Richard learned quickly that rest didn't exist here.
Recovery did—but rest was a luxury no one in the ice cave trusted.
The cavern was quieter than usual when he left his quarters, the soft glow of refracted light bending through ice walls like frozen auroras. His body felt different today. Not healed—settled. Chrome energy no longer surged unpredictably. It pooled. Waited.
That alone made him uneasy.
Blaze was easy to find.
Fire never belonged in a place like this, and Blaze made no effort to hide it.
A section of the cave had been hollowed out and reinforced with blackened alloy, the ice walls permanently scorched and re-frozen in warped layers. The temperature dropped the moment Richard stepped inside—not because of cold, but because heat was being aggressively controlled.
Blaze stood in the center, twin swords resting against his shoulders, flames coiling lazily along their edges like living things.
"You're the new one," Blaze said without turning. "Richard."
"Guess word travels fast," Richard replied.
Blaze snorted. "In here? Everything does."
He turned then, revealing burn scars along his forearms—not injuries, but limits. Chrome energy damage. Self-inflicted.
"My technique's simple," Blaze said, answering the unspoken question. "Flame manipulation. I generate, shape, condense. No fancy domain. No regeneration miracle."
Richard nodded. "Zero said you were Tier One."
Blaze laughed—short, sharp, bitter. "Semi. At best."
He lifted one hand, letting flame bloom across his palm before snuffing it out just as quickly. "My CE burns too fast. Literal combustion. Every second I fight at full output, I'm eating my own reserves. My ceiling's capped."
"Then how're you still alive?" Richard asked.
Blaze's eyes sharpened.
"Because power isn't everything."
He stepped forward, blades snapping into his hands. Chrome energy surged into his legs—not flowing, but compressing.
"Battle IQ," Blaze continued. "Efficiency. I coat my swords in flame, boost my legs with CE, and explode outward."
He vanished.
Richard barely tracked the movement before Blaze reappeared behind a training dummy. One step. One draw.
The dummy split cleanly in half, edges cauterized instantly.
"My trump card," Blaze said calmly. "Single-strike quick draw. I don't trade blows. I end fights."
Richard exhaled. "That's… terrifying."
Blaze shrugged. "It works."
They talked longer after that. About pacing CE. About knowing when not to fight. About accepting caps instead of breaking yourself trying to surpass them.
It wasn't flashy.
But it mattered.
Corpse's chamber was sealed.
Layers of security hummed faintly as Richard approached, blood-red symbols pulsing across translucent ice panels. Corpse himself stood behind them, fingers dancing through holographic streams of data—Phantom databases, fractured and stolen.
"Hey," Richard called out. "Zero said you could help me with CE control."
Corpse didn't turn. "Not today."
"Busy?" Richard asked.
Corpse finally glanced over his shoulder, eyes sharp, ancient, unreadable. "Monitoring Phantom movements. Tremor's been active. And something else."
"Something else?"
Corpse's gaze lingered on Richard for a fraction too long. "We'll talk later. Go train."
The barrier sealed tighter.
Richard stood there a moment, then nodded to himself and turned away.
Ghoul didn't go easy this time.
If anything, he went harder.
The moment Richard stepped onto the platform, the air fractured.
Ghoul split—one presence becoming many, frames overlapping, attacks coming from angles that didn't make sense. A kick to the spine. A punch to the ribs. A knee to the jaw.
Richard tried to track.
Failed.
Chrome energy surged as he pushed his body beyond instinct, reacting instead of thinking—but Ghoul was already there, everywhere.
"Too slow," Ghoul said, voice echoing from six directions at once.
Richard slammed his foot down, releasing a burst of CE outward like Blaze had described. The shockwave cracked ice, forcing Ghoul back—once.
It wasn't enough.
Ghoul adapted instantly, striking between the pulses, dismantling Richard piece by piece. By the end, Richard was on his back again, chest heaving, vision swimming.
Ghoul stood over him, unscathed.
"You're improving," Ghoul said. "Marginally."
"Glad you noticed," Richard muttered.
Ghoul turned away. "Rest. You'll need it."
Richard found Zero near the central chamber hours later.
Corpse was there too now—still, silent, data streams frozen mid-scroll.
Something was wrong.
"Richard," Corpse said quietly. "We found something."
Zero didn't speak.
That scared him more than Corpse's tone.
"What?" Richard asked.
Corpse exhaled slowly, like he didn't want to continue but had no choice. "Phantom genetic archives. Early experiment lineage."
The words hit before the meaning did.
"No," Richard said. "That's not—"
"You share the same bloodline," Corpse said. "Partial genetic match. Same donor base. Same markers."
Richard turned to Zero, heart pounding. "Tell him he's wrong."
Zero's jaw tightened.
"I'm not," Zero said.
The cave felt suddenly too small.
"You're—" Richard's voice cracked. "You're saying—"
"I was the first," Zero said quietly. "You were the continuation."
The silence shattered.
Richard staggered back like he'd been hit, chest tight, vision blurring. "No. No, that doesn't—my whole life—"
"I didn't know," Zero said. "Not until Phantom's records were breached."
Richard laughed—a broken, hollow sound. "So all this time… all this power… it wasn't random."
"No," Zero said. "It was inheritance."
Something inside Richard finally broke.
He sank to his knees, hands clutching his head, breath coming apart. "They made us," he whispered. "They made us like this."
Zero knelt too—slow, deliberate—until they were level.
"I survived," Zero said, voice shaking for the first time. "So you wouldn't have to be alone."
That was it.
The dam burst.
Richard sobbed—ugly, uncontrolled, years of fear and confusion crashing out of him all at once. Zero pulled him in, arms tightening despite his own trembling, frost creeping outward as his control slipped.
They stayed like that—brothers bound by blood, by cruelty, by survival—while the ice cave bore silent witness.
For the first time since Phantom—
Neither of them was alone.