Some truths were buried not to be forgotten—but to prevent them from waking.
[Setting – Intramuros HQ, War Council Room]
Alarms blared.
Data streams blinked red.
Admiral Ina Reyes stormed into the room, flanked by Riftwatchers and high-ranking Vein tacticians.
"Update," she barked.
"Sir—Ma'am—the southern crypt seal has been compromised," replied a lieutenant, sweat trickling down his neck. "Resonance readings spiked beyond containment thresholds. We believe... the First Contract has been accessed."
The room fell into stunned silence.
An elderly archivist dropped her stylus.
Someone whispered: "The Severing..."
Ina turned sharply. "Get me Sam. Now."
[Cut to – Crypt Depths]
Sam lay sprawled on the stone floor. His eyes glowed gold, flickering like dying stars. Valencia knelt beside him, her hand trembling as she held his head.
"Sam, listen to me. You need to breathe."
Rael circled the area, weapons drawn, checking for residual echoes or hostile anomalies.
Sam's lips parted.
"They weren't myths. The Eternals... they're real."
Valencia frowned. "You mean the gods?"
He shook his head, weakly. "No. Worse."
[Vision – The Scroll's Truth (Sam's POV)]
The scroll had shown him ancient wars fought not across land, but across meaning.
The Eternal Severing was the first act of defiance—an attempt to break all known connections between cause and effect, spirit and flesh, memory and legacy.
They were beings that fed on discontinuity.
Not demons. Not gods.
Editions of reality.
They moved through broken timelines, feeding on paradoxes.
And now, the scroll—a fragment of the First Contract—had become a beacon.
They were coming.
[Cut to – Court of Logos, Deep Rift Strategy Lab]
The Director stood alone, staring into a Rift Gate oscillating like a bleeding eye.
"They activated it," she said. Her tone wasn't fear—it was calculation.
One of her inner-circle agents bowed low. "We should retaliate. Collapse Intramuros. Bury the flame."
"No," she murmured. "Let it grow. Let them feel hope."
The Gate pulsed.
"Then we tear it from them."
[Cut to – Sam Awakens]
Sam sat up, gasping. The golden light faded from his eyes, but something remained different. His presence felt... anchored deeper than before.
Rael noticed it first.
"You're... echoing."
Sam looked at his hands. His voice overlapped with itself, like two timelines speaking in sync.
"I think... I unlocked something."
Valencia's eyes widened. "Echoform: Mind Split."
A legendary state. Forbidden. Unstable.
A Resonant enters this form when two versions of themselves—past and future—occupy the same present vessel.
Sam had merged with his alternate self—the one from the vision. The corrupted one. The worshiped one.
Rael stepped back. "Is that you... or him?"
Sam hesitated. "It's both."
[Suddenly – The Scroll Shatters]
A shockwave of pure resonance burst outward.
Aboveground, the sky fractured.
Clouds split in hexagonal patterns. Birds froze mid-air. Light moved wrong.
In the far distance, the Eternal Rift began to open.
[Scene Shift – Valencia's Breakdown]
In the aftermath, Valencia isolated herself in the Vein Chamber, staring into her father's last memory—replayed in the Archive Crystal.
Her fingers hovered over the final moment—his eyes, the betrayal, the sacrifice.
Rael entered quietly.
"You never told him goodbye," he said.
Valencia's shoulders trembled. "I thought becoming strong would be enough."
"It never is," Rael said gently.
She clenched her fists. "I'm tired of surviving history. I want to rewrite it."
[Scene Shift – Eternal Rift Opens Wider]
The air warped.
Time bled.
From the rift stepped a figure cloaked in fractured sigils—shifting constantly between human and non-human forms.
A Severed One.
Its voice cut across dimensions.
"One flame has remembered. The Chain is broken."
It turned its empty eyes toward Intramuros.
"Now we unwrite the rest."
The Eternal Rift doesn't just connect space—it's a door between drafts of reality.
And someone... is rewriting Sam's past from the other side.