Arin Voss stood on the edge of the platform, boots hovering just inches from the Rift's threshold. Wind howled through the fracture in space, ruffling her standard-issue jacket as light shimmered in unstable patterns. A scent filled the air—not ozone, not smoke. Something older. Wild. Like rain falling on forgotten metal.
Behind her, the drop shuttle's ramp groaned shut. No turning back now.
"Cadet Voss," the voice crackled in her ear, cold and clinical. "Final scan complete. Sync level: 0.2%. Codex unresponsive. You are not cleared for integration. This is a non-combat exploration—observe, record, and return. Do not engage."
The comms clicked off before Arin could reply. Of course. They'd already written her off.
She gritted her teeth, hiding the heat rising in her face. Around her, the others had already vanished into the Rift—bright stars in the tactical map overlay, strong sync scores glowing beside their names. Harlow, Sync 18.4%. Leema, 22.1%. Her own number pulsed at the corner of her vision like an insult.
0.2%.
They had called her the "Dustwalker" back at academy. "Too weak to trigger a Codex. Just let her sweep the floor." She'd swallowed the taunts like gravel, day after day. But here she was—on her first live Riftwalk, whether they liked it or not.
She stepped forward, letting the Rift take her.
The world bent.
For a moment, there was no ground beneath her, no up or down. Just noise. Sound that wasn't sound—waves of data, emotion, memory—folding through her as if reality were parsing her code. Then the drop resolved, and her boots met solid terrain.
She had arrived.
[RIFTZONE ENTRY: GLASS MIRE]
Her visor flickered. The terrain around her was surreal—sheets of translucent stone rising like frozen waves, warped trees grown from veins of obsidian, and pools of mercury-like liquid pulsing with internal light. The sky was a blur of starlight filtered through ash. Gravity pulled at odd angles, but she adjusted her stance with practiced ease.
The Glass Mire. Low-threat zone. One of the "tamed" Rifts, if such a thing existed. Even so, it felt...off.
Her Codex still hadn't activated.
"Of course it didn't," she muttered.
Every Riftwalker was implanted with a latent Codex fragment—a symbiotic system that bonded with the walker, growing and adapting over time. Most cadets triggered theirs within days. Some within hours. Arin had waited three years. Her shard remained silent.
She stepped between mirrored spires, checking the map overlay. The mission was simple: reach Survey Point Epsilon, scan the Rift's pulse signature, return. No combat. No interaction. Just proof that she could walk without being carried.
A flicker to her right. She turned.
A creature moved among the trees—spindly, insectoid, trailing iridescent threads behind its limbs. It paused when it noticed her, tilting its elongated head. Non-aggressive. Tier 0 entity. Passive scanner node. She nodded to herself and moved on, maintaining distance.
Ten minutes in. Still no incident.
The silence pressed in, too complete.
Then it shattered.
A quake surged beneath her boots, sending shards of crystal terrain snapping upward. Arin dropped, rolled, shield flickering to life on instinct. A rupture bloomed in the air ahead—a micro-rift, unscheduled, its glow pulsing like a heartbeat.
And something stepped out.
It wasn't logged.
It wasn't Tier 0.
It wasn't anything she recognized.
The creature's form was unstable—rippling like corrupted code, its limbs both too many and too few. Its core glowed with a sickly golden hue, tendrils of static trailing behind as it moved with mechanical grace. It focused on her.
[Unidentified Entity: Signature Not Found]
[Codex Alert: Fragment Reactivity Spiking]
Arin froze. Her Codex? She looked at her wrist, the embedded shard pulsing faintly beneath the skin for the first time in years. Heat poured into her chest like fire waking from sleep.
The entity charged.
She dove left, missing a swipe by inches. Her shield flared, then cracked, energy readings dipping dangerously low. She scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. This wasn't supposed to happen—nothing here was supposed to move like that.
"Control, this is Voss," she gasped. "Unknown entity. Rift signature unstable. Requesting—"
The comms hissed. Silence.
The creature lunged again. This time, she couldn't dodge.
It struck.
Agony exploded through her chest as the world shattered into white. She fell—no, drifted—falling without end, pulled through layers of thought and code and memory. She wasn't in the Rift anymore. She was inside something. Something old.
[Codex Interface Detected]
[Compatibility Breach: Override Initiated]
[Warning: Host Sync Risk—Critical]
A voice—not spoken, not digital—rippled through her mind.
> "You are...broken. But you burn. So brightly. Do you choose?"
She couldn't answer. Pain laced every thought. Her heart thundered like a war drum. But somewhere inside, past the fear, past the humiliation, a quiet flame burned.
Yes. She chose.
The Codex screamed.
The fragment at her wrist surged, fusing with her nervous system in a cascade of light and pattern. Symbols scrawled across her vision—none she recognized, all she somehow understood. Her Soulmark, once dormant, carved itself into being across her chest, pulsing with raw, unfiltered power.
[Codex Bond Achieved: Adaptive Variant — UNKNOWN TYPE]
[Initializing Echo Core...]
The pain stopped.
Arin stood.
The creature turned, sensing something had changed.
She met its gaze—and moved.
Faster than she should. Stronger than she ever had. The shield flared again, but this time it wasn't brittle tech—it was hers, reshaped by instinct and the Codex's will. She struck, not with a weapon, but with purpose, her palm slamming into the entity's core.
Light exploded.
When the smoke cleared, the creature was gone.
She stood alone in the glass, her breath ragged.
[Echo Signature Absorbed: Form Analysis In Progress]
[Welcome, Riftwalker Arin Voss.]
She stared at her hands, still shaking. The Soulmark on her chest pulsed with residual light.
For the first time in her life, she felt it.
Not weakness.
Not doubt.
Power.
And something else.
Something...watching.
Far away, beyond the edge of Riftspace, the Codex stirred.