Corrupted Bonds
Chapter 119: The Pulse Between Worlds

Chapter 119: Chapter 119: The Pulse Between Worlds

Ren didn’t answer. He didn’t know. But he kept moving, each step guided by a pulse only he seemed to feel—like the beat of a buried heart calling him home.

At the chrono relay station, energy flared around him—veins of blue light lashing from the terminal like living wires. The tower’s pulse surged through the feed, dragging pieces of him forward—not just in time, but in essence.

His vision split—fractals of himself in different timelines screeching across the interface. He grit his teeth, the pressure mounting.

He didn’t think.

He moved.

Space around him ruptured with a deafening snap, like a star collapsing in on a breath. Light exploded into a sphere of spiraling glyphs, silver and violet, anchored by resonance threads bursting from his spine.

The air turned weightless.

Then—

Reality split open in the field—no sound, only pressure and brilliance—as a rift tore the sky like glass. The air sang with harmonic distortion. Gravity flexed.

A flash of braided light coalesced midair and snapped downward.

Ren stepped through.

Not stumbled—stepped.

His cloak billowed in unnatural wind, silver-gold circuitlines etched with pulse. His eyes burned with raw resonance. Where he moved, the tower paused.

Not as a system pausing for input.

As a being recognizing its master.

The tower slowed.

Only for a breath.

Just enough.

Command Deck

In the command deck, the terminal cracked with static as Ren vanished from sight.

"Where the hell did he go?" Ava snapped, already pulling up resonance scans.

Evelyn leaned in, eyes wide, her voice urgent. "That wasn’t a projection. That was a full corporeal fold. He opened a rift—in real time."

Sharon’s hands danced across the controls. "There’s no gate activity on our end. He phased through without us even detecting the breach."

"Like the tower let him," Evelyn whispered.

"Or called him," Ava added.

Sharon quickly rerouted audio. "I’ve got a lock on the recon team’s local comms."

Evelyn took the lead. "Ren, team, this is command. We’re still monitoring. Give us a sitrep—now."

The feed crackled, then cleared just in time for them to hear Kira’s breathless: "He’s here. Ren’s here. He came through."

Ava exchanged a look with Evelyn. "We stay on the line. They’re going in, and we need to keep the path anchored."

The entrance

The light from the rift lingered like an afterimage burned into reality. Wind that wasn’t wind coiled around the team, brushing against armor with intangible fingers, before fading into stillness.

Ren’s eyes glazed over, silver bleeding into his irises like twin moons reflecting static. For a heartbeat, he didn’t see the corridor—they saw him. Timelines layered across his vision: towers collapsing, towers reborn, his own face at the center of every one. He blinked, the shimmer fading—but the resonance stayed.

Kira stumbled backward. "Ren?" she breathed, wide-eyed.

"Impossible," Elias muttered. "How did you—?"

Ren didn’t answer right away. He took one breath, then another, grounding himself. "It pulled me through. Or I pulled myself through. I don’t know."

Sloane raised his weapon, then lowered it slowly, gaze locked on Ren. "You... shimmered like the recursion gate itself."

Zora stepped closer, eyes scanning Ren’s cloak and the threads of resonance still flickering around him. "You’re not just synced to the tower, are you?"

"No," Ren said quietly, eyes fixed on the half-buried spire before them. "It knows me. It paused for me."

And it had.

The deep thrumming from beneath their feet had silenced the moment Ren arrived. The shimmer in the soil dissipated, like a breath held tight.

Mira looked around, voice tight. "Whatever it’s doing—it’s waiting. But not for long."

Quinn took a step closer to Ren. "What does it want from us?"

Ren finally turned to them, face taut. "To finish what we started. And that means going in. Together."

A low groan echoed from beneath the ground, too deep to be seismic, too alive to be mechanical. The soil beneath their boots trembled—not violently, but with a steady, rhythmic pulse like the heartbeat of something ancient stirring in the dark.

Kira turned, eyes scanning the horizon. "The light’s changing. Shadows are... bending wrong."

Elias narrowed his eyes. "There’s movement beneath the surface. Something’s shifting in tandem with us."

"Feels like it’s reading our thoughts," Zora muttered, his voice gravel. "Like it already knows our fears."

Above them, the air grew heavier. Not colder—denser. Like the pressure of expectation before a verdict.

From the tower’s fractured face, a faint glow began to stretch downward like vines of light curling toward the ground—reaching for them.

Ren’s jaw tightened. "It’s opening the way."

Sloane’s eyes scanned the geometry of the stone. "This place... it’s not passive. It’s testing us. Every step we take, it’s watching."

Mira locked eyes with Ren. "So what happens when we reach the core?"

Ren didn’t blink. "We find out why it was built. Or we become part of it."

They began to move.

Slowly, cautiously—like divers sinking beneath the surface of an unfamiliar sea.

Every step toward the tower’s entrance was a study in silence. No birdsong, no wind, no insect hum. Only the soft crunch of boots against dust, and the near-imperceptible hum rising from the stone beneath them.

The ground shifted as they walked. Not visibly, but in weight—as if the path was drawing something from them. Memories, resonance, names.

Mira placed a hand against one of the faintly glowing walls. The surface felt warm—like breath on skin. It flexed under her fingers, not quite solid, not quite liquid. She recoiled gently, eyes wide. "It knows I touched it."

Beside her, Ren suddenly froze mid-step. His breath caught. His eyes glazed over, the pupils dilating as a silvery sheen rippled across his irises like moonlight on fractured glass. Reflections shimmered in them—not just of the tower’s walls, but of something deeper, ancient, unknowable.

He saw a chamber not yet reached. A core that pulsed with resonance identical to his. A throne of spiraled circuitry that once responded to his touch.

The vision faded as quickly as it came, and Ren blinked slowly, steadying himself. "It’s remembering me too," he murmured, more to the tower than to the team.

Inside the tower’s threshold, the light dimmed not into darkness, but into a thick, molasses gold. Dust shimmered like tiny suspended stars. The walls curved in unnatural symmetry—too perfect, yet wrong in how they bent with no visible origin.

Sloane walked with one hand trailing the stone, the other gripping his weapon. "Feels like we’re stepping inside something living."

Zora frowned. "I don’t think this place was built. I think it grew."

The deeper they moved, the quieter it became.

Even the sound of their breath was muted—as if the space did not want noise, only presence.

Kira turned to Ren, her voice barely more than a whisper. "How far does it go?"

Ren didn’t answer. He didn’t know. But he kept moving, each step guided by a pulse only he seemed to feel—like the beat of a buried heart calling him home.

They rounded a corner—and the corridor opened.

The space widened into a spiraling chamber bathed in golden glow. Lines of radiant script flowed across the walls like veins. A massive root-like column descended from the ceiling into a mirrored floor that reflected the team not as they were—but as they could have been. Slightly different armor. Older eyes. Parallel echoes.

Jasper knelt near the mirrored surface, fingers hovering inches above it. "It’s showing us... versions."

Quinn crouched beside him, watching the ripples shift. "Choices. Probabilities. Or regrets."

Ren exhaled, gaze drawn to a shimmering glyph pulsing at the room’s center.

"The first layer," he said. "It’s not a trap. It’s memory."

Fractals of reality shimmered in the periphery of his vision—corridors not yet walked, memories never lived, echoes of himself threading through each wall. The pulse guiding him wasn’t external anymore. It was familiar. His own.

Kira noticed the shift first. "Ren?" she asked softly.

He didn’t respond at first—his gaze locked on the curving path ahead. When he blinked, the shimmer faded, but the presence behind his eyes lingered. He gave her a faint nod. "It’s remembering me."

A hush fell as they reached the next chamber.

It opened with no sound—only the pressure of invitation. Inside, the floor descended into a shallow bowl, each step lined with etched spirals that glowed softly beneath their feet. Walls rippled with faint motion, like lungs drawing air. In the center stood a pedestal made of light—not stone, not metal, but suspended brilliance, humming in tune with Ren’s breath.

The team halted at the rim, each of them struck by a sense of reverence they couldn’t explain.

"It’s a welcome," Mira whispered. "A... sanctuary?"

"No," Ren replied quietly. "It’s memory. It remembers us."

Sloane crouched beside the pedestal, staring into the glowing basin that topped it. "Is it showing something?"

Zora leaned forward. The basin shimmered—shapes coalescing into scenes. Fleeting. Impossible. Versions of the team—older, younger, twisted by different choices, different lives. A laugh here. A cry there. Ari, alive and smiling. Evelyn kneeling beside a battlefield. Rowan—

Ren’s breath hitched.

Rowan’s face, eyes lit in peace, smiling at someone just outside view.

He turned away.

Kira stepped back, shaken. "We shouldn’t be seeing this."

"No," Elias murmured. "But it wants us to."

Ren placed his hand gently on the basin. The light steadied.

"It’s only just begun to open," he said. "And it’s waiting for us to remember what we left behind."

The corridor turned gently downward, forming a long spiral ramp that dipped deeper into the tower’s belly. The further they descended, the more the walls changed—glassy and dark at first, then lined with intricate meshwork like veins of pulsing amber trapped in obsidian. Light radiated from no fixed source, shifting in gradient hues of copper, ultramarine, and violet.

The next chamber opened slowly, like a living iris dilating in slow response. Its ceiling soared high above them, vaulted and ribbed like the inside of a colossus. A series of large monoliths floated above a glassy floor—each one slowly rotating in the air with an eerie lack of sound.

And as they stepped forward, the tower breathed.

Suspended above the mirrored floor were twelve obelisks, rotating slowly in silence. Each monolith radiated with a halo of resonance, and as they stepped closer, glowing text scrolled across their surfaces. The symbols rearranged—then solidified into names.

One by one, the symbols reorganized.

Into names.

Their names.

Kira inhaled sharply. "What the hell is this?"

Each monolith now bore one—etched in light: Elias. Kira. Quinn. Sloane. Mira. Zora. Jasper. Sharon. Ava. Evelyn. Rowan. Lucian.

And Ren.

Kira stepped back. "It’s not just watching. It’s cataloging us."

Elias whispered, "No, this is deeper. It’s memorializing us. Like we’ve already been here."

Ren walked forward, and the nearest obelisk pivoted midair—facing him. The script along its surface shimmered, rearranged.

Ren approached his with hesitant reverence. The monolith tilted toward him and unfolded like petals of light.

Within the beam, a memory flared to life.

It was Ren—barely older than a teenager, wearing robes stitched with threads of light, kneeling at a similar pedestal. Alone. Eyes closed. A single word hovered above his chest, projected from the monolith: Custodian.

A second image followed—Ren standing at the center of a massive spiraling mechanism, hand outstretched, guiding streams of time across hundreds of mirror fragments in midair. Lucian and Rowan flanked him, their faces solemn. They were younger. They were closer. Their hands touched the same projection, completing a circuit.

Gasps rippled through the chamber.

Elias stepped back. "This... this isn’t just memory. It’s a foundation ritual. The tower was seeded with them."

Zora’s voice was quiet. "Ren didn’t just inherit the tower. He shaped it."

Ren’s eyes remained fixed on the image. "I didn’t remember this until now."

Kira swallowed. "From another timeline perhaps?"

The chamber responded—not with words, but by shifting gently, pulsing once like a massive heartbeat.

The obelisk pulsed once in recognition.

And from deep within the room, a soft resonance began to rise. Not an alarm. A welcome.

They were expected and the next door began to open.