. This was still happening. He needed to ask the right questions quickly. “Why are you doing this?” he asked again, though this time, the question reached the right person.

  “Because I have to,” the doctor whispered. It was a quiet utterance, a physical whisper.

  “Because this world must be fed with Echo,” the much louder answer reached his ears. It was a grinding noise against his eardrums, like crunching, shattered glass.

  “Why here? Why now?” Matt asked, grinding his teeth.

  “The balance shifts. The usurpers paid us. We will have our prize. We must move more swiftly. To reclaim our lost shards.”

  Matt sighed softly.

  “That’s it?” Liam asked, quietly. “You cause suffering for that?”

  Once more, the doctor tilted her head further. This time, the movement was more jerky, less human. The facade melted away as the puppeteer showed itself. “What could be more important?”

  And Matt sighed again. His sword glowed with ethereal pink. That was enough knowledge, enough hearing them out. It was such a simple reason, so instinctual. Just a relentless hunger for more.

  That hunger made them gather their puppets, eat away at this world, and make deals with the usurpers. Who also held shards. The keepers were playing all sides, just to grasp at yet another gateway. It was… pathetic.

  All that apathy, all that anger gathered at the edge of his sword. It condensed down to a hair-thin razorblade, and then even fainter than that. A single atom, and then even less. [Edge of Infinity] activated as his Qi poured into the blade, and Matt took a single breath, a single step.

  Pink flower petals surged forward, and he sliced.

  Metal and plum blossoms carved through the world. A ragged gash appeared in the fabric of reality, unveiling the hideous truth. A puppeteer in a world of glass, hiding behind a mirror inside the puppet. But the strings shattered when Matt’s blade touched it, and its hiding place was unveiled.

  Writ across the monster’s glass face was nothing. A plain glass But underneath, where in that glass cocoon a million hands blossomed from each other, their fingers all sprawled apart in what must have been… surprise.

  Gently, Matt caught the doctor. Her eyes had rolled back, and her body collapsed like, well, a puppet with her strings cut. Liam, for his part, snarled at the thing. When it was unveiled, its hidden dimension carved into, he dissolved.

  Darkness made manifest slithered through the crack in the world, and Matt felt that the rogue, perhaps, wanted some alone time with the keeper. And Matt was, frankly, happy to leave him to it.

  Liquid shadow filled that rent in reality, and Matt turned his sight elsewhere. Marie was chanting, casting a few spells to deal with the Echo, while Reya stood over Lars. Her hands glowed, and her brows were furrowed in concentration.

  With a couple deft movements, Matt cut the restraints that kept Lars tied down to the table. Reya gave him a quick, thankful nod, and the golden glow intensified. By then, Matt’s phone rang again, and he picked it up with a sigh. Bureaucracy, eh?

  Nearby, faintly inhuman screams rang from the dimension, and Matt politely began to handle business with the government.

  - - -

  Liam was furious.

  There was a roiling disgust in his veins at the thing that slithered between the cracks. A hatred that he couldn’t quite put into words. It made him grind his teeth, and it stripped the calm away. It made him afraid, and he hated that.

  So he retaliated. In the truest way that he could, he struck back at it. He reached into his path, dragged out the darkness, the formless horror that he kept restrained, and poured it into that pocket of irreality. There were mirrors here, and mirrors reflected the light, so he devoured it.

  Strongs reached into his formless self, and slid away. They tried to wrap around arms, but he had none. To tie around his throat like a noose, but there was nothing there. The feeble attempts at control washed over him, because Liam was scarier. He refused to be afraid anymore. He refused to cower in fear of this thing.

  And he refused to let them have his world.

  Shadows coalesced at his will, because they were an extension of him. His path wasn’t a wielding of the element, after all, it was a melding. Dissolution of the Fearful Past. He breathed without lungs, and moved his limbs as he became one with the shadows, melting into them and losing his own shape.

  Moment by moment, Liam dissolved. His limbs came undone, his clothes unspooled into remnants of darkness, and the familiar embrace of shadows gently stripped his fear away. There was nothing to be afraid of, because he was the monster in the darkness.

  Another not-breath, and the fear melted away. It disappeared into the gaps, the faint corners where no one dared look, and then vanished entirely. Liam knew it was gone, because he smelled it. The rancid aroma of terror; because Possessions, the keeper, had never felt it before.

  This was the one that had attacked Fio at the guild hall. This was the one who wore a living, breathing human like a skin-suit. Who played with Zinnic, cut deals, and manipulated its way through the corporate world like a fish in water. It was a hoarder, a thing of desire and ownership.

  Liam hated it. The way it wormed its way into his life as an enemy he couldn’t see. He hated that he could never sneak up on it - and now was his chance.

  Shadows coalesced, and the thing felt fear. It had hidden, and they’d found its hiding place. From the darkness emerged claws and fangs. Bestial fury, the monster that would tear flesh from bone and glass from glass, now. Liam coalesced into a fluid, shapeshifting thing meant to destroy, to terrify.

  [Night Terror has reached (High)!]

  His technique advanced, and more fear spilled from this avatar of Possession. He could not truly shatter the keeper, but perhaps…

  Perhaps he could send a message.

  Fangs twisted into a snarl, and Liam taught the keeper what fear was.

  - - -

  I stepped out of the portal at the same time Ann did. Golden armor dissolved around me, and her mana barriers faded away. As we came back to Neamhan, we tuned down our powers, and I took a few moments to watch as Ann’s hair stopped fluttering on invisible currents of mana, instead settling down to frame her face.

  Then, she shot me a smile. “Good work, Ion. You certainly guarded my body.”

  “That is my job,” I said with a snort. And I had. There were a few times when the bone-spikes from the usurper that ruled the gate would have torn through Ann, and as lovely as her mana-heart was, I did not want her to replace more of her skin with managlass. So I stopped them, instead.

  A few more moments passed, as we stepped to the science equipment. Ivan looked up from a call, rapidly speaking into his phone, and seeing me, he quickly nodded. “Ion. Check your phone. It’s important,” he said.

  His tone was so severe that my heart skipped a beat. Instantly, I grabbed my phone from the table, tapping my finger against its side, and seeing the messages from Matt.

  Rat: “Yoyo. Your dad’s getting Echo pumped into him. Gonna check that out, be reporting back” at 16:33.

  Rat: “Crashing this party” at 16:34.

  Rat: “Keepers are shitheads. That bitch hid in a parallel dimension, can you believe it?” at 16:57.

  Rat: “Oh, yea, your dad is ok. Lol. My b. Shoulda said it earlirr. Wjoops” at 17:03.

  Looking at the screen, I was stunned for a few moments, then looked up at Ivan. “What the fuck happened?” I breathed.