Chapter 3: The Riftwalker's Mark

The air in the tunnel turned viscous.

Kael froze, body tensed, as a wave of pressure rolled through the underground corridor like the breath of something massive and ancient. Dust rose from cracks in the floor. The shadows behind him churned, coalescing into shapes not meant to exist in this dimension—limbs bending the wrong way, eyes blinking where there were no faces.

They had found him.

Kael turned, grip tightening on the warlock blade. His arm burned where the sigil glowed, the pattern now shifting, alive—like something beneath his skin was rewriting the rules of his body. Or preparing it for something else.

A shriek echoed through the chamber. Then another.

The spectral figures burst forth, shrieking and warping through the air like corrupted spirits trapped between digital corruption and raw sorcery. Kael raised his blade as the first one lunged—only to phase through him.

But it didn’t pass harmlessly.

Pain exploded through his chest as if the creature had reached through flesh and memory, pulling at something inside. Kael dropped to his knees, gasping, and then—

A pulse.

Deep, guttural, from within his spine. The sigil on his arm ignited in violet fire. His vision inverted—colors bled into negatives, sound warped—and a different Kael stepped forward. Not with his legs, but with his will.

He didn’t move.

He shifted.

Like stepping sideways through the crack in a mirror.

The blade in his hand elongated, wreathed in shadow-fire. The air around him screamed as time buckled—and when the next creature attacked, Kael struck without thought, carving a shimmering arc that sliced through the entity’s existence.

The spirit howled, unraveling into tendrils of glitching light.

Kael exhaled. The moment snapped back. Color returned. Sound leveled.

He blinked. “What… the hell did I just do?”

"You walked the Rift," a voice said.

Kael turned, fast. His blade hummed, vibrating from the energy still burning through it.

Standing at the far end of the chamber was a tall figure in a hood of stitched shadows, a lantern dangling from one elongated hand. The lantern didn’t glow—it absorbed light. His face was a void, endless and blank.

Kael’s instincts screamed danger. But his power didn’t rise in protest. It bowed—like a hound before its master.

The figure stepped forward.

“I am the Hollow Warden,” it said. “Guardian of Riftbound souls. And you, Kael Draven, carry a mark not meant for your kind.”

Kael stood his ground. “You’re one of them?”

The Warden tilted its head. “I am of many things. But no… I am not one of the shadows that hunt you. I bind what should not cross. But your existence… complicates this.”

Kael’s fingers twitched on the hilt of his blade. “Then help me understand. What is happening to me? What did they do to me?”

The Warden raised the lantern. Within it swirled fragments of memories—his own. He saw images of himself as a child, speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Training in black corridors. His mind wired to machines as warlocks chanted beyond glass walls.

“You are a Riftwalker,” the Warden intoned. “A hybrid. Part vessel, part gate. The Arcane Protocol did not make you—it unlocked you. Your mind was the cage. Now, the seal is broken.”

Kael stepped back. “So I’m a walking rift?”

“No,” the Warden said. “You are a threshold. The eye that stares both ways. And both sides are beginning to see.”

The chamber trembled again. Distant screams echoed—closer now.

“You must choose, Kael Draven. Anchor yourself… or drift.”

“What does that mean?”

The Warden stepped closer, holding out the lantern. “There are memories hidden within you—vaulted in time fractures. Triggers. Unlock them, and you may gain control. Let them fester… and you will become what hunts you.”

Kael hesitated. Then reached for the lantern.

It passed through his hand.

The Warden faded.

“Seek the Crimson Archive,” the voice whispered, now disembodied, surrounding him like wind in a dead forest. “There lies your name… and your enemy.”

Then silence.

The pressure lifted. The chamber grew still. The Rift shades, for now, were gone.

Kael stumbled back into the transit corridor, the world tilting as he walked. His body felt both heavy and electrified. Every step reverberated through the sigil, sending tiny pulses of awareness into the surrounding reality. He was starting to feel things beyond sight—ripples in magic, cracks in space, anomalies just beneath the skin of the world.

Vex’s voice crackled through a speaker embedded in the inner rim of his skull.

“Kael. You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a massive energy spike coming from Central Sector. Someone just accessed the Crimson Archive.”

Kael stiffened. “What is it?”

“A forbidden data-core repository. Forbidden as in… pre-Rupture magic-tech. Encrypted memories, astral signatures, soulprints—stuff that shouldn’t exist anymore. Syndicate’s locked it down tight.”

“And you think it’s connected to me?”

“No,” Vex replied. “I know it is. One of the logs just activated under your name.”

Kael swallowed hard.

The Hollow Warden’s words echoed again.

“There lies your name… and your enemy.”

He looked down at the burning sigil on his arm. It now resembled the Riftwalker seal—an ever-turning spiral of runes orbiting an empty center.

Kael closed his eyes. He felt it now.

Something was waiting for him at the Crimson Archive.

Something that remembered everything he had forgotten.

End of Chapter 3