The first scream didn't come from a creature.
It came from the air.
A high, thin wail—like a threadline snapping in slow motion, echoing through places sound shouldn't reach.
Elian's head turned, eyes narrowing, Griefblade rising instinctively.
The girl clutched her ears, stumbling back. The rotborne woman bared her teeth, claws digging into cracked stone.
"What… is that?" the girl gasped.
Elian's eyes stayed locked on the horizon, where the rotlight twisted into spirals—forming shapes that should not have shape.
"Memory," he muttered, voice low.
"Turning into monsters."
[Warning: Conceptual Drift – Phase 2]
[Effect: Anomalous Entities Manifesting]
[Classification: Memory Constructs – Origin: Directive Collapse]
The fissure where the directive had fallen began to pulse—waves of dark, humming energy spilling out like smoke.
And then… they rose.
Figures.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Not real.
Twisted forms built from the system's deepest regrets.
Some were skeletal, wrapped in broken glyphs.
Others were featureless shadows, eyes flickering like dying threadlines.
All of them moved like they were still trying to remember how to be monsters.
The system's nightmares made flesh.
The rotborne woman hissed low.
"What are they?"
Elian's gaze sharpened, cold and deadly.
"Echoes of rules that didn't survive me."
He lifted Griefblade, its dark edge gleaming with a fresh hunger.
"And now they're trying to survive themselves."
The nearest construct lunged—a massive thing of twisted limbs and flickering code, claws outstretched, its mouth a swirling glyph of pure lawlessness.
Elian didn't flinch.
He stepped forward—fast, clean—and cut.
Griefblade arced through the creature's center.
Not just through its body.
Through its meaning.
The monster didn't die.
It simply… unraveled.
Gone before it hit the ground.
[Memory Construct: Severed]
[Residual Drift: Dissipating]
[Warning: Additional entities converging.]
But more were coming.
Dozens now, pulling themselves free of the fissure, each one more warped than the last.
Elian's grip tightened.
The girl backed up fast. "There's too many!"
The rotborne woman snarled, dropping into a crouch, claws ready.
Elian's voice was cold steel.
"There's never too many."
He stepped forward into the swarm—Griefblade flashing.
Each strike wasn't just a kill.
It was a correction.
Each swing erased a mistake reality had spat back out.
And still—they kept coming.
The air filled with broken whispers:
"Why… do we exist…?"
"We were… law… we were… order…"
"We… remember… being whole…"
Elian's eyes burned with sharp fury.
"That's your mistake."
Another cut.
A construct folded into ash.
"Remembering doesn't save you."
Another slash—two more gone.
"Only breaking free does."
[System Alert: Aberrant Response Surpassing Threshold]
[Emergency Directive: Prepare Next Phase Containment.]
Far above, the sky trembled, thin cracks widening as the system strained to pull itself back together.
And beneath it all, deep in the code where no voice should exist, something whispered:
"The devil is not just fighting monsters."
"He's carving new rules into the bones of fear."
Elian stood alone amid the wreckage—shattered constructs fading around him, the rotlight still flickering with exhaustion.
Griefblade hissed, dark and alive.
And Elian whispered to the quiet:
"This is just the beginning."