Chapter 71 – The Descent of Quiet Blades
The wind howled unnaturally through the fractured skyline as Kael-X stepped into the exposed courtyard of Whisper City's heart. The skies above churned with static clouds, reality itself thinning with every breath he took.
Then it came—
A whir. A hum.
A silence that didn't feel like peace… but preparation.
"They're here," Nyx whispered, her shadow tendrils bristling.
From the torn rooftops, figures began to descend—silent as smoke, swift as thoughts.
Ten of them.
Clad in sleek, mirrored armor that bent light and erased sound. Their helmets were faceless, their bodies moving in synchrony, like one will with ten limbs.
The Quiet Blades.
A unit rumored to be forged from the dreams of dying assassins. Created by Zypheron to hunt anything… or anyone… that shouldn't exist.
Veyron spun lazily above, smirking. "Ah… the irony. Shadows against silence. Let's see which speaks louder."
Kael-X crouched slightly, his cloak swirling. "We don't hold back."
"I didn't bring silence," Umbra hissed. "I brought oblivion."
The first blade struck—so fast that even Kael-X barely registered the motion. His left shoulder exploded in sparks as his armor cracked open. A second blade was already mid-swing toward his spine.
Kael-X flipped backward mid-air, activating his temporal twitch, slowing reality just enough to land behind one of the assassins and drive his elbow through its chestplate. But it didn't fall—it twisted in ways no body should, stabbing at him with a blade shaped like a fractal.
Nyx intercepted, slamming into the attacker, tendrils slicing through the assassin's midsection with brutal grace.
Oblivion roared, his shadow mass forming a dome around two of the blades, crushing them within a second of isolation.
Yet more arrived.
Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty.
"They're multiplying," Kael-X growled. "Clones?"
"No," Veyron answered, eyes glowing a deep violet. "Echo imprints. They're being streamed from a dimensional forge. We need to break the signal."
Kael-X leapt onto a nearby broken tower, dodging thrown blades that disintegrated air where they passed. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned his zero-point anchor, embedding it into the concrete beneath him to stabilize the distorted space.
The world slowed… and twisted.
In that frozen moment, he could see it—a floating prism above the battlefield, almost invisible, pulsing with the same light as the assassins' suits.
"That's the forge," he muttered.
He pointed. "Veyron—cut it."
The riddle-speaking shadow beast smirked, words dripping like void ink. "A song unsung must still find tune… let's play a note that breaks the moon."
Magic surged from Veyron's hands—jagged, dark, ancient. It sliced through the air and shattered the prism with a thunderous CRACK.
The assassins paused. Then… began to glitch.
Flickering like candle flames in a windstorm.
Kael-X wasted no time. He launched forward, twin chrono-blades summoned from his gauntlets, dancing through the remaining foes with cold precision. One by one, the Quiet Blades fell—silently, like the chapter of a book being closed.
And then…
Silence returned.
But it was different this time.
Not an assassin's silence… but the silence before a greater storm.
Kael-X dropped to a knee, breathing heavy.
"They're not stopping, are they?"
Nyx placed a hand on his shoulder. "No. But neither are we."
Kael-X slowly rose, exhaling steam into the cold void air. The battlefield around them was strewn with fragments of armor and fading code—remnants of the Quiet Blades' artificial existence. But the threat wasn't over.
Oblivion stirred, his massive shadowy form shrinking back into a humanoid silhouette. "I feel it," he rumbled. "A second wave… or worse."
Veyron tilted his head. "No... not a second wave." His eyes widened, glowing fiercely. "It's a counter-surge. They're activating a collapse field to erase the entire sector."
Kael-X's jaw clenched. "A failsafe."
Above them, the sky warped. A crimson glyph, massive and rotating, carved itself into the clouds—spinning with deadly elegance. Gravity shifted, pulling debris, corpses, and even sound toward the spiral.
"The Collapse Field will reverse time in this region by exactly 72 hours," Nyx hissed. "But only in this location. It's not to undo damage—it's to create a loop trap."
Kael-X's eyes narrowed. "A temporal prison."
Veyron nodded grimly. "Anyone caught inside… forgets. You relive the battle. Again. And again. Until your mind breaks and your soul fractures into quantum fragments. That's how they clean up loose ends."
Kael-X raised his gauntlet. "Not today."
He unleashed a pulse of Compound-X into his bloodstream—his veins igniting briefly with radiant blue light. His body surged forward, fast enough to burn the friction of the air, racing toward the glyph.
As he ran, everything slowed.
Voices whispered from the air—his own screams from the past iterations that never were. The loop was already forming.
"You don't belong here."
"You're a crack in the glass."
"Let us reset you."
Kael-X reached the glyph. Threw his anchor up. Locked himself outside of time.
The glyph resisted.
It screamed.
But Kael-X gritted his teeth, reversed the polarity of the zero-point anchor, and twisted the pulse—feeding the loop its own code backwards.
A shockwave burst out across the city, unraveling the spiral glyph and snapping time back into place like a whip.
Reality stabilized.
The sky cleared.
Silence again.
But this time… it was victory.
Kael-X fell to one knee, coughing hard. Blood spilled from his mouth, but he smiled through it.
"I told them…" he said softly. "I don't break. I adapt."
Umbra coiled around his shoulders like a living cape. "The system is starting to fear you."
"Good," Kael-X whispered.
Behind him, far on the shattered skyline, a single figure stood watching. Cloaked in silver, holding a mask carved with the symbol of a serpent eating its own tail.
The Ouro-Core had noticed him now.
And soon… they'd come to claim him.