---
The descent continued.
The broken halls narrowed into tunnels that seemed less constructed and more… grown. The walls pulsed faintly, like veins carrying memories too twisted to forget. Aidan kept glancing back, half-expecting the Hive creatures to follow, but Evan's psychic pressure lingered behind them like a silent wall — an invisible warning.
> "You sure about this?" Aidan asked, voice low.
Evan didn't look back. His focus was razor-sharp, eyes scanning every corner, every shadow.
> "No," Evan said. "But it doesn't matter."
There was no turning back. Not after Gravemind had stirred. Not after the Academy's collapse had torn the lid off the old world's secrets. If they didn't confront it, others would — and those others wouldn't survive.
Or worse: they would become something new.
Something worse than Evan had ever been.
---
The path ended at a massive blast door, half-buried under rubble and strange, cancerous growths. Ancient symbols were scorched into the metal — containment sigils, frayed and powerless now.
Evan extended a hand.
The door groaned under invisible pressure. Dust rained down in thin sheets as, with a final wrench, the metal twisted inward, revealing darkness beyond.
> "Stay close," Evan muttered.
They stepped inside.
---
The inner chamber was cavernous — a sunken pit at its center, with shattered platforms hanging like broken teeth around the rim. Machinery of impossible design hung from the ceilings, some still humming with residual energy.
But the true horror was at the bottom of the pit.
There, half-submerged in thick black fluid, was it.
A mass of shifting matter — human faces, animal limbs, metallic shards — constantly forming and unforming.
Gravemind.
Or rather, what was left of it.
Its presence battered against Evan's defenses immediately — a desperate, hungry pull, like a drowning man clutching at a rescuer.
> "Reaper..." the voice gurgled, reverberating through the walls. "Come closer..."
---
Aidan recoiled instinctively.
> "Evan— don't!"
But Evan didn't move closer.
Instead, he stood still, tightening his telekinetic control around them like armor. He wasn't here to merge. He was here to understand.
The creature wasn't whole. Pieces of it had been severed, ripped away — likely by the Academy itself, in a desperate bid to contain it.
> "What is it trying to do?" Aidan asked.
> "It's incomplete," Evan said, voice strained. "It needs a vessel to stabilize. A mind strong enough to anchor it."
A mind like Evan's.
Gravemind pulsed again, sending another wave of psychic static lashing through the chamber.
> "You were made for this," it hissed. "You are the Seed. You are the End."
---
A heavy silence followed.
Aidan gritted his teeth. He could see it — the raw potential in Evan. If Evan gave in, if he accepted what Gravemind offered, he could become unstoppable. A god. Or a monster.
> "You're not what it says you are," Aidan said suddenly, voice cutting through the gloom.
Evan glanced at him, something flickering behind his cold eyes.
> "You don't know what I am," Evan said quietly.
> "I know what you're choosing," Aidan shot back.
Evan stared back down into the pit.
Seconds passed.
Then, with a slow breath, Evan raised a hand — and crushed the tendrils of psychic energy reaching for him. Gravemind howled in pain, the chamber shaking violently.
> "I choose my own damn fate," Evan said, voice like iron.
---
The backlash was immediate.
The entire facility began collapsing inward, ancient structures giving way.
> "Move!" Evan barked.
He grabbed Aidan, throwing up a telekinetic shield as they sprinted back through the collapsing corridors, debris bouncing harmlessly off the invisible barrier.
Behind them, Gravemind's cries echoed — not of anger, but of despair.
The Reaper had defied it.
And that meant the real war was only beginning.