The golden Malik’s expression didn’t change, but the light around him did. It flared. Not warmly. Not gently. Violently.A harmonic shockwave ripped through the corridor, snapping overhead pipes, cracking concrete, shattering the silhouettes behind him into shards of fractured light.Maya was hurled against the wall. Viktor crashed to the floor. Caleb braced himself, dampener raised, teeth bared against the force.Rina curled protectively over Malik as the blast tore past them, shielding his body with her own. The imprint’s voice, usually calm and eerily serene, now cracked with something new.Anger. “You choose an unstable fragment,” it said. “An incomplete identity. A flawed host.”Rina lifted her head, breath shaking, hair falling wild around her face. “You don’t get to choose for him.”The golden Malik’s eyes glowed, brighter, harder. “He will not survive the next pulse.”Rina glanced down. Malik’s breathing had grown shallow again, his skin cold, veins glowing faintly with gold b

“Malik!”Rina’s cry tore through the tunnel, raw and uncontained. She dropped with him to the floor, palms trembling as she pressed her ear to his chest. No breath. No pulse. No Malik.“NO—Malik—NO” She slammed her hands against his sternum, desperate, frantic. “Come on, come on, breathe, don’t do this, don’t you do this to me!”Maya stumbled beside her, face chalk-white. “Oh god—Rina—he’s—he’s”Rina didn’t let her finish. “Viktor!” she snapped. “Find a pulse—ANYWHERE!”Viktor crawled over, still dazed, moving on instinct. He pressed trembling fingers to Malik’s neck. His expression collapsed. “I—I don’t, he’s not”“DON’T SAY IT.” Rina shoved his hand away and started chest compressions. Her arms shook violently, tears blurring her vision. “Malik, breathe! Breathe, baby, breathe”Caleb fell against the wall, staring at Malik with a hollowed-out expression, horror choking him silent. “Rina” Maya whispered. “He’s gone”“HE IS NOT GONE!”The scream ripped out of Rina like her soul was te

Rina woke with dust in her lungs and concrete in her mouth. The world was wrong, tilted, ringing, vibrating like the aftermath of a bomb.Darkness pressed around her, broken only by the twitching flicker of a dying emergency strip far overhead.She coughed, rolling onto her side, one arm dragging uselessly behind her. “Malik”Her voice broke in half.Memory hit her in shards: the golden surge, Malik’s scream, her name ripping out of him, and then nothing. “Malik!” she called again, louder, panic sharpening her voice. “Malik!”Only echoes answered. Pain shot through her ribs when she tried to stand, but she forced her body upright anyway. Her knees shook under her weight. Her vision blurred at the edges. “Rina !”Maya’s trembling voice cut through the dust. She crawled into view from behind a collapsed pipe, coughing hard. Viktor stumbled out next, blood in his hair.Caleb was half-buried under a beam, groaning as he tried to push it off. Rina barely saw any of them. She was searching

Malik’s body spasmed in midair, every tremor sending gold splintering through the darkness like cracks in stained glass.His eyes, brown and gold stacked on top of each other, fought to settle, failing every time. The entity tightened its grip around him, the silhouette pulsing like a heartbeat made of pure light.Rina’s voice tore out of her, raw and shaking. “LET HIM GO!”Her steps forward were instinctive, uncontrollable, but Caleb’s arm shot out, stopping her just before a ripple of gold sliced across the floor like a wave of heat. “Rina—NO” he hissed. “That field will cut you in half!”She didn’t care. “He’s dying!”“No,” the entity said, its voice echoing through the chamber like resonance bending through metal.“He is changing.”Malik’s scream shattered the air. His back arched violently; golden filaments embedded deeper, wrapping his ribs, threading down his spine, weaving into him with surgical precision.Maya’s sob echoed off the cavern walls. “It’s, it’s rewriting him”“It’

The golden blast knocked the world out of order. A roar of resonance tore through the chamber, throwing Rina back, slamming Caleb and Viktor into the rubble, sending Maya sprawling with a cry.The cavern floor rippled like a stone dropped into water, metal bending and groaning. But Rina didn’t feel the impact.Her arms locked around Malik’s body, refusing to let him go even as the shockwave rattled her bones. His back arched against her, a strangled gasp ripping out of him as the filament spark fused against his chest. “Malik, Malik, breathe, just breathe!”A violent convulsion snapped through him. Then, His pulse steadied. Not normal. Not safe. But steadier. Alive. Relief crashed into her so hard she almost sobbed. Then a cold realization followed, The entity screamed.The fractured silhouette at the far end of the chamber erupted with golden fury, shards of light shooting outward like razors. Its rebuilding had been interrupted, violently.It staggered, shape glitching, collapsing i