Branches of Remorse

The orchard howled. Not wind—remorse. It wept sap, reality, and time through its branches.

Dani crouched beside Lance, one hand on his shoulder, the other yanking open a side holster.

Her fingers wrapped around the custom shell for her grenade launcher—round IV-E: designed to disperse anti-anomaly shrapnel in a five-meter radius.

She slammed it into the breach—

Click. Whine. Fizzle.

A warning glyph blinked red across the casing.

"Damn it," she spat. "Warp's fouling the trigger matrix."

She yanked the launcher's side hatch open. Three rounds inside—all pulsing faintly, glitching like corrupted pixels.

One looked ready to cook off. Another… flickered between round and insect.

"I've got maybe one good shot," she muttered.

Kenton winced. "So don't miss."

"I won't."

But they all knew better. The Hollow Reach wasn't missable. It bent reality around the shot.

A screech rang out as another mirror-Lance lunged from the fog, jaws wide where his face should've been. Dani rolled low, used the broken launcher itself as a blunt weapon—crack—splintered its spine, sending the thing reeling into warped vines that swallowed it whole.

She cursed under her breath. Too slow. Too sloppy. Too few options.

More figures were circling. Some had Kenton's limp. Some had Dani's war-stare. One even dragged Dario's limp tail behind it like a trophy.

"I've got no signal," Kenton muttered. "My instruments are full of noise."

"No surprise," Dani said. "We're in a feedback trap. Hollow Reach is collapsing in, but it's not kicking us out—it's caging us."

She glanced down at Lance.

He was breathing harder now. Twitching stronger. Milk and blood leaking from his ears in thin threads—but his eyes were open.

Not clear.

Not sane.

But open.

"Lance," she whispered. "Hey. I need you. You feel that thing inside you? That twitch?"

He blinked, lips twitching.

She leaned close.

"I need you to aim it. Not control—aim. Give it something worse to bite than you."

He didn't speak.

But the air thickened.

Kenton's hair rose at the nape of his neck.

Lance's fingers unfurled slowly, and space bent with them—like cloth pulled from opposite ends. A ripple of distortion pushed outward, folding the orchard's geometry into a fractal spiral.

The mirror-figures screamed. Not audibly—but metaphysically. Like the concept of screaming was injected directly into their spines.

And behind them, reality finally snapped.

The observatory crumpled into the air, folding inward like a soda can.

Dani's boots lifted off the ground for a heartbeat.

The sky twisted.

The orchard lifted, roots and all, then imploded into the ground.

And yet—

They weren't falling.

They were flattening.

"THE REACH IS REWRITING US!" Kenton shouted. "IT'S FORCING CONGRUENCE—MAKING US MATCH ITS MEMORY OF US!"

Dani's vision flickered.

For a split second—she was younger. Wearing a soldier's uniform. Crying in an alley after a failed mission.

Another blink—she was dead. A burned-out husk with one arm and a metal ribcage.

A third—Lance wasn't there.

None of them were.

Only her.

Alone.

Bleeding under the orchard's pale moon.

She gritted her teeth, shaking it off.

"Lance!" she snapped, grabbing his face. "Fight it. Aim. You're not a glitch. You're not a rewrite. You're the wrench in its gears!"

Lance blinked again.

And screamed.

A pulse of impossible geometry tore from his chest—sharp as math, hot as guilt, cold as milk.

The mirror-figures exploded into fragments of concept and bone.

And the Reach—

Shrieked.

The orchard collapsed in full. A vacuum of meaning. Trees becoming memories of trees. Ground becoming a lie.

Dani slammed her shoulder into Kenton, yanking him sideways as a twisting fissure opened beneath them. She grabbed Lance, threw him over her back like a sack of collapsing reality, and ran—

Not away.

Through.

Through a rift in the world Lance had made.

The Reach snarled behind them. Its final voice sounded like her mother's.

"You don't deserve escape."

They didn't answer.

They just fell.

Through the split skin of the world.

And somewhere in the impossible dark between places, something else opened an eye.

Watching them.

Interested.

The trio woke in a place that felt like Hollow Reach, but twisted sideways—like looking through a cracked lens.

The sky was too still, the shadows too quiet. The streetlights flickered unevenly, casting shapes that lingered too long, bending corners that should have been sharp.

Lance lay semi-conscious on a cracked stoop, his breath shallow, the twitch inside pulsing faintly but steadily.

Dani sat close by, fingers twitching nervously, eyes flickering between the warped horizon and her half-repaired grenade launcher, which hummed faintly—something alive in its mechanics, but not by any human design.

Kenton was on his knees, hands pressed against the cracked pavement, eyes wide and unblinking.

He blinked again.

Time warped around him.

The moment skipped—then repeated.

His own voice echoed in his ears, but out of sync, like a badly tuned radio.

He reached up, trembling fingers touching his face—and froze.

Where once his skin had been pale and steady, now it shimmered faintly, translucent in places, revealing shifting veins of black and silver beneath.

His pupils contracted sharply, narrowing like a cat's in a dim room.

Fear flickered there—deep, quiet, but unmistakable.

This wasn't a glitch. This was him.

An echo of the Reach had seeped into his body, fracturing his form. But it hadn't broken him.

Instead, it reshaped him.

His hands trembled, then flexed—and where his palm met the cracked concrete, the ground rippled like liquid obsidian, solidifying into sharp, glassy shards that hummed softly with cold energy.

He exhaled slowly.

"This isn't just contamination," he whispered. "It's… adaptation."

Dani's gaze snapped to him.

"Are you okay?"

He tried to smile, but the edges of his mouth flickered like a broken signal.

"I think… I'm becoming something else."

The shimmer along his arms shifted again, as if alive.

He flexed his fingers, and the glass shards pulsed, extending outward, forming a thin protective shell around him—less armor, more living barrier.

"We've been given a reprieve," Kenton said quietly, voice low but steady. "This place… it's holding us. But it's unstable."

Lance stirred, blinking open his eyes.

A small, translucent child version of himself sat nearby, watching silently, expression unreadable.

The twitch inside Lance flickered softly, warping the air between them.

Dani's fingers brushed over her launcher.

The hum grew louder.

Her weapon's pieces began to knit together on their own—metal and circuitry fusing with whispers of something alien and impossible.

She swallowed hard.

"We can't stay."

Before anyone could respond, a sharp, deliberate knock echoed through the hollow air.

Slow.

Insistent.

Coming from the warped, fragile door at the edge of their refuge.

They all froze.

Kenton's pupils shrank further as he whispered, "It's not safe. Whoever—or whatever—that is… knows us."

The child-Lance shifted slightly but said nothing.

The knock came again.

And the fragile veneer of their sanctuary cracked.