The stone screamed, a sound that grated bone-deep, as the colossal barrier rose. One moment, Senja’s furious, bewildered face was illuminated by a stray luminescence from the distant training teams; the next, it was gone, swallowed by a slab of obsidian. The air tasted metallic, heavy with the stench of scorched limestone. Jalo, beside me, choked on a gasp, stumbling back a step. His hand, shaking, reached for the space where Senja had been, as if he could pluck her from the rock. “Senja!” he yelled, his voice thin against the groaning rock. He pounded his fist on the newly formed wall. The impact was swallowed, leaving no mark. His shoulders slumped. “What was that? Where did they go?” I didn’t answer. My gaze was fixed on the far end of the tunnel, where the Shard of Absence faded, its glass-bright angles melting back into the gloom as if satisfied with its work. It hadn’t attacked. It had *separated*. A surgical strike. It aimed for me, or for Jalo, or for both of us together, isolated. Either way, this was its idea of a fair fight. My first thought turned to the dungeon's fickle nature, its random reconfigurations. But the Shard’s deliberate gesture, its chilling intent, had ruled out chance. This was a prison. “No time for existential crises, farm boy,” I snapped, grabbing Jalo’s arm. His skin felt clammy. “Unless you want to be the next desiccated husk, we move. Now.” My voice, sharper than I intended, cut through his shock. He blinked, his wide, innocent eyes finding mine. There was a raw vulnerability there, a stark contrast to the burning rage I felt. I needed him functional, not grieving. “But… the Pathfinders,” he stammered. “They’re trapped. We have to help them.” “They’re safe for now,” I lied. “The entity is gone. It just aimed to clear us out of the way.” It probably intended our deaths, but Jalo didn’t need to know that. “We find a new path, find a way around, link back up. Standard drill when a sector shifts. It’s inconvenient, not fatal.” He hesitated, then nodded, a flicker of his usual resolve returning. The innocent hero. Easy to manipulate. Easier to protect, perhaps. I hoped. The very thought of protection made my stomach clench. It was a role I’d abandoned for good reason. The air grew heavy, the faint light from the main cavern barely piercing the oppressive gloom that had settled in our new, smaller prison. The walls here were rough, uncarved stone, untouched by the Empire’s runes. This wasn’t a main thoroughfare; it was a forgotten artery, a secondary digestive tract of the Labyrinth. “Stay close,” I ordered, shedding my porter’s pack. The strap strain was familiar, grounding in its mundane purpose. I pulled out a length of fine iron wire, twisting it into a crude loop. “And for the love of the Valta, watch your step. These parts aren’t mapped.” Jalo watched, silent, as I moved. My movements were no longer the lumbering shuffle of a lazy porter. Each step was measured, my eyes scanning the uneven floor, the crumbling ceiling, the subtle shifts in airflow. My hands, once calloused from carrying crates, now traced invisible patterns in the dust, searching for pressure plates, tripwires, the faint scent of disturbed earth. My ears, trained to pick out the rustle of a distant Echo-gnat, now listened for the almost imperceptible hum of a magical ward, the faint creak of shifting rock. This was the real me, the one I’d buried under layers of apathy. The Pathfinder. “This way,” I murmured, guiding Jalo around a patch of lichen that glowed with a faint, hypnotic light. He would have stepped on it, triggering the paralyzing spores prickling my throat. I sprinkled a handful of coarse chalk dust from my pack onto the moss. It hissed, retracting, leaving behind a bare, harmless patch of stone. We moved deeper, my internal compass spinning wildly but my instincts honed. I disarmed a crudely fashioned snare of sharp obsidian shards by cutting the tension wire with a shard of my own. I identified a crumbling section of ceiling, propping it with a carefully placed Echo-spike I’d ‘borrowed’ from a high-ranked Pathfinder’s discarded gear. Jalo watched, his awe growing with each silent, efficient act. His earlier despair was replaced by a bewildered admiration. He kept trying to ask questions, but I simply shook my head, my attention focused, my mind racing through possibilities and probabilities, re-calculating routes, anticipating threats. “You… you know this place?” Jalo finally whispered, his voice hushed. “How?” “It’s the Valta,” I said without looking at him. “They all follow certain patterns. Once you learn the language, you can read the story.” It was a lie, of course. I knew these patterns because I’d walked them before, died in them before. Too many times. We descended into a vast, almost perfectly spherical vault. The air here was warm, humid, carrying the scent of rich earth and ozone. Strange, bioluminescent fungi clung to the walls, casting a dull, pale glow. In the center, a massive prism thrummed with internal glare, feeding thin tendrils of raw resonance into the surrounding rock. A deep 'Heart-vault.' A place where Echoes were born, where the very fabric of reality was thinnest. We were not supposed to find one of these, especially not in a live sector. Before I could process the tactical implications, the air grew frigid. The Shard of Absence materialized, not fading from shadow, but *ripping* itself into existence, a jagged tear in the humid air of the Heart-vault. Its silhouette was sharper here, its faceted surface gleaming with an intense, internal glare. It was no longer observing; it was hunting. And it was focused solely on us. “Run!” I yelled, shoving Jalo forward. But it was too late. The Shard didn’t move. Instead, an invisible concussive shock slammed into us, throwing us backward. I hit the moist ground hard, the air knocked from my lungs. My Echo-knife flew from my grasp. Jalo, however, reacted differently. The raw force, instead of simply harming him, seemed to ignite something within. A low growl rumbled in his chest, guttural and unfamiliar. His eyes, usually soft brown, now burned with a fierce, unstable fury. His hands, clenched into fists, began to crackle with an unnatural blue light. The very air around him warped, distorting the fungi on the walls. He wasn’t just powerful; he was a storm waiting to break. “Leave him alone!” Jalo roared, his voice no longer that of a naive farm boy, but of something ancient, something enraged. He lunged, a blur of raw, uncontrolled fury, and drove his glowing fists into the Shard of Absence. It was a primal scream of power, an explosion of force that ripped through the Heart-vault. The blue light flared, blinding. The mineral core of the vault shuddered violently, its tendrils recoiling. The ground shook, not with the measured shift of the Labyrinth, but with a violent, chaotic tremor. The Shard of Absence, however, was untouched. The explosion of Jalo’s power simply rippled over its surface, like water over polished stone, leaving no mark, no scratch. It was immune. But the Heart-chamber was not. The prism at the center began to crack, spiderweb fissures racing across its surface. The trapped light within flickered, then surged, then began to *invert*. The tendrils of power, instead of feeding into the rock, began to tear at it, pulling reality apart. The cavern warped. The fungi on the walls stretched into impossible shapes, then dissolved into pure light. The very air twisted, becoming liquid, then solid, then nothing. I was thrown, tumbling through a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations. Time itself seemed to unravel. Images flashed before my eyes, not memories, but pure information, raw and unfiltered, pouring into my mind. I saw the Shard not as an entity, but as a mechanism, a tool of impossible precision, designed to excise anomalies. I saw its purpose, its function, its cold, unfeeling directives. And then, through the warping reality, I saw the hand that wielded it. The figure was shrouded in shadow, but the stance, the subtle tilt of the head, the glint of a familiar, scarred gauntlet… It was him. My old commander. The man I had served under, the man who had taught me everything, the man I had watched die in the Labyrinth’s core in my first life. He stood there, impossibly alive, his face still hidden, but his presence undeniable, radiating a cold, clinical power that dwarfed even the Labyrinth itself. And he was holding the reins of the Shard of Absence, controlling it with absolute authority, directing its chilling hunt for me. This wasn’t fate. This was a personal vendetta. He was not just alive; he was hunting me across timelines, using a god-forged weapon to erase me. The realization hit me with the force of a thousand Labyrinth collapses. My past wasn't just dead; it was actively trying to kill me, again.

Two-Man Army