Ater POV:
I held Alvi tighter.
Not out of panic-but instinct. Desperation. As if, by clutching her close enough, I could anchor myself to something real. Something solid. Something that wasn't falling apart in my arms.
But her blood had other plans.
It soaked through her clothes, warm and wet and terrifyingly fast. The smell of iron clung to my throat. Too much. Too fast.
She was weightless in my hold. Limp. Her skin shifted between feverish heat and deathly cold like her body couldn't decide whether it was giving up or fighting back. Her breathing-shallow, uneven-sounded like a signal flickering at the edge of failure. She was still alive. Barely.
The metal floor beneath us was too clean. Pristine. The kind of reflective, surgical sterility that belonged in labs, not warzones. But that was already ruined. Crimson spread across the floor in slow, blossoming pools, dark and deliberate, like the world itself was bleeding with us.
The silence didn't last.
Clack-clack-clack.
Footsteps. Hard-soled boots. Too fast for civilians. Too clean for looters.
Trained.
Coordinated.
I didn't look up at first-just shifted enough to shield her body with mine. Muscles screamed, joints locked, and my bloodied hands trembled against the urge to drop from exhaustion. My body begged for rest. My instincts refused it.
A white blur entered my peripheral vision-then another. Shapes emerged from the corridor. Humanoid, but not human. Not really. Armored figures in sleek white exosuits stepped into the corridor, visors glowing faintly beneath their helms. The metal of their plating shone under the corridor lights, but not decoratively. They were built for clarity. Efficiency. Suppression.
Weapons glinted-rifles, sleek and humming with stored kinetic energy I didn't recognize. They moved like a unit. A circle forming. Trained. Precise.
Six of them. Maybe more behind the blinding light.
They surrounded us in silence. No shouts. No warnings. Just a ring of death humming with latent violence.
One stepped forward. His weapon lifted, barrel aligned with my forehead. No tremble. No hesitation.
"Unregistered anomalies. Threat level unknown. Prepare to fire."
The words rang in my ears like a bell tolling for the dead.
No.
I shifted, teeth gritted, ready to fight-even if I couldn't stand. My body screamed, but it didn't matter. If I went down, I'd take one of them with me.
I'd die holding her.
Then-
"Stand down."
A voice. Not loud, but absolute. A scalpel, not a hammer.
Everything froze.
The air shifted. Even the soldiers faltered-not in fear, but in recognition. As if the voice had cut through whatever protocol drove them, and rewrote it on the spot.
From behind the formation, a man stepped forward.
He didn't walk like a commander. He walked like someone who had nothing to prove and no time for performance. He was tall but wiry, shoulders slightly slouched beneath the long white coat that swung behind him like a flag for some half-buried authority.
Beneath it, a black turtleneck framed his lean build, and from the coat's breast pocket, the chain of an old-fashioned silver watch caught the light-a relic in a world full of data streams and digital IDs.
A black pen was clipped neatly to his collar. Probably the same one he'd use to sign my death certificate if I twitched the wrong way.
His face was sharper than his frame-lined, creased, and wearied by time in the way that didn't fade with sleep. His short black hair was threaded with streaks of grey, disheveled in a way that didn't seem intentional.
Not quite presentable, not quite careless. His five o'clock shadow looked like it had taken permanent residence on his jaw. The bags under his eyes weren't the kind that came from a bad night-they were the kind that came from years of bad nights.
He looked like the kind of man who'd survived explosions, quarantines, betrayals, and four restructures of bureaucratic leadership-and still came back in the morning to file the report.
A soldier hesitated as the man passed.
"Sir. Elm," he murmured. "They weren't in the registry. We thought-"
"You thought wrong," Elm interrupted, without slowing, without looking. "Do you see what he's holding?"
He knelt beside me.
No sudden movements. Just calm observation.
His gaze shifted to Alvi-quick, clinical, calculating. There was no softness in it, no overt compassion. But something flickered there. Not empathy-he didn't seem the type-but a recognition of cost. A subtle tension that suggested he'd seen this before. Too many times.
"She's dying," I rasped, voice cracking.
Elm didn't argue. He didn't promise. He simply turned his head.
"Medical Sector. Priority One. Alert R.A.P. Stabilization field. Now."
The soldiers hesitated for less than a second.
That was a second too long.
I try to move, to stop them from taking her away-
Elm's hand shot out and landed firmly on my shoulder.
There was surprising weight behind the touch.
]"She won't make it if you don't let us act now."
It wasn't a plea. It wasn't even a command.
It was the voice of someone who'd already calculated every outcome. And only one of them led to her survival.
I looked into his eyes.
Tired. Sharp. Not uncaring-but so weathered by chaos that caring had become a calculated risk. A weapon. A tool to be applied with precision.
I let go.
And something inside me cracked.
Her body was lifted carefully from my arms, and I felt myself collapse without moving. The world dimmed. As she vanished down the corridor, silver doors hissed shut behind her, leaving only a red smear in her place.
Two more soldiers moved to lift me.
I didn't resist.
The pain was numbed now. Muted. Like my body had decided to fold in on itself just to make the moment easier to forget.
My head dropped back.
My eyes closed.
And then-
Darkness.
Observation Chamber - MWMB Medical Sector
The chamber glowed cold-blue, lit by the unceasing flicker of floating holograms and data feeds. Readouts spun in the air, surrounded by threads of static and shifting diagnostics. A steady hum buzzed low through the floor, like the room itself was holding its breath.
Dr. Elm stood alone, his posture slightly hunched, one hand fiddling with the silver chain of the watch in his breast pocket-not checking it, just... holding it. Like a habit he'd forgotten to drop.
Two primary files hovered in front of him. Red-flagged. Data corruption. Missing identifiers.
Incomplete.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
SUBJECT A
Status: John Doe
Codename: ATER
Classification: Unknown World Origin
Rift Entry: 017
SUBJECT B
Status: Jane Doe
Codename: ALVI
Classification: Unknown World Origin
Rift Entry: 017
_______________________________________________________________________________________
He adjusted his glasses, eyes narrowing behind the lenses. With a flick of his wrist, the data expanded-DNA strands, neural maps, cellular breakdowns-each line flashing with static, each scan running endless loops with no endpoint.
Nothing matched.
No world. No signature. No records of existence.
Not even a soul-stamp.
By every measurable standard, they didn't exist.
And yet... they bled. They broke. They suffered.
They were real.
He opened Alvi's vitals. His lips pressed into a thin line.
"Cellular degradation accelerating," he muttered. "Neural pathways stable, but declining. Core magic is disintegrating. No harmonization with base-world laws."
She wasn't healing.
She was unraveling.
This world was rejecting her, atom by atom. Magic was destabilizing her core. Biology couldn't keep up. She wasn't dying from trauma-she was being erased by incompatibility.
Elm's jaw tightened.
He brought up Ater's scans next. Not much better.
Alive. But fractured in ways that didn't make sense. Trauma looping in layers-scars burned, regrown, broken again. Neural pulses showing foreign energy flows-unnatural. Corrupted. Powerful.
Elm reached to initiate another diagnostic-
The door hissed.
"Twelve hours," came a voice behind him.
He didn't need to turn.
"Agent Varin."
She entered with the clipped formality of someone born into command. Her uniform was crisp: black and gold, the sharp colors of R.A.P.-Restoration and Preservation. The Bureau's elite. The last line between anomaly and collapse. The emblem on her shoulder pulsed faintly with layered runes, constantly adjusting for dimensional stability.
"Command wants answers. Status on the Doe subjects."
Elm gestured to the hovering scans.
"No registry matches. No known past. But their energy signatures ripple across the network like sonar. Ancient."
Varin's eyes moved to Alvi's data. No emotion surfaced.
"She's not going to make it."
"Not unless we act now," Elm said. "We've run out of conventional options. With your authorization, we initiate bio-reconstruction. Center-grade."
Varin's brow twitched.
"On a Jane Doe?"
"I want her alive," Elm said evenly. "And if Subject A agrees to cooperate, we may uncover the collapse point that destroyed their world. Maybe even stop the next one."
She folded her arms.
"He'll be under full Center protocol. Surveillance. Control. If he's even half as dangerous as these scans suggest..."
Elm turned back to Ater's vitals.
Beneath the sterile recovery sheet, the subject stirred.
Not awake
Not peaceful.
His fingers clenched.
Muscles coiled.
Elm watched him, expression unreadable. Somewhere behind the data, the protocols, and the bloodied battlefield they came from, he saw it.
A storm could be is appraoching.
"He'll say yes."
"Why are you so sure?"
Elm's voice was quiet.
Measured.
"Because he has nothing left. And people like him..."
"...will burn the world before they lose the last thing they love."
Ater povish
Ater's eyes opened to silence.
But it wasn't the quiet of rest or recovery. This was sterile. Manufactured. The kind of silence that came with filtered air and reinforced walls. The ceiling above him glowed a clinical white, interrupted by thin blue veins of faint light. He didn't recognize the material.
He didn't care.
He sat up without hesitation.
Pain flared through his limbs, dull but present-like echoes of battles his body hadn't finished fighting. He ignored it.
His gaze swept the room with practiced speed.
No weapons. No gear. No Alvi.
The bed beneath him was too soft. The air smelled of ionization and recycled oxygen. No dust. No dirt. No blood.
He slid off the bed, bare feet landing on the polished floor with the muted sound of contact against something synthetic. His hand moved on instinct-reaching for something that wasn't there: the hilt of his blade, the curve of his mask, the steady weight of everything he had relied on to survive.
Nothing.
Then-a hum.
A ripple of energy surged through the air, blue and translucent. A force field ignited in front of him, shimmering faintly. It didn't lash out. It simply existed-calm, controlled, immovable.
The voice came as the door opened.
"Don't bother testing it. The field's tuned to your nervous system."
Elm entered, looking unchanged.
Still draped in his long white coat, still dressed like someone who couldn't decide between a mission briefing or a funeral. His silver-rimmed glasses caught the glow of the room's lights, making it impossible to tell exactly where his eyes were focused. But Ater knew-he was being measured. Assessed.
Elm always measured.
"Where is she?" Ater's voice was low, worn but steady. Like a blade dulled at the edges but not yet broken.
"Alive," Elm replied, matter-of-fact. "In cryostasis."
Ater's fingers twitched.
"I want to see her."
"You will," Elm said, stepping further into the room. "But first-food. And context."
Ater didn't move. He stared at Elm like he was calculating the fastest route through him if he had to.
Elm didn't blink.
"You've been unconscious for nearly two days. Your body isn't running on defiance alone."
For a moment, there was only the humming of the field.
Then Ater stepped forward.
The field dimmed in response to his movement, recognizing the shift in his biometrics. It vanished without a sound.
The MWMB and the Heart of All Worlds
They walked side by side, though Ater trailed a step behind-not out of deference, but caution. He was still gathering information, scanning every turn, every hallway, every person they passed.
The Multi Worlds Management Bureau was unlike anything he'd seen.
The corridors were arteries, gleaming with filtered light and information conduits that pulsed like veins beneath transparent floors. Each sector orbited something massive at the core-the Center-a blazing engine of fractal light, suspended in the vacuum beyond reinforced glass.
A sun that didn't burn. A reality that didn't belong to any one world.
"The Center is the source of everything," Elm said, his hands clasped behind his back. "All life. All worlds. All time. The MWMB forms the scaffold around it-an interdimensional framework to keep it stable."
Ater said nothing, but his eyes moved constantly.
Creatures passed by-humanoids, quadrupeds, robed, armored, rotting, translucent. None familiar. Some gave him wary glances. Others didn't even notice him.
"You're its shield," Ater said finally.
Elm nodded.
"Correct. We track anomalies. Stabilize failing systems. Intervene when corruption nears the core."
"And you?" Ater asked. "What are you?"
"Coordinator Elm," he said. "Head of R.A.P.-Restoration and Preservation. I oversee first-response missions, salvage ops, and special containment or recruitment... when things cross a certain threshold."
Ater's jaw clenched.
"Is that what I am? A threat?"
Elm gave a subtle tilt of the head. Not a denial. Not an admission.
"You're something rare. Unaligned. Alive after a world's death. That makes you interesting. Possibly useful."
"You don't sugarcoat things," Ater said.
"You don't need it."
Yai Mida Noodles and Roast
They turned into a smaller passageway, lit by lanterns that swayed gently in the recycled breeze.
Down here, the Bureau felt less like a fortress and more like a city. And in one quiet alley, a carved wooden sign hung over a narrow doorway:
YAI MIDA NOODLES AND ROAST
"Food that makes you remember."
The inside was hazy with the scent of salt and smoke, punctuated by the subtle sweetness of herbs. The place was filled with chatter and clinking bowls. Uniforms and civilian clothes blended-refugees beside soldiers, engineers beside children.
Ater paused at the entrance.
He knew this kind of place. The quiet ones. The safe ones. The places that pretended the world hadn't ended-even when it had.
From behind the counter, a woman raised her head.
Flour dusted her apron. Her hair was tied back in a loose knot. Her voice cracked with age and wear, but there was warmth behind it.
"Ah. The scowling one returns."
Ater narrowed his eyes.
"You were at the plaza."
"I'm where I'm needed," Yai Mira said, ladle still in hand. "And you're hungry."
She motioned toward a mismatched table in the corner.
He sat. No words.
Minutes later, a bowl hit the table.
Thick noodles. Roast meat. Herbs that glowed faintly in the broth. Ater didn't ask what it was. He ate.
Quick. Clean. No wasted motion. No comment.
Elm watched him.
Because eating like that wasn't hunger-it was survival. A habit. A confession.
Mira passed behind them.
"You eat like someone who's only known war," she said.
"I have," Ater replied.
"And yet you're here. So eat slower. The war's not in the broth."
He didn't smile. But he paused.
When the bowl was empty, he sat back-still quiet.
"I can't pay."
"Wasn't expecting you to," Mira said.
Elm pulled a polished Bureau token from his coat and slid it across the counter.
"On my account."
Ater turned to him, voice flat.
"Why?"
"Because whether you like it or not," Elm said, "you're part of this now."
Cryostasis - BioCore Chamber
The room was colder than the others.
A containment field pulsed gently from the walls, maintaining the chamber's temperature.
In the center hovered a single cryo-pod-its sides curved like glass and laced with energy veins that pulsed in time with Alvi's vitals.
She floated inside, preserved in stillness. Light curled from beneath her skin like stardust trapped in veins.
Ater stepped to the glass.
He didn't touch it.
Elm stood beside him, voice quieter now.
"She's alive. But unstable. Her body's rejecting this world. The same energy that kept her alive is now tearing her apart."
Ater's eyes didn't move.
"Fix it."
"We will. But we'll need your help."
"You want control."
"I want cooperation," Elm corrected. "Train with us. Work missions. Help identify threats to the Center. And in exchange, we give her a future-not as an experiment. As herself."
Silence.
Ater exhaled through his nose.
"Fine. I'll cooperate."
Elm didn't smile.
But he nodded, once.
"Then welcome to the MWMB."
Departure
The lanterns above swayed as they walked back through the lower district, the soft glow of Yai Mida Noodles and Roast fading behind them.
"Boy."
Ater stopped.
Yai Mira stood at the shop's threshold. Her apron was still dusted with flour, a bundle in her hands. She stepped forward and held out a small wooden bento box, tied with red string. Steam curled from the seams.
"You'll need this later," she said. "Not just for the food. To remember there are still quiet things worth fighting for."
Ater looked at the box.
At her.
He didn't know what to say. His fingers moved slowly. He took it.
"...Thanks," he muttered.
She gave a knowing smile.
"Come back in one piece next time. I might throw in dessert."
She turned and vanished into the warm light of her shop.
Ater stood still for a moment longer than usual.
Elm waited beside him in silence. Then, as they resumed walking:
"You haven't said much about where you're from," Elm said. "And I haven't asked."
"Don't," Ater replied.
Elm nodded once.
"Understood. What you were doesn't matter. What you become here does."
They reached the lift bay. A golden glow flickered at the base of the platform.
Elm tapped his ID. The doors opened.
"Tomorrow, you'll begin evaluation."
Ater turned his head slightly.
"What kind?"
"Trial run. Combat. Teamwork. We want to see how you perform under pressure-and with others."
"I don't need teammates."
"Maybe not," Elm said, stepping onto the platform. "But the Center does. And if you're going to be part of the Bureau, you'll learn how to fight with people-not just near them."
Ater said nothing.
The lift descended, humming low as it carried them into the depths of MWMB command.
He still held the bento box.
It wasn't heavy.
But somehow, it was impossible to ignore.
The lift continued its slow descent, the golden ambient light dimming the farther they dropped into the Bureau's lower levels. Ater stood with the bento box still in hand, gaze fixed forward, expression unreadable.
Elm stood beside him, arms folded behind his back, posture straight despite the ever-present weight in his shoulders.
A moment passed in silence.
Then, Ater spoke.
"What are you planning?"
Elm didn't look at him.
"We're going to run a few tests," he said calmly. "Assess your strength, responsiveness-see what exactly we're working with."
Ater's eyes narrowed.
"You mean see if I'm dangerous."
"I already know you are," Elm replied, without hesitation. "What we don't know is how far that danger can go-and whether it can be controlled. Or directed."
The lift slowed.
A soft chime echoed through the chamber. Ahead, reinforced doors slid open with a hiss, revealing a massive interior chamber-dark, industrial, humming faintly with power.
Beyond the threshold, artificial terrain shimmered into existence-jagged platforms, gravity shifts, simulated rift zones. Training arenas unlike anything from a normal world.
An electric wind rolled out across the threshold. The air was thicker here, charged. Alive.
Elm gestured toward the open space with a nod.
"Welcome to the proving grounds."
The doors parted fully.
And then-
Ater's gaze locked on something inside. His body shifted subtly. Alert. Coiled.
The lights inside the arena flickered-
and something moved in the shadows.