Chapter 17: Beneath the Quiet Stone

Time since last Rift contact: 11 hours, 42 minutes

Location: Mobile Command Convoy – Sector Edge Camp 3

Cadet Recovery Status: Unstable | Monitoring Required

The makeshift base had been erected in haste—shelters hummed with unstable field generators, and perimeter drones swept endlessly across the fractured ridge. Med-bots worked in silence. Most cadets were silent too. Shell-shocked. Staring at nothing.

Aarav sat alone on a cold slab of synthetic stone, his fingers trembling above his lap. The aftershocks hadn't stopped. Not in his body. Not in his head. Not in the Rift-burn that still flickered across his shoulder like silver fire under the skin.

The near-death battle from hours ago replayed in his mind, again and again, in loops.

The blur of claws. The scream of Mira's voice. Kairav's desperate shout. The moment Reyan reached for him—and the look in his eyes.

Not pity. Not fear. Something worse.

Judgment.

"Why do you keep breaking?" the memory whispered.

Aarav's breath hitched. He clenched his fists.

"You're not them," he muttered to himself. "I'm still here."

A few meters away, Kairav sat cross-legged by a broken comms pylon, rebuilding its circuitry with a rusted multitool and pure genius. He hadn't slept. The bandage on his cheek was already soaked through. His datapad hummed with Rift-sensor data.

"You know," he said without looking up, "your vitals still say 'erratic.' You could at least try pretending to be stable."

Aarav didn't move. "It's not physical. You know that."

"I know." Kairav tightened a circuit coil. "But pretending is the only thing keeping half these cadets from falling apart."

The silence stretched.

"Was I… supposed to die back there?" Aarav asked finally.

Kairav paused. "You weren't supposed to survive. There's a difference."

Their eyes met.

And for a second, Aarav thought he saw grief in Kairav's expression. But it vanished quickly—buried under layers of calculation.

"I'm not just a variable, Kairav."

"None of us are," he said, standing. "But the Rift doesn't care. And neither does the system."

Reyan stood at the top of a ridge overlooking the camp, arms folded tight across his chest. His uniform was scorched, his eyes sharp. Watching.

He hadn't spoken to Aarav since the Rift.

He hadn't spoken to anyone.

Below, Mira Veil paced near the perimeter. She had barely survived too, blood still dried across her scarf. But unlike the others, Mira's expression wasn't haunted.

It was focused. Angry.

She approached Reyan. "You should check on him."

Reyan didn't look at her. "He made it back. That's all that matters."

"No. It's not." Mira's voice was low. Measured. "He's not like you. Not like me. He's something else. And right now, he's trying to carry this without cracking."

"Then he'll learn," Reyan replied coldly. "Or he won't."

Mira narrowed her eyes. "He saved us."

Reyan turned to face her now, and for the first time in days, his mask cracked. "You think I don't know that?"

She saw it then—the quiet rage, the guilt. He wasn't angry at Aarav.

He was angry at himself.

"I hesitated," he muttered. "When the Rift surged. I should've been faster."

"You can't always be the hero," Mira said.

"I wasn't trying to be."

"Then stop acting like you lost something that wasn't yours to protect."

They stood in silence. Distant thunder rolled across the Rift horizon.

Finally, Reyan said, "What if we're not enough?"

Mira looked toward Aarav's figure, hunched and alone. "Then we teach the ones who are."

[Medical Tent | Interior Scan: Level 3 Psychological Instability Detected]

Later that night, Aarav's room was dark.

A field monitor pulsed blue against the wall, tracking his irregular heartbeat. He sat upright on the cot, knees pulled close to his chest, eyes fixed on the floor.

A whisper tickled the edges of his hearing.

"They remember you… You left them behind…"

"No," Aarav whispered. "That wasn't me. That was the Rift talking."

The room shifted. For just a second, the air shimmered—like time itself took a deep breath and paused.

His reflection in the polished metal tray by the wall… was wrong.

It blinked when he didn't.

"Soon…" it whispered, voice curling like a ghost made of dust.

Suddenly, the flap rustled.

Mira entered.

The shimmer vanished.

She didn't speak right away—just pulled over a chair, sat opposite him, and tossed a ration bar onto the cot.

Aarav didn't move.

"I've been reading old case files," she said casually. "You know how many cadets came back from Rift-contact missions with trauma-induced hallucinations?"

He didn't respond.

"Four hundred and twelve. Out of a thousand and six. But guess how many kept hearing voices after the Rift?"

"…How many?" he asked hoarsely.

"Just one."

She leaned forward.

"You."

Mira watched his face carefully, but he didn't flinch.

"Why are you telling me this?" he finally asked.

"Because I think you're not hallucinating. I think you're syncing with something deeper than you understand." She paused. "And because if you fall apart, everything we've built collapses."

Aarav nodded slowly. "I feel like I'm unraveling."

"Then let me help stitch you back."

Outside, Reyan walked the perimeter, eyes scanning the stars.

And on the edge of the crater wall, Kairav stood in silence, uploading Riftwave data into a secure server. The timestamp glitched.

He didn't blink.

[2:37 AM | New Rift Signature Detected | Proximity: 4.2 clicks | Classification: UNKNOWN]

A red icon flared on Kairav's screen.

Then it vanished.

Then reappeared.

Blinking.

Mira's voice came through the comms. "Everyone report to the command tent."

Kairav exhaled.

"Something's coming," he whispered.

End of Chapter 17