The air shattered.
Not like glass, but like time itself had fractured.
Ethan had seen strange Rift distortions before—places where reality blurred, where things existed in states they shouldn't. But this? This was something worse. This wasn't just a crack in the world. It was a deliberate break.
And the thing standing before him was its cause.
The Rift Servant.
Its form flickered—tall one second, hunched the next, shifting through states that didn't belong together. It wasn't like looking at a creature. It was like looking at a thousand possible versions of the same thing, all at once, layered over each other in a pulsing mass of broken existence.
But its eyes—if they could be called that—never wavered. They were locked on Ethan.
Watching.
Waiting.
Then the clocktower tolled a third time, and the creature moved.
---
A Battle Against Time Itself
Ethan barely had time to react.
