The world had no sky.
Only the coiling mass of scaled flesh draped in grey. The crescent-shaped pupil still gazed down, unblinking, its judgment unending.
The black rain turned thick, nearly tarry. The air was unbreathable, metallic, laced with whatever hellish ether leaked from the creature's maw.
Seyfe could barely stand.
His legs burned from overexertion. His core was spiraling again — neither fully sanctified nor stabilized — and every moment felt like his bones were vibrating out of sync with the world.
"Anyone—? Anyone still breathing?!" Seyfe shouted into the veil of chaos.
A cough. "I'm here!" Saline yelled, but it came from somewhere far. He couldn't even see her anymore.
Jerome's voice snarled into the comms, "Still alive, but barely! This isn't a field anymore. This is a goddamn slaughter pit!"
Ferez barked out, half-laughing and half-crying, "Is this what being a Veiler means now?! 'Go die to moon-eyed snakes in another plane of reality!'?"
"Shut up—keep talking!" Emi's voice trembled, frantic. "I'm syncing my Cellik—just keep talking!"
She huddled behind a cracked fang embedded into the earth like an obelisk. Her gloved fingers flew across the Cellik's interface, overriding every encryption protocol. This was not a request. It was an emergency SOS aimed directly to Aki Varess, bypassing standard channels.
[EMERGENCY PRIORITY OVERRIDE // DIRECT LINK — HANDLER: AKI VARESS]
Rain pelted her visor. Her breath fogged the inside of her helmet. The pulse-pulse of the gravitational pressure made the signal stutter. She slammed her fist on the casing, then resumed typing.
"—Seyfe's Unit 23-B—Sector Break—Broken Layer confirmed—""—Entity observed—massive—eye approximately lunar-scale—""—non-echoform class—possible primordial—zero containment—""—loss of allied squad—casualties at 60%—requesting—handler-level deployment—"
Lightning carved through the sky. Not thunder — a ripple, as if reality tore for just a breath.
Then impact.
Another fang fell — this one cleaving an entire ridge in half. Emi screamed as the tremor almost knocked her Cellik loose.
But the transmission sent.
She collapsed against the cracked rock and whispered into the mic, "Please… just hear it. Just… see it."
Seyfe dragged himself toward her, bleeding from a cut on his forehead, and grabbed her by the arm. "You got it through?"
She nodded, face pale.
Then silence.
Then, a tone. Acknowledgment ping.
The signal made it.
Somewhere far above the storm, Aki Varess received a direct alert.A feed request. Live. No filters. No delay.
The command room at the Veiler High Command Forward Coordination Center was a storm of its own.
Holograms flickered above the central table—projected maps of Asia, waveforms of rift stability, real-time overlays of squad deployment zones. Dozens of squadrons were under duress. Sovereign mutations were spreading faster than the simulations allowed. Even now, three squadrons were in recovery, one reported MIA, and others—unknown.
Aki Varess stood at the helm, voice sharp but precise.
"Prioritize reinforcement for Delta sectors in the Southeast—deploy automated scouts to cover Region Nine. I want all non-awakened Veilers rerouted immediately. We're thinning the line, and it's showing."
"Handler Varess." One of the techs at the central console looked up, eyes wide. "Direct emergency Cellik transmission. Level 7 encryption. It's… from Unit 23-B. Emi Hoshira's signature."
Aki froze mid-command.
"Route it to me. Now. Full decryption. I want it in my lens."
The room dimmed. The other handlers—Ura Gintoki, Hansel Fel, Kira Jahina—paused as well, eyes drawn to the rising hologram from Aki's projection lens. Static hissed—then visuals played.
It was chaos.
A battlefield, but unlike any rift terrain recorded.
The sky was coiled flesh.Rainfall — black, viscous.An eye — impossibly large, glowing like moonlight split across a crescent pupil.And below — Veilers screaming, scattered in fractured formations.
"What the hell is that—" muttered Handler Hansel, eyes narrowing.
The transmission cut for a moment as the storm pulsed. Then returned — just long enough for a recording to stabilize:
"—non-echoform class… casualties exceeding 60%… direct deployment required… please, Handler Varess—"
The video ended. The feed confirmed loss of connection. Static remained.
Aki's hand clenched.
"We're pulling every Sovereign-class protocol into effect," Aki commanded. "Forget the deployment hesitations. That storm is a Broken Layer Phase Surge — and that isn't an echoform."
"What is it then?" Handler Ura asked grimly.
Aki didn't look up. "Something older. Something that knows how to wait."
Another tech called out. "We're losing signals from Units 12-C and 14-A as well. Region Four just blacked out!"
"Then we go in," Aki said firmly, eyes burning red. "Get my unit armed. Set the priority codes. I'm taking lead deployment into Sector Break."
Silence.
Then Handler Kira spoke, voice steady but tense, "If you leave HQ, it opens a tactical hole. You know that."
Aki replied, "And if I don't, they all die."
Her eyes flicked across the room.
"Every handler here: assign proxy command to your Vice if you must. We're entering an unknown phase class. Sovereign mutations are accelerating, cores are overclocking, and we've just confirmed the presence of an external entity capable of engineering mutations manually."
The room shifted. No longer just in command — now bracing for war.
The containment chamber hissed open, exhaling a gust of cryo-cooled mist as the sealed black case rose from beneath the Veiler platform. Inside, nestled like a weapon waiting for judgment, was the Commanded Veiler Suit: Variant Black — a prototype armor built for high-risk Broken Layer infiltration, reserved only for senior handlers with authorization over Level 10 missions.
Aki Varess stood before it in silence.
The suit shimmered faintly in the chamber lights — obsidian segments laced with silver conductor veins, its core reactor throbbing gently like a held breath. She placed her palm on the interface node. The suit hissed once — then opened like a shell. She stepped inside.
"Core linkage stable."
"Neural sync: 94%... 96%... 99%."
"Sanctification rune bindings active. Weaver resonance confirmed. All modules online."
The Black Veiler Suit locked in. Her eyes, already glowing red, deepened into a molten hue as the suit synchronized with her core.
[12 Minutes Later]
Aki stood at the edge of the hovering drop-vessel, visor open, eyes scanning the storm below — a battlefield that had mutated beyond recognition. The rain was black. The terrain, warped. She could already feel it: time and gravity folding in strange pulses. The same conditions described in the live feed from Emi.
"Target zone stabilized at 0.4 frequency drift. Still no stable anchor," the technician relayed. "Handler, with all due respect… you shouldn't be the one going in."
Aki's voice was calm, distant. "This isn't a choice. It's a correction."
She stepped off the edge.
The vessel hissed, and gravity released her. For a moment — weightlessness.
Then — impact.
The shockwave rippled, her boots igniting stabilizers as she landed amid the wreckage of the shattered sector. The terrain was riddled with spires of twisted metal, craters from blast points, and still-burning veiler cells. Screams had long faded.
The Commanded Suit's environmental seal tightened. Aki activated the FOLD ANCHOR DEVICE — a prototype gateway creator designed to carve escape fractures in unstable dimensional folds. She slid it into her thigh port and scanned the skies.
"Unit 23-B signal… partial. Direction: 187 degrees."
She began moving.
The fog hissed. The rain sizzled off her armor. Something above stirred — she didn't look. Not yet. Her priority was singular: reach the squad.
"This is Handler Varess. Deploying Phase Anchor in four minutes. All nearby units, converge if possible. I'll punch a hole through this thing if I have to."
The device began charging. Rotating rings of light pulsed around it, crackling with interference from the dimension's instability.
In the distance — a shriek, something inhuman and impossibly vast.
Aki didn't flinch.
"Hang on, Seyfe… Emi… all of you. I'm almost there."
The rain grew heavier.
The clock was ticking.
The moment Aki entered, it felt like stepping inside a memory — a corrupted, dead one.
No echoforms. No swarm.No battle cries. No survivors screaming into broken channels.Just wind, and the sound of her own breathing filtered through the helm of her black Veiler suit.
Above her, the sky wasn't a sky. It was a coiled skin, translucent and endless, blending with the dark, boiling clouds.And in the center — that eye — moon-sized, crescent-pupiled, and alive. It didn't blink. It watched.
"Subject anomaly: active. Confirmed single-entity phase environment," her system intoned.
Aki exhaled slowly.
"A world built around it…" she whispered. "Or from it."
She stepped forward, each stride marked by pulses from the portable Fold Anchor mounted to her spine — trying to lock onto the thinnest fracture in the layer to tear an exit. A one-way path out.
But the entity… it felt her presence. Her movement.
The sky rumbled like a beast breathing in reverse.
— Seyfe's Team: Deep Within the Phase
All around them: grey rain falling endlessly, staining their suits black.The land stretched, a never-ending field of craggy rock and distant monolithic stone pillars that led nowhere.
And above, the serpent god watched.
It did not move with purpose. It didn't need to.
It was everywhere.
A faint vibration passed through the ground. Then—
A sharp scream — not from anyone living. It was the storm itself crying out.
Saline collapsed.
They'd been running too long. Her flame, once their warmth in this freezing world, flickered violently and died as she slumped beside a broken slab of stone. Blood matted her red hair.
"Saline!" Emi ran first, slipping in the blackened water, skidding next to her.
Jerome looked up. "It's not watching the terrain," he muttered. "It's watching us."
Seyfe's eyes narrowed. "...Or waiting."
They didn't have time to argue.
A tremor rolled again, and the rain fell harder, soaking through what little protection remained.
"Her core's destabilizing," Emi said. "Her internal charge is draining too fast in this environment. She won't last—"
Just then — a flicker on their comms.
"...This is Handler Varess. Anchor breach underway. Relay your position and converge—"
Seyfe's eyes widened.
"She's here…"
A new hope.
But hope was costly here.
They lifted Saline together. Seyfe shouldered her weight, blood seeping through the lining of her suit.
Then the sky roared.
Not thunder.
A gargantuan hiss.
And the fog peeled away from the horizon.
In the far-off distance — a gap opened in the coiling sky.
The serpent's mouth. Golden fangs glinted like temples. Its tongue, a vast, thorned mass, descended — not to strike — but to taste.
The ground warped from just its presence. Mountains cracked. Fields peeled back. The air pulsed — push. pull. push. pull.
"This thing isn't an echoform," Jerome whispered, pale. "It's not even a mutation."
"No," Seyfe said grimly, "it's older."
As they fled, every step felt like a sin against gravity. The serpent delighted in the scattering motion, its gaze a prison light.
It opened its mouth again ——and from it fell teeth.Golden, divine. Like spires from the sky.
Whole sections of the field collapsed from the impact.
"Keep moving!" Seyfe screamed. "Get to Aki's signal — or we die here!"
No echoforms.No sky.Just the eye.And a world built to watch you suffer.