CHAPTER 32
[HOSTILE INTENT: ACKNOWLEDGED]
[OPERATIONS CONTROL LINK: NON-RESPONSIVE — AUTONOMOUS ENGAGEMENT AUTHORIZED]
The cold wind swept through the woods.
The child tilted his head slightly.
Slowly, he rose from his crouched position.
"I'm afraid I'll have to kill you now."
"…All three of you."
Silence followed.
There was no movement neither was there a response.
Agent Lynx tightened his stance.
Agent BrimJaws shifted his weight forward.
Both had already registered it.
Hostile intent confirmed.
The visored helms maintained a secure neural-link between the three agents.
Wraith's voice entered the channel.
"Listen carefully."
There was a brief pause.
"We've lost Operations Control."
BrimJaws responded first.
"I noticed interference during the last transmission. Severe signal degradation."
Lynx followed, quieter.
"It wasn't natural interference."
A brief silence.
Wraith kept his eyes fixed on the child.
"Operations Control escalated this to the Black Archive before we lost them."
That made Lynx pause.
"The Black Archive?"
BrimJaws didn't turn his head, but his posture tightened.
"So you're saying this isn't a standard anomaly classification…"
Wraith cut in.
"Black Archive correlation confirmed."
A quiet pause
Then —
"Designation: Unknown-Class anomaly."
Silence settled over the neural-link.
That very moment the forest felt heavier.
The child had not moved.
Now standing still and completely composed.
One hand rested loosely near the hilt of the katana horizontally strapped behind his waist line.
The faint smile remained. His gaze fixed toward the ground, as if avoiding eye contact with the three agents that stood across from him.
Wraith's voice echoed through the neural-link.
"Do not forget S.C.U.L.A.A.R.S doctrine."
"Contain if possible."
"Capture if feasible."
"Neutralize if necessary."
"Terminate only as a last resort."
"Containment is no longer considered viable."
A brief pause followed.
His eyes never left the child.
"Unknown-Class designation supersedes standard doctrine."
"If engagement becomes necessary..."
Another pause.
"Skip directly to termination."
Silence settled over the channel.
Even BrimJaws didn't have a response to that.
Because every agent present understood what it meant.
Whatever stood before them was no longer considered a recoverable asset.
It was a threat.
Then Wraith spoke again.
"Hostile intent acknowledged."
"Prepare to initiate Releases."
BrimJaws immediately understood.
Lynx remained silent.
Wraith continued.
"BrimJaws."
"Frontline."
"Deploy Verdaxis. Establish area control and deny movement."
"Understood."
"Lynx."
"Hold Release until ordered."
"Summon only if engagement begins."
"Copy."
Wraith's gaze remained fixed on the child.
"If it moves..."
A brief pause.
"We move first."
"Understood."
"Understood."
Wraith began explaining the engagement strategy through the neutral link.
"Listen carefully."
"BrimJaws will force the initial response."
"I'll assess the target's capabilities."
"Lynx, you're reserve support—"
Wraith abruptly stopped speaking before he could finish the briefing.
For an almost imperceptible moment, he saw something.
Like a sort of distortion. A subtle glitch if one were to describe it. Like reality had lost a frame.
The Child's body flickered.
It wasn't movement. Neither did it resemble speed, but rather it was something else.
And then, through the edge of his peripheral vision, Wraith caught sight of something impossible.
A face. But not just any face... It was the child's face.
Several inches from Agent Lynx's visor.
Looking directly at him.
The image existed for less than a heartbeat, so subtle, almost imperceptible. It blurred the line between being real and being dismissed as not.
Then it was gone. As if it never even happened.
Wraith immediately turned toward Lynx.
But there was nothing.
No one stood beside him nor in front of him.
There was no intruder, no movement, nothing.
Lynx remained exactly where he had been.
With a stance that says he's fully on guard and ready for anything.
His eyes fixed forward.
Wraith's attention snapped back to the Child.
The Child had not moved.
Still standing, still very much composed.
Still wearing that faint smile.
At least from what Wraith could tell.
But a strange feeling crawled up the back of Wraith's neck.
His instincts kept saying something was wrong.....terribly wrong.
Then he noticed Agent Lynx.
At first, nothing seemed unusual.
Then Wraith realized Lynx wasn't moving.
Not even slightly.
The realization hit a fraction of a second later.
Lynx had been cleanly cut in half
His upper torso remained standing for a brief and impossible moment before gravity finally claimed it. Collapsing to the ground
Time seemed to slow down dramatically.
Wraith's eyes widened.
His mind struggled to process what he was seeing.
Beside him, BrimJaws had not yet noticed.
Then BrimJaws turned.
A sharp line appeared across his neck.
His head separated from his shoulders.
The body remained standing....only for an instant. Then it collapsed.
Wraith's thoughts froze.
What —
A violent impact exploded through his chest from behind.
There were three claws... From what appears to be a silhouette of a monstrosity that resembled a beast of some sort.
Three claws remained buried deep within Wraith's chest, piercing through his flesh that had been reinforced with divine energy and anchoring him in place above the forest floor. Blood poured steadily from beneath his visor in thick streams, running down the edges of his helm before spilling into the air below. His body hung several meters above the ground, suspended by the sheer force of the impalement, each tremor of the beast's grip sending sharp shocks of pain through his frame.
The pressure tightened.
Wraith's muscles locked instinctively, but there was nothing he could do to break free. Pain shot through every nerve in his body in uneven waves, each one more distant than the last as his perception began to fracture. His vision started to fail, the edges of the world breaking apart into blurred fragments of light and shadow that no longer seem to hold a stable form.
Across the clearing, the Child stood exactly where he had always been. Motionless. Head lowered. A faint smile resting on his face that never shifted or reacted to anything unfolding before him. He looked unchanged, as if the entire battlefield had not moved an inch since the moment this encounter began.
Wraith's breathing grew shallow inside his helm. Each inhale felt heavier than the last, each exhale carrying less control. His consciousness was slipping in and out of focus, dragged downward by the weight of his injuries. Yet even as his body failed him, his eyes never left the Child. There was no hesitation in his gaze, only the forced discipline of a soldier refusing to lose sight of the threat.
"…Release…"
The word came out broken, mixed with blood as it spilled from his mouth. His voice was no longer steady, reduced to fragments forced through collapsing breath.
"…Ancient Art of Kairos…"
The beast's grip tightened again, driving deeper through his flesh. Wraith's body jerked slightly, but the motion never completed, cut short by overwhelming force. His vision darkened further, the forest now reduced to fading shapes and unstable light.
"…Initiate…"
The command was weaker now. Strained. Each word separated by silence and breath that no longer came easily. His grip on consciousness faltered, but he forced it back through sheer will.
"…First Command…"
For a moment, everything seemed to stop inside him.
Not the world... Just him, as his awareness had completely gone from him. At the brink of death.
Then, violently, his awareness surged back just long enough for one final breath.
"…Paradox Of Mendes."
Everything froze.
The forest ceased all motion as if the world itself had been ordered to a halt. The wind vanished mid-stream through the trees. Leaves suspended in air without falling. Blood hanging motionless in the space around Wraith's body, no longer obeying gravity or time. Even the beast's claws stopped where they were, locked in place as though existence itself had been paused.
Then the reversal began.
Reality did not shift forward or backward in a simple motion — but rather, it unraveled.
The claws withdrew from Wraith's chest, not as an act of force, but as if their existence was being erased from the moment. Blood flowed backward into his wounds, reversing its path through the air and sealing itself back inside his body. The injuries themselves ceased to exist, as though they had never been inflicted at all.
Wraith's body descended toward the ground in reverse, lifting upward and then settling back into standing position before the impact that had originally lifted him ever occurred. His special raid suit reformed, blood retreating beneath the material fabric and the visored helm he wore until nothing remained.
Across the clearing, BrimJaws' collapsed form reassembled, his severed condition reversing seamlessly until he stood whole once more. Lynx's body followed, rebuilding itself in a single continuous undoing of the fatal strike that had ended him moments before.
The massive beast dissolved next, its form breaking apart into fragments of reversed motion. Its claws folded back into unseen space, its limbs retracting as if recalling every action it had ever taken. Even its presence unraveled, disappearing not by vanishing, but by never having fully occurred.
Leaves rose from the forest floor and returned to their branches. Grass straightened. Dust lifted back into the air and returned to the ground in reverse. The entire battlefield rewound itself in accelerating motion, every second collapsing backward into the one before it.
Faster.....Then faster again.
Every action undone. Every consequence erased. Every death returned to life.
Until...
Everything stopped.
The forest stabilized.
The wind returned in a calm sweep through the trees.
The Child stood exactly where he had been before it all began.
He tilted his head slightly.
A faint smile rested on his lips.
"I'm afraid I'll have to kill you now...."
A brief pause followed.
"…All three of you."
Wraith's eyes widened behind his visor.
Lynx was standing.
BrimJaws was standing.
The beast was gone.
And the Command had worked.
The First Command...
....The Paradox Of Mendes.