Ethan exhaled slowly, forcing his heartbeat to steady. The night air pressed around them, thick with tension. Vance stood beside him, arms crossed, his gaze wary. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.
Then Ethan moved.
He lifted his hand, focusing on the Mark pulsing beneath his skin. He wasn't sure how it worked—wasn't sure if he could even control it—but he had felt the way reality bent around him when the system had rewritten itself.
If he could trigger that effect again… he might be able to do more than just survive.
"You're serious about this, huh?" Vance muttered.
Ethan nodded. "I need to know how deep this goes."
Vance sighed, rubbing his temples. "Fine. But we're testing this away from civilization. If you break something, I don't wanna be caught in the blast radius."
They moved quickly, pushing deeper into the forest. The ground sloped downward, leading them into a secluded clearing where the trees grew taller, their branches forming a dense canopy overhead. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and moss.
Ethan flexed his fingers, willing the Mark to respond.
Nothing.
He frowned. The first time had been instinctual. Desperate. How had he triggered it?
"Try thinking back to when it activated before," Vance suggested. "What were you feeling? What was happening?"
Ethan closed his eyes. He remembered the crushing weight of the Executors' presence, the way reality itself had tried to erase him. He had felt like a glitch—something that didn't belong. And then—
The Mark had pushed back.
He focused on that sensation. The rejection. The defiance.
And suddenly—
The world flickered.
The ground beneath his feet warped for an instant, as if reality itself had hesitated. The trees around him shimmered, their forms momentarily inconsistent—as though the system was trying to correct something that wasn't actually broken.
Vance took a step back, eyes wide. "Holy shit… you actually did it."
Ethan opened his eyes, heart pounding. He had felt it. The same sensation from before. A crack in the world's logic.
An exploit waiting to be used.
A slow grin crept onto his face. "I think I just figured out how to cheat the system."
Vance shook his head, but there was something close to amusement in his eyes. "Kid… this is either the smartest or dumbest thing you've ever done."
Ethan clenched his fists, feeling the flickering instability still lingering in the air.
Either way, he wasn't stopping now.