Tales of flame and void

The crystalline hum of ANSEP's communications module filled the silence of Cornicius Corell's office as he leaned over the holo-projector. His fingers, pale and slightly trembling, hovered before the blue-lit interface. A sharp tone pulsed. Connection stabilized.

Inteja V Pharsa's face flickered into view — cold, regal, and distant. The Commander of the Fourth Corps was known across the Belts for her tactical brilliance and merciless precision.

> "Lady Inteja," Cornicius began, voice laced with urgency, "I believe the box... it's begun to change. Warping space around itself. We're unable to interact with it physically — drones, light, even Yai energy get repelled."

Her eyes narrowed, calculating. "Any breaches? Infiltration?"

He hesitated. "Four staff are missing from Sector Theta-Zero. Same wing as the artifact."

There was a pause. No emotion flickered across her features.

> "Run another phase of analysis. Crosscheck with pre-Void field data. I'll summon additional researchers and redirect the Fourth Corps to reinforce security. Unfortunately—" her expression stiffened, "I cannot be present. For now."

Cornicius nodded, trying not to show his disappointment. "Of course. I'll begin immediately."

The feed ended. The blue light vanished.

He sat for a moment longer, alone with the quiet static of his thoughts.

> "No. This isn't just a relic. If this is what I think it is..."

The term Pandora Box echoed once through his mind — sharp, impossible, unwelcome.

He stood, brushed down his coat, and exited the office in hurried strides.

---

In the lab's central chamber, the air was colder — like the room itself recoiled from what it held. The Box levitated mid-air, sealed in an orb of spatial anomaly. Reality bent around it in impossible curves, as if the universe refused to touch it.

Cornicius approached, eyes flicking to the readings on his wristpad, then froze at the voice behind him.

> "You really did strike gold, old friend."

He turned.

Nongban leaned casually against the doorframe, a gloved hand brushing his coat. The eccentric scientist's presence, while always unsettling, was oddly comforting now. His painted eye, shimmering with hues unnatural, glinted in the dim light.

> "A jackpot," Nongban continued, "possibly an ancient artifact of the highest classification."

Cornicius allowed himself a weary smile. "You always appear when things turn interesting."

Nongban's grin widened. "If you hadn't recruited me, I'd have stolen it sometime later."

Cornicius chuckled despite himself. "Let's work together on this. Unravel it. Piece by piece."

> "With pleasure."

---

Elsewhere, within the ever-shifting maze of ANSEP's lower corridors…

Atiya braced against the wall, threads coiled silently at his wrists, blood ringing in his ears.

His earlier strike had failed.

He had warped behind the creature once again, hoping to sever more of its limbs, to catch it by surprise. But the creature had been ready. As he appeared, it expelled a blast of corrupted Yai, the energy rippling like static-saturated void, crashing into Atiya and hurling him backward across the corridor.

His back struck cold metal. The world spun.

> "It adapted," he thought. "It remembers."

Then — a memory.

---

"You're joining ANSEP?" Yaishna's voice, amused but tinged with concern, echoed from the past.

Atiya, younger, unscarred, had replied without hesitation. "My teacher works there. It's the best place for me to grow."

Yaishna's smirk softened. "Well, fair enough. I can teach you Flamecraft, but if it's Spatialcraft you want... Lady Inteja's domain is better suited."

She turned serious. "But do you know what ANSEP truly does?"

"I thought… research. Advancement of Yai arts."

"True. But we also investigate Voyagers. Study anomalies. And sometimes… we confront Hingcha."

He paused. "Irregular beings that feed on realms, right?"

"Beings that consume civilizations," Yaishna corrected. "Your mother died fighting one."

"I know. That's why I want to join."

Her eyes had lingered on him for a long time before she finally nodded.

---

Now, the present bled in.

He rose.

The hallway twisted. Paths split like veins — leading to his quarters, to empty rooms, to void.

> "Trap architecture," he muttered. "A Trapper-type Hingcha."

He had read of them in ANSEP's deep archives — creatures that wove pocket dimensions stitched from the innards of buildings and the minds of those inside. Weak in physical strength, deadly in manipulation.

> "This isn't just a beast. This is a predator."

The silence was oppressive. He could almost hear the walls breathing.

Atiya began moving — slowly, precisely — warping short distances to avoid contact with infected surfaces, mapping the fractured layout. The corrupted creature was now part of the structure. A spatial parasite, feeding, looping, hiding.

He circled around a corner, threads flickering from his fingertips like ghostly flame. Every inch of the hallway was wrong — angles that shouldn't exist, shadows cast without light.

He knew the inhabitants of these rooms. At least a dozen staff.

Now… nothing.

Just echoes.

Dead air.

> "I need backup," he whispered. "I can't neutralize this alone."

The creature's shriek rose again — not just from behind, but from above, from below, from everywhere at once. And the metal corridor folded like parchment.

The hunt had resumed.

---

Threads shimmered into motion—sharp, invisible, and laced with lethal intent. Atiya weaved them around the creature like a puppeteer trying to snare a storm. Each thread bent space subtly, whispering across reality with precision honed from years of discipline.

And yet—

The creature moved with fluid unpredictability. It didn't dodge so much as preempt, warping its cephalopodic body into shapes and angles that should not exist. It danced through rifts in its own domain, twisting like thought made flesh.

Atiya halted mid-assault.

> "It's detecting spatial distortions," he realized. "It's not dodging the threads. It's reading them."

His mind raced. The threads were an extension of him—tied through spatial perception. As long as they were connected to his craft, they created ripples through the Yai network. Ripples the creature felt.

He cursed silently.

> "I'm broadcasting my moves before I even make them."

To sever the spatial connection would turn his threads into mere physical filaments—razor-sharp, yes, but lacking the unpredictability that gave them tactical supremacy.

Could he win like that?

> "No... not with brute force. But if I can make it believe I'm fighting on its terms..."

Atiya inhaled sharply and changed rhythm. He slowed his movements, fingers twitching with intentional delay, mimicking weakness. Behind the false hesitation, he wove something else—traps. Threads tied to unstable edges of warped space. Hinges. Anchors. Lures.

> "Let's see how you like your own tricks."

But even as he laid his weave, something gnawed at him.

The creature hadn't truly gone on the offensive. Its tendrils had lashed out, yes—but wild, uncalculated. No focused strikes. No spatial slicing. No illusions. No poison.

It was... too restrained.

> "Why hold back?" he murmured. "Unless its offense isn't physical at all…"

His pupils narrowed.

> "Mental. Illusion-based. Or even worse—emotionally parasitic."

A deep chill threaded through his spine.

He couldn't let it reach his core.

---

Still circling, Atiya initiated his second tactic: misdirection.

He began layering false portals, minor warps that led nowhere but looked real to any being tuned to the flow of dimensional shift. One blinked open behind the creature; another shimmered to the left, then to the right—decoys born of fractal recursion.

The creature paused. It twitched.

A moment's confusion. Not much.

But enough.

Atiya's third tactic surged into play: field fragmentation. He scattered his Yai signature into dozens of smaller imprints, each vibrating at a slightly different frequency—like echoes of himself in miniature. A trick taught to him by Yaishna when they were children, meant to fool beasts that hunted by resonance.

> "Still works on monsters," he smirked.

Until it didn't.

Suddenly the creature shrieked—not a sound, but a pressure—twisting space with a force that splintered Atiya's balance. The walls around him folded, corridors collapsed inward, and reality unraveled like torn parchment.

> "You bastard!"

The hallway no longer obeyed geometry. It stretched sideways and down, forming a twisted cathedral of impossible angles. Light warped. Shadows bent the wrong way. Atiya fought to maintain clarity—but the creature's domain had expanded.

A lawless realm.

Unmapped. Unforgiving.

He drifted for a heartbeat. Lost.

Then—

A glint.

A nameplate embedded in one of the doors: Z. Roseblood

> "Zelaine?"

Atiya grinned.

> "Well, this is gonna be fun."

In a blink, he bent a fragment of corrupted space to his will—one of the few spots not yet fully consumed by the creature's trap—and folded into the room beyond.

---

Inside, the air was warm, familiar.

Zelaine sat cross-legged on her bed, dinner tray hovering beside her. A fork hovered between her fingers, half-raised toward her mouth.

She blinked.

So did he.

> "Vampy!" Atiya gasped, wide-eyed. "I never thought I'd say this but—damn I missed you."

Zelaine's gaze met his—utter confusion, then dawning horror.

> "What the actual hell—"

She leapt backward, fork clattering to the floor.