"Unbounds do not rise—they fall upward. Power is the descent into the self, until nothing human remains to resist." — Prometheus Evolution Records, Cycle 2059 FS
EEver since humanity learned to draw power from the wounds of reality, survival became more than endurance. It became ascension. The discovery of the Vortex System marked that turning point, when humans stopped fearing the rifts and began using them. Those tears in existence, once devouring cities whole, became the greatest resource the New Facility had ever claimed. The vortexes were not merely anomalies; they were forces of lawless creation, a breach in causality where the rules of time bent and the boundaries of form dissolved. Within their unstable depths, energy moved like thought, and thought became the only means to command it. From that chaos, the neural band was born through human intelligence. It served as a bridge between human consciousness and the pulse of the Vortex Field. With it came the dawn of a new evolution: the Unbounds.
The Unbounds were not a species, nor a chosen few. They were simply humans who had learned to "fall upwards". "Fall" meant the gradual loss of what tethered them to the human mind. It was the shedding of perception that once defined sanity. "Upwards" was what came after: the gaining of power, clarity, and understanding of higher dimensions that no human should touch. The process began as a whisper in the neural pathways, a gradual expansion of capacity beyond the Dormant Stage. With each phase : Unbounding, Expansion, Resonance, and Transcendence, their senses widened, their thoughts stretched beyond linear time, and their bodies began to blur with light. Some called it evolution; others, especially indigenes from the Sanctuary of Eve, called it divine punishment.
However, each Unbound's path was different, shaped by what Prometheus researchers later named Resonance Archetypes. They were echoes of consciousness molded by emotion, logic, or entropy itself. But all paths led toward one truth: no one ascended without leaving something behind. More than ninety percent of Unbounds vanished within the vortexes they once sought to master... But those who vanished were later discovered to remain trapped within the vortexes, becoming something else entirely. Their bodies were found to be more bestial, stronger, their minds totally untethered from the human consciousness, become very vile creatures, known as Riftborns. These are one of the nemeses of Unbounds within the vortexes.
... Such an irony fighting their fellow humans, whose minds had been totally transformed by the vortexes, becoming Riftborns.
Those who remained as Unbounds became humanity's last guardians. Their presence alone could steady storms, reshape magnetic fields, and silence chaos. Yet even they could not predict the August Visit. The temporal rain fell without pattern, ignoring containment grids and readings alike. By the time the Unbounds arrived, the storm had already chosen its course.
It was a reminder that the Vortex still obeyed no one. It gave power, but it never gave control. And perhaps that was the true cost of falling upwards.
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The night after the August Visit came quiet, too quiet for comfort.
Across the New Facility, the glow of containment grids pulsed in rhythm, washing the courtyards in amber hues. The air still carried the faint shimmer of distortion, and the metallic tang of spent energy. Even long after the temporal rain had ceased, the world felt unsteady, like the pulse of time itself had yet to find its balance.
Temporal rains were not new. They came without warning, drifting from ruptures that no one fully understood. They left no puddles, no moisture, no trace of weather... only distortion. Seconds slipped, minutes tangled, and people lost fragments of themselves between one breath and the next. Humanity had grown accustomed to it. The med units called it temporal fatigue. Veterans called it mercy that it wasn't worse.
This time, though, something lingered.
When the Unbounds arrived from the outer Factions, the atmosphere seemed to still in reverence. The tremors softened, the distortion haze bent back into place, and for a fleeting moment, the Facility breathed again. Eight silhouettes descended from the sky like quiet storms, each radiating a faint afterglow that made the air around them hum. No one dared to speak. The Unbounds did not need introduction. They were beyond ranks, beyond systems. Seven Expansion Unbounds and one Resonant Unbound.
By the time the vortex clouds dispersed, the Unbounds were gone, pulled into the higher towers where only the Core's will extended. What followed was procedure: containment reports, time recalibrations, and the weary rhythm of restoring order.
By dawn, everything was almost back to normal. Almost.
Inside the VFP diagnostics wing, Bale sat beneath the pale hum of scanners. His neural band pulsed with an uneven red glow, fluctuating like a weak heartbeat. Med drones floated around him, their lenses flickering with indecision as they processed readings that refused to align. Every few seconds, the monitors displayed a wave pattern too erratic to belong to a human mind.
They called it anomalous resonance.
His file was flagged before the morning cycle ended. Prometheus Division received it within the hour. They were the ones who studied things even the Core feared to name—the Division that dealt with anomalies, consciousness drift, and things that lived inside data. Instructor Jet filed the report himself, marking it with a brief note: Unfit, but unique.
From that moment, Bale's path began to slip quietly from his own hands.
Around the dorm sectors, cadets spoke in low voices. Some claimed they had missed entire seconds from their memory. Others swore the walls whispered backward when they blinked. Still, no one panicked. This was not a first. Another side effect of the rain. Medical teams administered temporal stabilizers. Neural grids were recalibrated. Order resumed, as it always did.
But something in the air refused to settle. The silence felt heavy, as though the Facility itself was listening.
That night, Bale finally fell asleep, though sleep came strange.
He dreamed of rain that didn't fall.
He saw himself walking through a mirrored world, each surface reflecting his image a fraction too late. The rain moved upward instead of down, tracing rivers of light into the fractured sky. Towers stood around him, endlessly rebuilding themselves, folding and unfolding like breathing metal. Time had no rhythm there. There were just loops, repeating fragments of reality.
Ahead, he saw Tora... or what remained of her. She shimmered in fragments, her form unstable, like glass shifting through phases of existence. Her eyes glowed faintly, reflecting a storm that wasn't in the sky. She raised her hand toward him, her outline breaking apart at the edges.
He tried to call her name, but his voice came out as air.
The mirrored ground cracked beneath his feet. Beneath it, something glowed. It was slow, red, and alive. The light spread outward, crawling like veins beneath glass, and with it came a deep vibration that pulsed in his chest. He stumbled backward as the horizon folded in on itself, the mirrored towers collapsing into spirals of reflection.
From beyond the fissures, silhouettes began to move. Not shapes, not forms... just motion. Something vast and distant was turning its gaze toward him, and though he could not see it, he felt the inevitability of its arrival.
The rain froze midair. Every droplet reflected the same scene: himself, falling.
Ethereal view.
The hum grew louder. His neural band pulsed in sync with it, faster, until the rhythm became all he could hear.
And then an overwhelming feeling came. It was dread, not of death, but of something far worse.
... Something waiting. Something coming.
Just then, he woke with a start, his chest heaving as he sighed heavily.
Then he looked around him. The dorm light flickered faintly above him. His breath came shallow, the afterimage of that mirrored world still alive behind his eyes. His neural band still glowed dimly red, steady this time but watchful, like it had seen the dream with him.
He didn't move for a while. Outside, the Facility was silent again. The air felt thinner, quieter than before.
Somewhere beyond the reinforced walls, the horizon trembled faintly.
The Unbounds had left.
... And whatever they came to contain had not.