The lower sectors always smelled different.
Less filtered air. More metal, damp concrete, and old dust that clung to the back of the throat.
Unit 3 moved down the narrow street in a loose wedge, Yuna at the front, Riku lingering a half-step behind and to the right, Hana near the center, Daren on the left side, and Shinra at the rear.
It looked casual.
It wasn't.
Shinra could feel the balance of it—the way each of them left space for the others' movements without thinking, the way Hana's hand stayed near her bracer, the way Riku's eyes flicked between rooftops and alley corners while pretending to be bored.
[Their formation is practiced, Master,] Arios observed.
[This unit overperforms its apparent rank.]
I noticed, Shinra replied.
They passed a row of small apartments packed into old concrete shells. A Mundane woman leaned out of a window to shake a blanket. Below, a child with a faint, barely-discernible glow in her eyes tried to conjure a flicker of light between her fingers. The spark sputtered once and died.
The girl glanced around anxiously, as if afraid someone would see her failure and laugh.
No one did.
Not yet.
Yuna's eyes slid that way for half a second, then back forward.
"You feel it?" she asked quietly.
Shinra did.
"We're close," he said.
The air ahead had started to bend.
Not visibly—not yet—but there was a pressure to it, a subtle vibration, like the space at the end of the street didn't quite fit properly anymore.
Riku checked the small scanner clipped to his band. "Energy spike confirmed," he muttered. "If that's not a Breach, I'll eat Daren's gloves."
"Why mine?" Daren asked.
"You picked them," Riku said.
The road dipped slightly as they approached an old transit access point. Heavy barriers had been set up around the entrance—temporary, projecting a faint shimmer. Two local patrol guards stood there, both low-tier Ascendants with tired eyes.
Relief flickered over their faces once they saw the Sanctum emblem.
"You're Unit 3?" one of them asked.
"Yeah," Yuna said, tapping her band. "We're here for the fluctuation at Transit 9-A. Any civilians inside?"
"We cleared the perimeter," the guard said. "No civilians got near it once we set up the cordon. But the readings have been unstable. It could open fully at any time."
"Any visual yet?" Hana asked.
"Just distortion," the other guard said. "No entities… yet. We didn't go closer than necessary."
"Good," Yuna said. "Pull your perimeter back another ten meters once we cross. If anything slips past us, stop it from getting into the housing blocks."
Both guards nodded quickly.
Yuna stepped through the first barrier. Unit 3 followed.
As soon as Shinra crossed, the change sharpened.
The tunnel mouth yawned ahead, dark and quiet. The station signs above it were cracked and faded, the old transit logo half-obscured by grime. Inside, beyond the physical shadow, power curled like smoke.
[Breach resonance confirmed, Master,] Arios said.
[Localized anomaly. Growing.]
I see it, Shinra thought.
Yuna didn't slow.
"All right," she said, voice dropping into command. "Formation three. Daren, you're with me up front. Riku, Hana, mid-back. Shinra—"
"Backline," Shinra said. "I'll observe first."
Riku made a face. "Of course you will."
"Don't start," Hana murmured.
They stepped into the old tunnel.
The temperature dropped a few degrees. Their footsteps echoed off the curved walls. Faint emergency strips still glowed along the floor, flickering every few meters like they were trying to remember how to function.
And ahead, the Breach.
It hovered near the middle of the tunnel, about twenty meters in—an ugly twist of space. The air there wavered like heat, but the ripples were jagged, edged with thin, crackling lines of light. A faint, discordant hum buzzed at the base of Shinra's skull.
"That's worse than the reading suggested," Hana muttered, eyes narrowing.
"Always is," Yuna said. "We're lucky it hasn't fully opened yet."
As if the Breach heard her, it pulsed.
The distortion thickened.
Shadowy shapes began to peel off from its edges, dripping down onto the floor like spilled ink turning solid.
Eclipse entities.
They lifted themselves up, limbs forming out of the darkness, faces congealing into mask-like shapes with hollow eyes that glowed faintly.
Yuna dropped her center of gravity slightly, hand sliding out to her side.
Light gathered around her fingers, racing up her arm, forming a crystalline line that extended outward, lengthening in an instant into a spear of solid, radiant energy.
She moved.
Her first step hit the ground with a burst, energy pushing her forward faster than a normal eye would track. The spear flashed once and punched clean through the first two entities trying to slither toward them. They shattered into shards of broken night, dissolving before they hit the floor.
Daren crashed into the next cluster.
His gauntlets flared, each punch carrying more weight than his size suggested. One strike splattered an entity against the tunnel wall; another blow crushed a half-formed mask under his heel.
Behind them, Hana's disks shot forward from her bracer. Two formed a barrier to the left as an entity tried to come in low across the floor. The creature slammed into the invisible wall and rebounded; another disk shot past it, wrapping its shadowy torso with glowing bands that cinched tight.
It tore free, but the delay gave Riku time.
He was already moving, rifles off his back in one smooth motion, boots planted.
His shots weren't loud. Just sharp pulses of compressed force that hit exactly where they needed to— through the masks.
Each entity that took a shot to the core spasmed and broke apart.
Shinra watched all of this from the rear, steps measured.
Yuna's spear work was sharp and efficient. No wasted movement, no flamboyant flourishes—stab, pivot, sweep, withdraw. She always positioned herself between the entities and her squad.
Daren's style was heavier, more straightforward, but not clumsy. He knew when to hold ground and when to give a step to let Hana's barrier catch the overflow.
Riku was annoying, but the barrel of his rifle always pointed where it mattered most. His timing was good; he rarely shot when someone else's move could handle it instead.
Hana's attention never drifted. Her barriers came up before anyone shouted for them. Her bindings snapped shut around anything that broke formation. She played the space like a quiet conductor.
Not bad, Shinra thought.
[High coordination,] Arios agreed.
[Especially for a mid-tier squad.]
More entities kept coming.
The Breach pulsed again, coughing out another wave. These were bigger—elongated limbs, more solid structure. Their faces grew more defined, their claws scraping against the ground with an unpleasant sound.
"Stabilization my ass," Riku muttered. "This is a full opening."
"Complaining later, shooting now," Yuna ordered.
Riku shot.
The squad pushed forward, carving a path through the wave.
Shinra stayed at the back, walking, not charging. Any entities that tried to peel off toward him were intercepted by well-timed shots or barriers. Yuna occasionally glanced his way, as if checking he hadn't disappeared.
"You're really just going to observe?" Riku called out once between shots. "Still waiting on proof you're not just a really confident Tier 3."
"Keep your eyes front, Riku," Hana said. "If he's useless, we'll notice soon enough."
"Cold," Riku groaned.
Daren grunted as he crushed another entity's face between his hands. "If he's useless, I'll throw him at the Breach," he said.
Shinra let their words pass. His gaze stayed on the anomaly ahead.
The Breach wasn't stable. Its edges flickered, curling inward and then bursting outward again. The energy density around it climbed steadily.
[Master,] Arios said.
[Reading an emerging higher-tier signature inside the Breach. Estimated one mid-level entity manifesting soon.]
When? Shinra thought.
[Within the next thirty seconds.]
The front line hit the limits of their current wave.
Entities broke against Yuna's spear and Daren's fists, and Riku's and Hana's coordination cleaned up whatever lingered.
Then the Breach throbbed.
Space at its center rippled violently, tearing wider. Something larger stepped out—a silhouette of armored shadow, taller than a person, with bone-like protrusions along its limbs. Its mask-face had sharper angles and a wider mouth, filled with jagged, glowing cracks.
Its aura was heavier.
"Mid-tier," Yuna said immediately. "Daren, you're up. Riku, soften it. Hana, watch for area attacks. Clear the small ones fast."
"On it!" Daren shouted.
He launched forward, gauntlets flaring brighter.
Riku's shots slammed into the bigger entity's shoulders and knees, staggering it. It shrieked silently, chest pulsing with more unstable light.
Smaller entities peeled off from its presence, as if drawn into its gravity, forming a loose shield around it.
Yuna spun her spear in a tight arc, slicing through the closer ones before they could reach Hana's position.
Shinra watched the mid-tier unfold its power.
It wasn't particularly clever. It was simply… heavy. Its claws left gouges in the tunnel floor. When it swung, the air distorted. When it roared without sound, the Breach behind it flickered in sympathy.
Daren met its first strike head-on.
The collision echoed down the tunnel, a deep, dull boom. The impact shuddered through the floor. Daren dug his heels in, teeth bared, muscles straining.
"Little help!" he barked.
Riku fired again. One shot clipped the mid-tier's arm, another tore a chunk out of the protrusions along its side.
The entity staggered, then planted its clawed feet and reared back.
Energy gathered in its chest.
Hana cursed under her breath. "Burst incoming!"
Her disks flew outward, forming multiple translucent barriers between the entity and the squad. Layers of glowing shields stacked over each other.
The entity's chest flared—
—and a condensed wave of Breach energy exploded outward in a cone.
It slammed into the barriers.
The first layer shattered. The second cracked. The third held, but only barely, Hana's jaw tightening with the effort. Sweat beaded at her temples.
"Still alive over there?" Riku called.
"Shut up," she said tightly. "Maintaining—"
Cracks spread further.
[If that wave had gone unblocked, the tunnel would have taken structural damage, Master,] Arios reported.
[Surface risk would rise.]
They're controlling it well, Shinra thought.
But the Breach wasn't done.
Power built again in the mid-tier's chest, faster this time.
Yuna's eyes narrowed. "We can't keep defending like this," she said. "Daren, force it back. Riku, aim for the core. We need to break it before it fires again."
Daren drove forward with a roar, slamming both fists into the entity's torso. It staggered, claws scraping deep lines into the floor. Riku's shots hammered into its shoulders, knocking its next blast off-center but not stopping the charge entirely.
Hana braced for impact, more disks spinning out from her bracer, taking up positions in front of the first cracked barrier.
The entity's chest flared again.
Riku shouted over his shoulder without looking back.
"Hey, Tier 1—at any point, you wanna stop sightseeing, that'd be great!"
Hana hissed, "Focus!"
Daren grunted, still locked with the thing's claws.
Yuna's spear snapped another lesser entity in half, clearing a line for them.
Shinra exhaled quietly.
[Master,] Arios said.
[If this blast hits at full strength, Hana's barriers will fail. Structural damage and potential injuries likely.]
"I know," Shinra answered.
He started walking forward.
Riku saw him from the corner of his eye and nearly double-taked. "Oh, now he moves," he muttered.
Shinra ignored him.
He approached until he stood just behind Yuna, who shot him a brief look without stopping her movements.
"Thought you were observing," she said between thrusts.
"I've seen enough," he replied.
The mid-tier's unstable energy reached a peak.
The tunnel's air grew thick, buzzing.
Shinra lifted his hand.
He didn't pull hard.
Just enough.
Space trembled at his fingertips, not visibly, but in a way his senses traced easily. Power coiled, compressed—not flaring outward, but folding inward so tightly it almost disappeared.
He drew a line.
Invisible, except for a tiny distortion in the air, like light passing through warped glass.
He let it fall.
The line sliced through the air and passed cleanly through the mid-tier's chest.
The gathered energy didn't explode outward.
It simply… cut.
The entity froze.
A thin crack spread across its torso, exactly where the line had gone.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then, without drama, its upper body slid down and apart, the entire structure breaking into shards of shadow that dissolved into fragments of fading light.
The gathered burst vanished with it.
The remaining lesser entities spasmed violently, then collapsed into shivering pieces that melted into the floor, leaving nothing behind.
Silence rushed in as the Breach shuddered.
Without the anchor of its strongest spawn, the anomaly began to shrink. The jagged edges curled inward, the distorted air smoothing itself out. Within seconds, it was no more than a ripple.
Then nothing.
The hum in Shinra's head faded.
He lowered his hand.
He'd used barely more force than it took to brush dust from a sleeve.
[Very minimal output, Master,] Arios noted.
[And still more than sufficient.]
That's enough for now, Shinra thought.
Riku let out a noise that was somewhere between a choking sound and a swear. "What," he said. "The hell."
Hana stared at the spot where the mid-tier had been, her disks slowly returning to rest positions around her bracer.
"…The signature just… disappeared," she said.
Daren straightened slowly, rolling his shoulders. "You waiting all this time to do that?" he asked, panting lightly.
"Yes," Shinra said.
Yuna turned to face him fully.
Her spear dimmed, light retracting back into her hand and vanishing.
"I thought you didn't like collapsing infrastructure," she said.
"I don't," Shinra replied. "That's why I kept it small."
Riku strode closer, eyes narrowed, rifles still in his hands. "You kept it small," he repeated. "That thing was about to blast us into a structural incident, and you…"
He gestured vaguely at the air.
"…cut it like paper?"
"Something like that," Shinra said.
Hana pushed her glasses up again, regaining her composure. "Your control is… precise," she said. "The output barely disturbed the surroundings. The entity's core destabilized cleanly."
"Why didn't you move earlier?" Riku demanded. "You could've cleared it the moment it stepped out."
Shinra met his gaze calmly.
"I said I would observe first," he said. "I needed to see how you function in real combat. If I'd acted from the beginning, I would've learned less."
Riku opened his mouth, closed it, then pointed a finger accusingly anyway. "…That's infuriating logic."
"But not wrong," Hana said quietly.
Daren let out a long breath and shook his arms out. "Next time, just give us a countdown," he muttered. "So I don't think I'm about to get flattened for no reason."
Yuna looked at Shinra for a long moment.
Her eyes moved from his hand, still relaxed at his side, to his face.
"That technique," she said. "I've never seen anything like it. No flash, no build-up, no noise. Just—"
She paused, as if searching for the right word.
"—final," she finished.
He shrugged faintly. "It's a habit," he said. "From a much older battlefield."
Riku stared. "You and your weird old-man lines," he muttered.
The tunnel, without the Breach's pressure, felt hollow and too quiet now.
Hana checked her band. "Residual energy is dropping," she reported. "No more entities forming. The anomaly is gone."
"Any structural damage?" Yuna asked.
"Minor scratches and surface stress," Hana answered. "Nothing critical. The first burst we blocked did most of what little damage there is."
Yuna nodded.
"Good," she said. "Let's confirm the exit path, then report up."
She turned away from Shinra, but paused.
"By the way," she said, glancing back over her shoulder. "That was more than 'not bad'."
He met her eyes.
"You, too," he said. "You kept your formation tight and your priorities clear. That's rare."
Her lips curved slightly, pleased.
"Unit 3 doesn't fall apart easily," she said. "With or without Tier 1s who like to watch first."
They regrouped and walked back toward the tunnel entrance at an easier pace.
Outside, the guards straightened when they emerged.
"It's done?" one asked.
"Breach neutralized," Yuna said. "Mid-tier entity eliminated. No spread beyond the tunnel."
The guard sagged with relief. "Thank you," he said. "If that thing had escalated…"
"It didn't," Yuna cut in. "That's what matters."
"Sanctum really does show up everywhere, huh…" the other guard muttered.
Yuna snorted. "Only where no one else wants to bother," she said.
As they left the cordoned area and stepped back onto the open street, Riku drifted closer to Shinra.
He walked in silence for a few seconds.
Then:
"All right," he said. "I'll admit it."
Shinra glanced at him. "Admit what?"
Riku scratched his cheek. "…You're not a fabricated Tier 1," he grumbled. "Happy?"
"I don't need you to admit it," Shinra said. "But I don't dislike the honesty."
Daren came up on his other side.
"Whatever your past is," he said, voice low, "I'm glad you were on our side of the Breach."
Shinra nodded once. "So am I."
Hana slowed her pace to walk near them, arms relaxed at her sides.
"Just remember," she said, calm as ever, "if you take a hit, let me know. You're not untouchable."
"Not anymore," Shinra said.
Yuna, walking a little ahead, glanced back at them.
"Hey," she called. "No debriefing before we actually debrief. Save the analysis for the report."
Riku raised his hands. "Yes, captain," he said.
They made their way back toward the higher districts.
The further they got from the tunnel, the more regular the city became again—noise, crowds, the invisible lines dividing strong from weak.
People glanced at their gear, their bands, their tired faces.
Some looked relieved. Others indifferent.
None of them knew that a mid-tier Breach had been a heartbeat away from becoming something much worse.
None of them knew what had cut it down in a single, thin, invisible stroke.
[You showed them just enough, Master,] Arios said quietly.
[Your squad has seen that your rank is real. But the world at large has not.]
That's how I want it, Shinra thought.
For now.
Yuna fell back a little until she was beside him.
"So," she asked. "How was your first Breach with us?"
"…Informative," he said.
She snorted. "You really like that word."
"It covers a lot," he replied.
"Anything else?" she pressed.
He looked ahead, at the Sanctum emblem barely visible in the distance as their guild building came back into view.
"Not bad," he said.
This time, she heard the weight behind it.
She clicked her tongue lightly. "…I'll take that as a compliment."
"It is one," he said.
They walked the rest of the way in companionable silence.
Behind them, in a slowly updating web of data and reports, someone at Ascendant Authority would eventually see the mission log:
Breach: Neutralized.
Squad: Sanctum Unit 3.
Notable participant: Tier 1 Ascendant — Name: Shinra.
A Tier 1 with no past.
A man whose file began with yesterday.
And somewhere, in higher offices and rival guild halls, a few brows would furrow.
But for now, in the space between old stone tunnels and bright guild doors,
Shinra walked back with his squad, hands relaxed, aura muted—
a sovereign pretending to be just another Ascendant
in a world that still had no idea who it had almost remembered.