CHAPTER 66: WOUNDS AND WHISPERS

She had seen that look before.

In the training room.

In the Breeding Pits.

It was the look of a weapon that was about to go off.

And she was sitting right next to the firing pin.

The hunger was a living thing.

It was a cold, coiling snake in the pit of his stomach, its whispers a sweet, venomous poison in his mind.

Just a taste, little Reaper.

The power is right there. Waiting for you.

Take it. You’ve earned it.

Michael gritted his teeth, a low groan escaping his lips. His entire body trembled with the strain of holding back.

The gargoyle corpse seemed to call to him, a silent, siren song of easy strength and sweet relief.

He was so tired.

So empty.

It would be so easy to just... give in.

He started to push himself up, his muscles moving with a will that was not entirely his own.

"Michael."

The voice was a block of solid ice, dropped into the hot, chaotic storm of his mind.

He froze.

He turned his head slowly.

Chloe was watching him.

Her face was a mask of cold, clinical focus, but her eyes... her eyes were burning with an intensity that was almost terrifying.

She wasn’t looking at him with fear.

She was looking at him like a complex, malfunctioning piece of high-yield ordinance that she was about to disarm.

With words.

"The whispers are a cognitive virus," she said, her voice low, steady, and relentlessly logical. "A parasitic data-form that feeds on your emotional response."

"It is offering you a solution. A shortcut."

"Do not accept."

He just stared at her, his mind a battlefield, her voice a distant, clinical report from the front lines.

"I... I can’t," he managed to gasp, the words a raw, ragged confession. "It’s too loud."

She doesn’t understand, the whispers hissed. She is weak. She is afraid of your true power. Ignore her.

"She is correct," Chloe stated, her voice cutting through the whispers like a surgeon’s scalpel.

She hadn’t moved. She hadn’t raised her voice.

She was just... talking.

"The entity you are fighting is not a monster," she continued, her analytical mind dissecting his internal struggle with a terrifying precision. "It is an algorithm. A feedback loop."

"It presents a problem—your weakness. It offers a solution—Soul Devour. When you accept the solution, it rewards you with a dopamine release, reinforcing the loop."

"It is training you. Like a dog."

The word hit him like a physical blow.

Dog.

A cold, unwanted image flashed in his mind. The Phase Hound. Its programmed loyalty. Its desperate, slavish need to obey its master.

He was becoming a pet to his own power.

"Break the loop, Michael," she commanded, her voice a sharp, clean line of pure, unshakeable logic.

"Refuse the reward. Starve the algorithm."

He looked from her cold, determined face to the gargoyle corpse.

The hunger was still there, a physical ache in his soul.

But now, it was mixed with something else.

A surge of hot, stubborn, and deeply human anger.

No one, his inner monologue snarled, calls me a dog.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, focusing on her voice, on the cold, hard logic of her words.

He used it as an anchor.

He began to build his wall.

It wasn’t a wall of strength. It was a wall of pure, undiluted spite.

Get out of my head, he thought, the mental command a raw, furious shout.

He visualized the whispers. Not as terrifying monsters, but as what Chloe had called them.

A virus.

A piece of bad code.

He built a quarantine folder in his mind, a little black box made of anger and stubbornness.

He took all the whispers, all the hunger, all the cold, alien logic, and he dragged them, kicking and screaming, into the box.

He slammed the lid shut.

He locked it.

And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, his mind was quiet.

The silence was so profound, so absolute, that it was almost deafening.

He slumped back against the rock, the strength leaving his body in a single, dizzying rush.

He was exhausted.

He was empty.

But he was... him.

He was Michael.

A quiet, almost imperceptible notification pinged on his HUD, its text a soft, reassuring blue.

[MENTAL FORTITUDE CHECK: SUCCESS.]

[Resistance to ’Soul Corruption’ effects temporarily increased.]

He had done it.

He had fought the monster inside his own head, and he had won.

He looked over at Chloe.

Her professional mask was back in place, but he could see the faint, almost invisible release of tension in her shoulders.

She gave a single, curt nod.

It was her version of a standing ovation.

"Your cognitive stability has been restored," she stated, her voice back to its usual, clinical monotone.

But he could feel it with his [Void Sense].

A faint, prickly wave of something that wasn’t analytical.

It was pride.

Their quiet, fragile moment of victory was shattered by a sudden burst of static from the comms unit that Forge had given them.

"Thanatos."

The voice was a low, gravelly rumble. It was Forge.

"You kids still alive over there?"

"For now," Jinx’s voice answered from across the clearing, where she had been silently watching the entire exchange, her expression a complex, unreadable mix of worry and relief.

"We’ve got eyes on the Gatekeeper," Forge’s voice crackled, the signal full of static and the distant roar of battle. "It’s not just a commander-class."

"It’s an Umbraxis."

Chloe’s head snapped up, her face going pale.

"A true dragon-class," Forge’s voice continued, his tone grim. "It just wiped out half of Vanguard’s A-team without breaking a sweat."

The camera feed on Chloe’s datapad switched, showing them what Forge was seeing.

The image was shaky, chaotic.

It showed a beast.

A behemoth of obsidian scales and crimson fire, its form so massive it blotted out the angry red sky.

It opened its mouth, and a river of molten fire poured out, incinerating a full squad of Hunters, their energy shields dissolving like sugar in water.

"We can’t beat it," Forge’s voice was a flat, final, and utterly defeated statement.

"No one can."