The wind along the Danube wasn't normal tonight.Not strong.Not cold.Just… too clean.So clean it felt like someone had wiped the humidity out of the air.
I stood at the riverbank, staring at the dim yellow lights across the water.The delay in my perception was almost unnoticeable, but the Source point in my chest kept reminding me—It isn't over.
Far out on the water, the surface bulged upward.Like something turning over beneath the riverbed.
Patch halted by my shoe, every hair on her body raised.Her eyes fixed faster than mine, locked onto the swelling point at the river's center.
The water split.
The shadow came up first.
Its outline twisted unnaturally, like a rendered frame had broken.Its skin drowned under the shimmer of the riverlight—never forming a full body, only that wrongness of movement.
The moment it stepped onto the bank—
Every streetlamp flickered at once.Like its shadow short-circuited the entire row.
In that flash, I saw something that froze my whole spine:
Behind the creature's distorted silhouette,a razor-thin line cut across the Danube's surface—straight as a surgical incision.
And on the other side of that line—
There was no reflection.Nothing at all.
I inhaled sharply."…Again."
The creature lurched toward me, pulled as if by an invisible string.Its gait wasn't human, nor like any Corrupted I'd encountered.Each step felt pieced together from mismatched instructions—out of rhythm, out of logic.
I lifted my foot, ready to meet it—
And the wind split.
Like someone had thrown a massive stone into the scene from outside the frame, crushing the air with a heavy boom.
A shadow fell from the opposite bank—
Not jumping.Not gliding.Just—arriving.
Water exploded outward.A ring of white mist was shoved back by the pressure field.
Emilia, half a step in front of me, whispered a name:
"…Alden."
The figure walked forward.Broad shoulders.Precise movement.A presence that stabilized the entire field just by standing there.
He carried no weapon.
Yet the river surface bowed under the weight of him.
The creature screamed, its movements growing more erratic—as if Alden's presence alone was interfering with its pattern.
Alden lifted one hand.Just one.
The air produced a sound—low, sharp, impossibly thin:
"Kk."
My heart clenched hard.
Not bone.Not an impact.
It was the sound of space folding a corner.
I knew it.Vienna Station—the moment the air there had been cut open—it was the same sound.
The creature slammed forward as if pressed by an unseen force.Its movements collapsed, reduced to the final instinct driving it.
Alden rotated his wrist.Like pushing an invisible shield forward.
The creature was hammered into the ground, twisted twice, then went completely still.
All of it happened in under three seconds.
Wind returned.River noise flowed back.Even the clatter of dishes from a far-off restaurant came through clearly.
Alden didn't brush off his hand.He merely turned his head and glanced at me.
That glance…
Not hostile.Not friendly.A kind of confirmation—as if verifying something he had long expected.
Emilia spoke:
"He's Alden.ARC's… harder-to-classify group."
Alden withdrew his gaze, saying only:
"Your Source has two layers.The second one is moving.Not fully awake, but already biting at things outside."
I froze.
"…I didn't do anything. Right?"
"That isn't weakness," Alden said, tone steady as weather."It's because your signal and theirs… are too close. They resonate."
I had nothing to say.
Patch flattened her ears, like she might launch into the sky any moment.
And then—
A faint line of text appeared in the lower-right corner of my vision:
01:59:11
The exact same countdown from Vienna Station.
Except this time,it was rising from the river.
Alden's brow shifted.
Emilia drew a sharp breath.
And my heart felt seized by a cold hand.
The countdown carried a message without speaking:
If you take one more step—there is no coming back.