The roar came from the depths.
It wasn’t especially loud. It didn’t shake the walls or send debris raining from the ceiling. Even so, every monster in the chamber stopped moving at the same time.
Those that still had legs crouched down. Those that had been reduced to masses of cracked flesh pressed themselves against the floor. Even the creatures the Future Soldiers had just mutilated tried to drag themselves toward the fissures.
They weren’t running from Adrian.
They were fleeing from something that had just awakened beneath them.
[Deep-level entity awakening.]
[Threat Classification: A-Rank.]
[Warning: Temporal Warden active.]
Adrian stopped smiling.
Evelyn, who was holding her ribs with one hand, noticed immediately.
"You know it?"
"Yes."
The floor vibrated again. This time, a black line spread across the center of the chamber. The dungeon runes flickered and went dark one after another, like lights being consumed by a shadow rising from the depths.
"That didn’t sound like good news," Evelyn said.
"Because it isn’t."
Adrian had read that name only once.
The record had been damaged. Most of the archive was missing, and the surviving images barely showed a silhouette among collapsed buildings. But he hadn’t forgotten the date.
The year 2066.
Forty years in the future.
The creature had appeared during the evacuation of New Cairo and exterminated the Seventh Awakened Battalion in less than nine minutes. Twelve hundred combatants, including seven A-Rank hunters, had died before understanding what kind of enemy they were facing.
Only one sentence from the report remained intact.
Never send an army against it.
Adrian looked at his five soldiers. They stood in formation around the students: the swordsman and lancer at the front, both riflemen covering the flanks, and the soldier with the longsword guarding the passage they had used to enter.
All five had just reached Level 15.
Against an A-Rank creature, that meant nothing.
"Everyone behind Evelyn," Adrian ordered. "Now."
The students obeyed without arguing. They had seen their companions die, become trapped inside a dungeon that no longer obeyed its own rules, and watched five armed corpses destroy a horde. They no longer needed an explanation to recognize an order that might keep them alive.
Evelyn didn’t move.
"I can fight."
"You can breathe without passing out. Don’t confuse the two."
"My ribs aren’t broken."
"Two are fractured."
She narrowed her eyes.
"How do you know that?"
"I counted how long it took you to start insulting me again after you were hit."
Another tremor passed through the chamber. This time, the center of the floor sank several inches.
Adrian pointed toward the side passage his soldiers had cleared.
"Take the students to the maintenance gate. It has a mechanical lock, so the dungeon’s transformation shouldn’t affect it. Wait there."
"And if that thing kills both of you, what do we do?"
"Come up with a more romantic story about how you met me."
Evelyn tightened her grip on her sword.
"You still owe me a dinner."
"On the contrary. You’re the one in debt."
"Then come back and collect."
For the first time since the dungeon began transforming, Adrian didn’t answer with another provocation. He simply held her gaze for a moment and nodded.
Evelyn understood what that meant.
This thing could kill him.
She turned toward the others.
"Move. Keep the injured in the center. No one separates from the group."
The five Future Soldiers closed formation around them and began escorting them away. Adrian waited until the final student entered the passage.
Lyra appeared beside him without making a sound.
The ancient goddess of war stared at the fissure in the floor with an expression Adrian had never seen on her before. It wasn’t fear.
It was recognition.
"You’ve heard that name before," he said.
"Not that name. That purpose."
"What purpose?"
"Killing armies."
The floor exploded.
Adrian crossed his arms in front of his face as a column of stone and dust erupted through the chamber. Lyra didn’t retreat. Her sword appeared in her hand, and an arc of silver energy split the debris before it could reach them.
Something emerged from the hole.
First came a hand covered in black plates. Its fingers, too long to belong to a human, ended in curved claws that dug into the stone. Then another hand appeared.
Then two more.
The creature pulled itself upward.
It stood almost twenty feet tall. The lower half of its body rested on four segmented limbs resembling those of an armored beast. Four arms extended from its humanoid torso, each covered in natural blades that ran from the elbows to the wrists. A smooth white mask concealed its face.
A ring made from twelve metallic fragments floated behind its head.
The fragments revolved like the broken hands of a clock.
Adrian felt Rift Sense react an instant before the creature opened its eyes.
Two red lines appeared across the mask.
They didn’t look at Adrian or Lyra.
They turned toward the passage.
Toward the soldiers.
"Recall them," Lyra said.
The ring stopped.
Twelve red symbols ignited around the creature.
One for Adrian.
One for Lyra.
One for Evelyn.
Six for the students.
Five for the Future Soldiers.
Every hostile presence had received a mark.
[Temporal Warden activated Army Recognition.]
[Hostile units registered: 14.]
[Legion Extinction multiplier: ×14.]
The beast extended all four arms.
Fourteen lines of dark energy erupted from its blades.
"Down!" Adrian roared.
The lines didn’t travel in straight paths. They disappeared into the air and reappeared beside every marked target.
Two flew toward Adrian and Lyra.
The other twelve appeared inside the passage.
Adrian activated Starforged Body and slammed both hands against the floor. A wave of force traveled through the tiles. The impact deflected the line pursuing him, but the dark energy changed direction and returned as though it had been chained to his chest.
Lyra cut hers in half.
The two halves rejoined.
"They aren’t projectiles," she said. "They’re bound executions."
Adrian closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.
He could feel his soldiers. Five cold, precise connections linked his consciousness to theirs. Through those bonds, he received images from the passage: Evelyn pushing a student to the ground, the lancer blocking two lines of energy, one of the riflemen losing an arm while intercepting another.
Then he felt something else.
The energy wasn’t merely attacking the units.
It was entering their bonds.
[Command network detected.]
[Command Severance initiated.]
A black line appeared across Adrian’s forearm. His skin split open without anything touching it.
Lyra turned toward him.
"It can reach you through your soldiers."
"I know."
Adrian raised his hand.
"Full retreat! Return to the Archive!"
The five soldiers dissolved into dark blue particles.
The lines pursuing them curved, attempting to follow even after their bodies disappeared. Adrian felt them striking the doors of the Unit Archive from outside.
[Unit recall completed.]
[External intrusion detected.]
[Unit Archive access denied.]
[Legion Extinction multiplier reduced.]
The cut along his arm stopped spreading.
Inside the passage, Evelyn destroyed the final line pursuing one of the students. Her sword broke in half, but she bought enough time for everyone to pass through the gate.
The steel door closed.
The symbols around the Temporal Warden went dark until only two remained.
Adrian and Lyra.
The creature tilted its head.
"Now I understand," Adrian said. "Every soldier gives me more strength, but each one also gives it another way to reach me."
"Not only you. If you had deployed an entire army, it would have produced one attack for every member and used the command bonds to spread the damage between them."
"Twelve hundred soldiers..."
"Twelve hundred weapons aimed at themselves."
Adrian remembered the number from the archive.
Nine minutes.
The Seventh Battalion hadn’t lost despite its numbers.
It had died because of them.
The Temporal Warden slowly descended from the mound of debris. Each of its legs left an aged footprint in the stone. The tiles beneath them cracked, became covered in moss, and crumbled into dust within seconds.
Adrian watched the ring floating behind its head.
The twelve fragments began moving again.
They didn’t rotate together. Some moved forward while others turned backward.
"Lyra."
"I see it."
"I just wanted to make sure you weren’t staring at my lips."
She shot him a cutting look.
"If we die because of one of your comments, I’ll find a way to kill you again."
"That almost sounded affectionate."
The Warden raised one arm.
Rift Sense exploded inside Adrian’s head.
He didn’t see one attack.
He saw seven.
All occupying the same instant.
"Three steps left!" he shouted.
Lyra moved before he finished speaking.
Four blades pierced the place where she had been standing. The other three appeared in front of Adrian, behind him, and directly beneath his feet.
Adrian activated Meridian War Step.
His body left their paths an instant before the stone split apart. Even so, one blade grazed his shoulder.
He didn’t feel pain.
First, he felt cold.
Then the sleeve of his jacket disintegrated. The skin beneath it became covered in scars that hadn’t existed a second earlier, as though his arm had aged for decades.
[Temporal erosion detected.]
[Starforged Body is distributing chronological damage.]
[Reinforcement layer generated.]
Starforged Body redirected part of the effect through the rest of his body. His muscles tightened. A strand of white appeared in his hair and vanished almost immediately once the skill finished processing the damage.
"That was unpleasant," he muttered.
Lyra collided with the Warden.
Her sword struck one of its lower arms. The impact sounded like two enormous bells crashing together. The creature retreated half a step.
Lyra spun, changed her grip, and delivered a second slash toward its mask.
The Warden raised two arms to block her.
That exposed its flank.
Adrian was already there.
Starbreaker Fist concentrated the full force of his body into his knuckles. His hip, shoulder, and arm formed a single line.
His fist struck the seam between two black plates.
The armor caved inward.
[Fracture applied.]
A network of glowing cracks spread across the Warden’s torso. Thanks to Starbreaker’s fifth level, the fracture jumped from one plate to the next, searching for every connected section of its structure.
Adrian smiled.
"You can still break."
The ring behind the creature’s head rotated backward.
The deformed plate returned to its original shape.
The cracks vanished.
[Temporal restoration detected.]
[Fracture removed from target history.]
Adrian’s smile disappeared.
It hadn’t healed the damage.
It had erased the moment when the damage occurred.
The Warden retaliated with a backhand strike. Adrian raised both arms, but the force ripped him from the floor. Starforged Body distributed the impact through his skeleton as he crashed through two columns and slammed into the wall.
[Starforged Body proficiency increased.]
[Reinforcement: 3 layers.]
Adrian landed on his feet, though his knees nearly gave out.
"Are you still alive?" Lyra asked.
"I’m offended that you have to check."
"That wasn’t concern. I need to know how long I must distract it."
She blocked two simultaneous attacks, spun beneath a third, and drove her sword into one of its joints. The Warden began reversing time around the wounded arm, but Lyra didn’t allow it to finish. She struck the pommel of her weapon with her palm and drove the blade deeper.
The creature emitted a low sound.
It wasn’t a roar.
It sounded like a machine trying to breathe.
Adrian launched himself from the wall. Rift Sense continued showing him multiple overlapping possibilities, but War God’s Instinct began distinguishing between them. Lyra’s ability didn’t predict the future. It read intent, muscle tension, balance, and the flow of energy.
The Temporal Warden could display seven attacks.
Its body only prepared for one.
[War God’s Instinct synchronization increased.]
The false trajectories faded.
Adrian passed between them.
One blade grazed his cheek. Another severed a lock of hair. The third was real.
He deflected it with his reinforced forearm and entered the creature’s guard.
First strike to the torso.
Second beneath the armpit.
Third against the mask.
Each impact applied a new fracture. The Warden’s ring began rotating backward to erase them, but Lyra released her sword and caught two of the metal fragments with her hands.
The temporal energy burned her skin.
"Now!" she ordered.
Adrian drove his entire body weight into the fourth strike.
The white mask split.
The Warden retreated three steps. Its ring trembled, trapped between moving forward and backward. For the first time, one of the cracks remained.
[Temporal restoration interrupted.]
[Target defense breached.]
There was no flesh beneath the mask.
There was darkness.
And suspended within it was a human eye.
The eye moved toward Lyra.
Then it fixed itself on Adrian.
A chill traveled down his spine.
It didn’t come from the creature’s strength. Adrian had fought more powerful enemies in the future.
He had died against some of them.
What disturbed him was the way that eye observed him.
Not like a beast that had just found its prey.
Like someone who had finally confirmed a suspicion.
The Warden stopped moving.
The system reacted.
[Infinite Sovereign has detected a temporal inconsistency.]
[Temporal Origin Scan initiated.]
Adrian’s eye burned. A succession of images forced their way through his mind: the creature walking among ruined skyscrapers, uniformed bodies covering an avenue, hundreds of weapons melted into the ground.
Then the date appeared.
[Recorded first appearance: May 17, 2066.]
[Current date: September 30, 2026.]
[Temporal causality conflict detected.]
Adrian clenched his teeth.
He had assumed the dungeon connected the present to remnants of the future. The Nullborn Hounds could have accidentally slipped through that connection. Even the Rift Hunter could have been a consequence of the instability.
But this was different.
The Warden hadn’t fallen through a rift.
Someone had sent it.
One final line appeared before his eyes.
[Target was sent from a modified future.]
For a moment, Adrian forgot the pain in his arms.
A modified future.
Not the future he had visited. Not the ruins where he had found his soldiers and awakened Lyra.
Another one.
"That’s impossible," he said.
Lyra didn’t take her eyes off the enemy.
"What did you see?"
"The future has already changed."
"Your presence in this era could alter what comes afterward."
"That’s not what I mean. This creature was sent from a future that had already been modified."
Lyra understood the difference.
Adrian hadn’t lived through those centuries yet. From his perspective, the future was only a possible destination. He could change it with every decision he made in the present.
But for something to arrive from an altered version of that future, another force had to be acting farther along the timeline.
Someone had changed the ruins.
Someone had taken the Temporal Warden.
And someone had sent it forty years before its first known appearance.
The system issued another warning.
[Temporal Origin Scan detected by external authority.]
[Connection terminated.]
All twelve fragments of the ring snapped into alignment.
Lyra recovered her sword and stepped in front of Adrian.
"Prepare yourself."
The darkness beneath the broken mask began to stir. The human eye disappeared. For a second, Adrian thought the creature was going to attack.
Instead, the Warden lowered all four arms.
The change was more threatening than any combat stance.
Because it wasn’t submission.
It was recognition.
The creature slowly tilted its head, and a harsh noise emerged from the void where its mouth should have been. At first, they were disconnected sounds, fragments of a voice never designed to pass through a throat.
Then the words took shape.
"Target... located."
Adrian felt every muscle in Lyra’s body tense.
The eye reappeared beneath the mask.
And the monster that shouldn’t have existed for another forty years spoke his name.
"Adrian Vale."