It began with footsteps that weren't real.
They clicked against the upper east junction—clean, crisp, almost cocky. As if a guard were jogging lightly, baton tapping at his hip.
But the hallway was empty.
The movement was fake.
A ghostloop, placed two minutes earlier, planted with surgical rhythm:
Step. Shift. Drag. Pause. Double-beat.
It wasn't just a trick.
It was bait.
Raifu crouched thirty meters above in a support shaft, pressed flat against the coolant tubing that ran beneath the surface-level movement paths. His heartbeat was slow now—deliberate. Every inhale cycled mana back into circulation, just like the new thread reflex taught him.
He could feel the tension in the system.
The rhythm wasn't just scattered.
It was panicked.
Below him, a soul-path unit approached.
Three guards. All standard elite. But the one in the center—different.
He didn't walk like the others.
His steps weren't trying to be quiet.
They weren't military-perfect.
They were measured.
Rhythm-aware.
Raifu's pupils dilated slightly.
"That one hears," he whispered to himself.
The man in the middle had a brand that pulsed slightly—not just glowing but responding to the walls. His baton wasn't the stun-forged kind used by basic enforcers.
It was etched—grooves along the spine, capped in hollow obsidian tips.
That wasn't for suppression.
That was for counter-rhythm.
A Rhythm Hunter.
Perfect.
Raifu didn't just want a fight.
He wanted a tuning fork.
If this man could respond to rhythm in real-time, he could teach Raifu something better than a stat screen ever could: resistance.
The guards stopped at the corner where the echo pattern ended.
The left one—twitchy—scanned the wall. The right tapped his foot unconsciously, trying to match the ghost beat.
But the leader stood still.
He pointed up.
Right at Raifu's vent shaft.
Raifu blinked.
He heard the silence.
Not the noise.
The gap.
Raifu moved instantly.
Step One.
He kicked the shaft open, dropping midair with a spiraling descent.
The hunter raised his baton, blocking instinctively.
Step Two.
Raifu twisted his foot mid-fall, landing at a diagonal that used the wall as a spring.
The hunter redirected, moving perfectly.
Step Three.
Palm-strike. Deflected. Backhand. Missed. Twist. Redirect. Blocked.
Raifu's eyes widened.
He was being mirrored.
This man was hearing him too well.
But that was fine.
Raifu didn't want a kill.
Not yet.
He wanted a lesson.
The other two guards flanked.
He let them come.
Step Four.
He spun into them—using their aggression against them. Twisted the second's arm, broke it at the elbow, flipped the body to intercept the third.
They collapsed.
Back to the Hunter.
The man stood still.
He didn't strike.
He waited.
Then stepped forward, in time with Raifu's last beat.
Mocking him.
Raifu moved again.
Step Five.
Feint left. Arc upward. Elbow into chest.
Blocked.
Step Six.
Knee strike mid-turn.
Blocked.
Step Seven.
Mana pulse—wind-force.
Absorbed.
The hunter's baton absorbed the mana—grooves glowing faint blue.
Raifu froze for half a breath.
He was out of beat.
The hunter raised the baton.
Then Raifu did something strange.
He stopped.
Stopped moving.
Stopped resisting.
Dropped his hands.
The Hunter blinked. Baton paused.
"Why?" he asked softly.
Raifu smiled.
"You didn't ask what this was," he said.
"This?" He pointed upward, toward the broken vent, the echo line, the trap corridor. "This wasn't a duel."
"Then what—?"
Raifu stepped forward—close enough for the man to feel his breath.
"This was a scan."
And then—
Thread Echo detonated.
The lingering rhythm Raifu had planted five moves ago collapsed inward like an imploding note.
The sound twisted.
The space wobbled.
The Hunter's baton dropped. He clutched his chest—air caught, rhythm disrupted.
Not a hit.
A disruption of tempo from within.
Raifu moved fast now.
Palm to chest.
Knee to thigh.
Shoulder to jaw.
He didn't kill him.
He broke his pattern.
The man collapsed, not from wounds, but from inability to hear himself.
His rhythm was stolen.
Raifu stood over him.
"Next time," he whispered, "don't follow. Lead."
Chapter: 3
Level: 3
Thread Count: 5
Stat Points Allocated This Chapter: 0 (Held)
New Technique: Echo Disruption Pulse (implodes a planted ghostloop into an internal tempo burst)
Combat Style Used: Mirror Response + Mana Echo Inversion
Notable Event: First encounter with a Rhythm Hunter; learns rhythm can be absorbed, mirrored, and **broken by silence**
He didn't move for three full beats.
Raifu stood over the collapsed Rhythm Hunter, eyes half-closed, hands slack at his sides. His breath came in a precise, measured rhythm: In—two—three… Out—two—three.
He wasn't resting.
He was listening.
To the system.
To the air.
To himself.
The echo detonation had disrupted more than the guards.
It had disrupted him.
That fight was the first time since death he'd met someone who moved with rhythm instead of against it. Someone who didn't resist his beat, but mirrored it—nearly cancelled it.
That couldn't happen again.
He crouched beside the unconscious Hunter.
The man twitched—still breathing, eyes fluttering beneath closed lids like a child caught in a bad dream. The aftershock of losing one's internal rhythm left the nervous system fragmented. A slight tempo-stutter would ripple through his thoughts for days.
Raifu reached into the man's chest wrap and pulled free a data-etched pendant.
Soul-path class.
Burnt into the metal were five grooves—standard formation badges for Rhythm Countermeasures Division.
He's not even top-tier, Raifu thought. But he still blocked six of seven.
Noted.
He stood.
Next time, don't leave the seventh for flair.
He stepped toward the corridor wall and placed his fingers flat against the cold iron.
Beneath the surface, the corridor vibrated softly—security pulses, sensor rhythms, biofeedback loops monitoring hallway movement.
All just… sound.
Sound pretending to be control.
Raifu's eyes sharpened.
He struck the wall.
Not with power.
With precision.
One—twist—push—two—slide—anchor—three.
The combo was clean, silent, fast.
He felt the threads of feedback ripple around the entire corridor—not breaking, not disrupting—but re-weaving.
And now they responded to his tempo.
The hallway pulse realigned.
To him.
He had rewritten the local rhythm perimeter.
Ghostplant: Corridor Bound (Rhythm Realignment Layered)
➤ All sensors now ping in sync with Raifu's movement
➤ Tracking him? Impossible
➤ Tracking anything not moving like him? Now guaranteed
He turned and walked away from the downed guards, leaving their failed patterns twitching in the floor's memory.
[Focus +1]
[Mana +1]
Total Stat Points Allocated (Chapter 3 So Far):
+1 Mana
+1 Focus
Raifu's rhythm no longer costs extra mana to manipulate system layers.
The next sector was two corridors ahead.
Sector 7-Hemline.
That was where the command threads converged.
A bottleneck of rhythm.
A cage built entirely from sound paths—meant to trap any anomaly by over-saturating their beat.
If he walked into it unprepared, the system would hear him from a mile away.
But Raifu didn't plan to walk into it.
He planned to invert it.
As he moved, he began humming.
Low.
Soft.
Not melodic.
Just a vibration, layered with breath-based pacing.
Every few steps, he touched the wall again.
And planted a false beat.
Not just an echo this time.
A spike.
A jarring, purposefully broken fragment of movement.
"If the system can't follow me," he whispered, "then let it trip over itself trying."
Ghost Inversion Spike: Active
➤ Raifu can now implant discordant beats that corrupt nearby patrol algorithms
➤ Causes system watchers to mirror incorrect tempo, exposing them to counter-attacks
He paused before the final turn into Sector 7-Hemline.
Ahead: heavy pulses. Measured. Synchronized. A corridor made of heartbeat.
His left hand touched the floor.
His right slid over the wall.
Planted.
Planted.
He whispered: Follow this lie.
And stepped sideways—into an electrical junction tunnel barely a meter wide.
No camera.
No watcher.
The system would chase the sound.
He would chase the source.
END OF PART II (Hey y'all.. please show support)
The crawlspace narrowed.
Raifu moved through it sideways, back brushing the chilled pipe wall, left hand gliding along the vibration ductwork. Each contact point gave him feedback—a pulse map of nearby enforcers, sensor frequencies, and movement patterns.
They were all converging.
Not on him.
On the echo he'd left behind.
His spike loops were working.
Sector 7-Hemline's central corridor was now chasing a rhythm that didn't exist.
That gave him two minutes.
He needed only thirty seconds.
The pipe ended in a grated platform two meters above the grid floor of Command Subdeck 5—a place most slaves never saw, and most guards never understood. It wasn't built with walls. It was built with waveforms.
Ceiling projectors hummed low-frequency pulses into the iron floor, creating invisible barriers. Pulsewalkers moved within them like dancers inside cages.
These weren't soldiers.
These were Conductors—soul-bound system techs trained to keep rhythm integrity flowing.
If they stopped, the entire sector's surveillance heartbeat would flatline.
Raifu exhaled once through his nose.
This was the tempo he came to kill.
He dropped.
His boots hit the floor with less sound than a sigh.
The nearest Conductor didn't even turn.
Raifu moved instantly.
Step One.
His palm touched the floor.
Mana surged into it—not explosive. Resonant.
Step Two.
The sound grid faltered for .3 seconds.
Step Three.
He stepped through the frequency seam and entered the center of the command triangle.
Step Four.
He turned his torso, palms rising like a spiral forming around his heart.
Step Five.
He whispered:
"Wolf Spiral."
The effect wasn't loud.
It wasn't visual.
It was geometric.
Every step he'd taken—every breath—every echo left in the last corridor—had created points in the system.
Now, he connected them.
Not with sound.
With motion.
The Spiral wasn't a combo. It was a decision.
To collapse rhythm inward, like a predator circling its kill.
The mana in his limbs became threadlight.
Faint. Flickering. Then sharp.
The Conductors froze.
Their systems began to loop.
A faint howling sound—low, sad, and metallic—rippled through the room.
Not from Raifu.
From the walls.
From the wires.
From the rhythm he had just broken.
One Conductor moved forward, reaching for an emergency override baton.
Raifu spun—not to strike, but to step.
The Spiral pulsed outward.
The Conductor's baton bent midair.
Not broken. Not blocked.
Denied.
The rhythm was rejecting it.
Combo Unlocked: 5-Beat Wolf Spiral
A signature rhythm-collapse pattern that folds ambient system motion inward
Effects:
➤ Cancels local surveillance tempo
➤ Stuns any soul-bound enemy whose rhythm aligns with target grid
➤ Redirects aggression of lower-level guards toward each other for 3 beats
The room descended into chaos.
Two guards entering from the south gate immediately misread each other's motion and collided.
Another turned, saw a flicker of movement from a fellow enforcer, and fired.
System rhythm was corrupted.
Raifu walked to the central command pillar.
Three guards already lay unconscious.
One wept from confusion.
The rest had fled.
He placed both palms on the interface.
Not to hack.
To resonate.
The system's grid recognized his pattern.
And for the first time—
Obeyed.
[Sector 7: Rhythm Core Hijacked]
New Pulse Source: UNBOUND
Rhythm Broadcast Control: Manual
Soul Registry Access – OPEN
Surveillance Access – OPEN
Soul Suppression Tags – OVERRIDABLE
He smiled, just slightly.
Now… it began.
Chapter: 3
Level: 3
Thread Count: 5
Stat Points Earned This Chapter: +2
Points Allocated: +1 Mana, +1 Focus
New Named Combo: 5-Beat Wolf Spiral
New Ability: Grid Rhythm Collapse
Combat Style: Rhythm Inversion + Spiral Anchor
Notable Event: Hijacked the Sector's pulse control system, stunned Conductors, collapsed surveillance grid from inside
🧠 Etymology Note:
"Spiral" – from Latin spiralis, derived from spira (a coil, a whorl)
A spiral is not a circle. It moves inward or outward, implying either collapse or emergence.
The Wolf Spiral is not just a combo—it's the symbol of Raifu's method: not to fight head-on, but to collapse structure inward using the system's own motion.