Story Title :- Riftborn Chronicles
Chapter 6: Revenant Protocol
The cryo-chambers deep beneath the Null Apex Citadel groaned to life.
Steam hissed from ruptured vents. Frozen glass fractured. And from within one of the darkest pods, something ancient stirred.
The lights in the chamber flickered violently. Sirens wailed—but not from malfunction.
From fear.
The Revenant opened its eyes.
General Nyra Voss stood on the observation deck, her expression unreadable as the pod cracked open below. Her coat bore the insignia of the Null Order, but unlike others, hers was etched with red glyphs—marks reserved only for those sanctioned to wake the irreversible.
A tech approached, voice trembling. “General, the protocol hasn’t been activated in decades. The Revenant—he’s unstable. Even the Apex Directive warns—”
“Silence,” she said coldly. “He’s not meant to be stable. He’s meant to end Kael Draven.”
The pod hissed open. A massive figure stepped out, steam clinging to his armor. The Revenant’s body was a mesh of organic tissue and Voidsteel, his eyes two empty wells of flickering white-blue light. His chest bore the Null sigil—but scorched over it, like it had been violently rejected.
Nyra descended the stairs.
“You remember me?” she asked calmly.
The Revenant tilted his head. His voice, when it came, was like a broken machine trying to sing.
“I remember… everything.”
“You were the first Riftbound. The original prototype. Before Kael. Before the Shatterborn.”
The Revenant flexed his hands, black tendrils of corrupted time flickering across his gauntlets.
“I was discarded.”
Nyra nodded once. “Then I offer you revenge. Kael Draven has stabilized. He’s a threat not only to Null… but to all timelines. Kill him, and I will give you the power to become the new Axis.”
The Revenant’s grin split like a wound. “He took my place. My future. My soul. I will take his timeline and erase it from the root.”
He walked past her.
And the temperature in the room dropped a full ten degrees.
Elsewhere — The Riftline
Kael stood outside the sanctum, watching the Riftstorm flicker across the horizon.
He was stronger now. More grounded. The chaotic voices in his head had quieted since his anchoring. But there was an eerie stillness in the air—like the world had inhaled and was waiting to exhale destruction.
Haron approached, his hands behind his back.
“You can feel it, can’t you?” he asked.
Kael nodded slowly. “Something’s coming.”
“Not something,” Asha said, emerging from behind a crumbling pillar. “Someone.”
She tossed a Null beacon onto the ground. The projector displayed a hologram—grainy but unmistakable.
A massive figure, half-machine, half-Riftspawn. Inhuman. Impossibly fast. Known only by one name in Null’s darkest files.
The Revenant.
Kael’s chest tightened. “He looks like… me.”
Asha tapped the image. “He was the prototype. The first attempt to bond human DNA with Rift entropy. But he was too unstable. Too fractured.”
“They buried him?”
“Worse,” Haron said. “They froze him. Locked him in temporal stasis and erased all records from mainstream archives. Only the Inquisitors remember him. If they’re releasing him now…”
“They see me as a real threat,” Kael finished.
Asha gave a thin smile. “Congratulations. You’ve graduated to existential hazard.”
Kael didn’t laugh.
A Day Later — Ghost District of Enkai
The city had long since been abandoned, its inhabitants vanished during the Second Fracture. Now, it was a dead zone—intermittent gravity shifts, buildings floating sideways, shadow creatures prowling its underlevels.
It was here Kael tracked the Revenant’s trail.
Slaughtered Riftbeasts littered the streets. Mutated scavengers turned to ash. Time itself seemed to scream in his wake.
Kael crouched beside a charred husk.
“This wasn’t just a kill,” he muttered. “It was a message.”
“Then let’s message back,” Asha said. She adjusted her arm-mounted orb, arcane runes spinning around her wrist. “We take him out before he gets to any populated zones.”
Haron hesitated. “No. You don’t understand. You don’t fight the Revenant. You run.”
Kael stood. “I’m done running.”
They found him near the fractured cathedral of Enkai’s core. The Revenant stood atop the shattered altar, facing away from them, surrounded by Riftstorm tendrils swirling unnaturally.
“Kael Draven,” he growled without turning. “You’re smaller than I imagined.”
Kael stepped forward, hands glowing. “You always imagined yourself bigger, didn’t you?”
The Revenant turned.
And the storm died.
Time in the entire zone froze momentarily—crows locked in midair, fire frozen in place, buildings halting mid-collapse.
The Revenant grinned. “Let me show you what real power looks like.”
He lunged.
The impact shattered the cathedral.
Kael was hurled through three walls before he could brace. The Revenant was on him instantly—raining blows laced with anti-time. Each hit didn’t just hurt—it rewrote. Fractured Kael’s sense of place, of memory.
Asha fired multiple null bolts. The Revenant absorbed them through his chest, then expelled a wave of reversed causality—unfiring them back in time, so they never existed.
Haron shouted a glyph, casting a shielding ward of frozen momentums.
The Revenant crushed it with one punch.
Kael wiped blood from his mouth.
He felt the Riftmark blaze.
“Let me in,” it whispered.
“Let me out.”
“No,” Kael growled. “Not yet.”
He rushed the Revenant, weaving between seconds, attacking from three angles at once.
One punch landed.
The Revenant staggered.
Then he laughed. “You’ve improved. But I was made for this.”
The air around them collapsed into a dark sphere—an inverted timeline Kael had only seen in theory.
Inside it, everything rewound. Pain reversed. Blood unbled. Bones unbroken.
But Kael realized something horrifying.
Only for the Revenant.
He was healing with every second.
Kael was stuck in normal time.
And he was bleeding out.
Asha reached into her belt and pulled something out—a black crystal.
“Kael!” she yelled. “Use it!”
“What is it?!”
“A shard of Prime Chronite. A tether to a future you haven’t lived yet. It’ll cost… but it’ll pull you into the version of you who can win this fight.”
Kael didn’t hesitate.
He crushed the shard in his fist.
The world exploded.
Kael’s vision blurred. He saw flashes of a future—himself in full control of his powers, wielding time like a blade, a suit of shimmering Riftsteel wrapped around his frame.
And then he was back.
Not fully that Kael.
But enough.
The Revenant swung.
Kael caught his fist.
And broke it.
“You’re not the prototype,” Kael said.
“You’re the failure.”
He unleashed a burst of Riftfire through his body, slamming the Revenant into the sky, chasing him upward in a column of white-blue light.
They collided midair. Explosions bent the skyline. Buildings twisted in spatial screams.
Kael roared and drove the Revenant through a floating district.
And finally, down into the depths of Enkai’s crater.
The Revenant crawled from the rubble, his body steaming, flickering.
“I… cannot… fail…”
Kael landed in front of him, Riftmark burning.
“You already did.”
He raised a hand.
And with a twist of time—
Undid the Revenant’s existence.
Not killed.
Removed.
As if he had never been.
Kael collapsed.
Asha caught him. “That crystal… it aged you. Temporally, I mean.”
He looked down at his hands. The Riftmark had spread. His veins pulsed silver.
“I felt who I could become,” he said. “It was terrifying. But also…”
“Hopeful,” Haron said, arriving with a limp. “If you can become him… then there’s still a chance to win.”
Kael looked at the stars again.
Only now, he could feel them moving out of order.
Something worse was coming.
He could feel it.
And it had his name.
Far Beyond — A Rift-Fortress in Nullspace
Nyra stood before a colossal Riftgate, the Revenant’s essence sealed in a crystal core beside her.
She turned to a figure cloaked in smoke and mirrorlight.
“Begin the Axis Protocol,” she said. “If Kael won’t join the Rift…”
“…Then we’ll bring the Rift to every timeline.”
End of Chapter 6
