The impact threw shockwaves through the ruined district. Windows burst. Dust plumed upward in spiraling columns. The sound didn’t echo, it cracked the air like something bigger than sound. Frank and the creature slammed into the far street, carving a trench through broken stone. Frank didn’t stop. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. The hybrid had his body, his muscles, his rage. Frank felt it moving him,but he was still there, still conscious, still gripping the edges of control like a man clinging to a cliff. The creature struck first. Its arm elongated into a jagged blade of living shadow, slicing toward Frank’s throat.Frank caught the blade with his bare hand. His bare hand. It didn’t cut him. The hybrid’s laughter ricocheted inside his skull. “At last, equal footing”Frank snarled through gritted teeth. “Get. Out. Of my head.”The creature twisted, forcing Frank backward. White sparks scattered from his palms as their energies clashed. Elara’s voice echoed through the settling dus

The world around Frank folded in half. Not metaphorically, physically. Buildings bent inward like paper pulled toward a flame. Streets rippled. The sky cracked into mirrored halves, each showing a different version of him. Elara’s scream stretched like an echo pulled through water. “Frank,FRANK! Stay with me!”He tried to answer. But he didn’t know which version of himself she could hear. Because he wasn’t standing in one place anymore. He was standing in two.One Frank stood with the hybrid, white fire coursing up his arms, strength radiating through every cell, a beast roaring inside his bones. The hybrid growled inside him: “Reject it. Reject the fragment. You KNOW what we are together.”The other Frank stood bathed in soft child-light, weightless, unburned, untouched by power, by terror, by war. A gentle, innocent version of himself reaching out with a small, glowing hand. The child-voice whispered: “Come back. Please, you don’t have to hurt anymore.”Frank felt his ribs crac

The world split. Not shattered, Frank stumbled backward as the air tore open between him and the being,between him and Elara. Light bent, shadows twisted, and a sound like a thousand glass lungs inhaling at once punched outward. He couldn’t breathe. He pushed forward anyway. “Elara!” he shouted. Her voice,thin, trembling,reached back through the breach. “Don’t,Frank don’t,don’t come near it,”“I’m right here!”The light-being jerked violently, half her face melting into Elara’s proper features, the other half splitting into cracked glass geometry, like two realities trying to occupy the same skin. “STOP!”she screamed, Not-Elara’s voice, layered and broken. “You’ll push her through the breach, she’s not contained, she’ll detonate,”Frank slammed his arm into the rift anyway, wincing as his skin blistered instantly under the pressure. “She’s coming out whether you want her to or not!”“NO!”The creature lunged, grabbing his wrist, claws of light burning into his flesh. “You don’t ge

There was no impact. No pain. No sound. Just white. Frank opened his eyes,or thought he did. It was impossible to tell. The world around him wasn’t light. It was the absence of everything except the glow. A flat horizon of nothing, stretching forever. Then, A voice. Soft. Flickering. Familiar. “Frank”His stomach dropped. “Elara!”His shout echoed in the void, warping, bending, as if swallowed by distance that didn’t exist. Her voice answered from everywhere and nowhere. “I, I can’t see you.”Frank started moving,running, though the ground didn’t feel like ground at all. Each step landed with no sound, no weight, no direction. He could be sprinting in circles. He could be going nowhere at all. “Elara! Keep talking!”His pulse hammered. “I’ll find you!”“Frank, wait,something else is in here”Her voice trembled. He froze. Something shifted in the white. A ripple. A shadow inside the light. Impossible, yet there. Frank’s jaw clenched. “Come out!” he barked at the ripple. “If you wan

Frank stepped toward the door of white light, chest still heaving from the last fight. The corridor behind him pulsed once,like it was breathing,and then went still.The door didn’t glow steadily. It throbbed. Like a heart. Frank wiped dust and blood from his brow. “Alright,” he muttered. “What’s behind you? Another version of me? Something worse?”The door answered by shifting,its surface rippling like liquid light. Frank tried the handle. There was none. He touched the surface, and his fingers sank straight through. He jerked back. “What the,?”A faint voice murmured from the other side. “ come in ”Frank stiffened. “Elara?”The voice didn’t respond. He inhaled sharply, rolled his shoulders, and stepped forward. The white light swallowed him whole. It was silent. Too silent. Frank blinked. A flat, endless plain. White ground. White sky. No horizon. No shadows. It felt like standing inside someone’s memory of a world,not the world itself. Frank muttered, “Great. A blank loading