Ethan dreamed.

  In his dream, he stood before the portal again, but this time he was alone—no monsters, no Ray or Marlene, just him and the twisted tear in reality. Its edges pulsed like a living thing, beckoning to him.

  A voice whispered from within its depths, familiar yet alien: *You are merely the first. The bridge between what was and what will be.*

  He tried to back away, but his body wouldn't respond. Instead, he found himself moving closer, drawn by an invisible force. The portal's edges expanded, stretching to engulf him.

  *The System is not a gift,* the voice continued, now seeming to come from inside his own mind. *It is a transformation. A preparation.*

  "For what?" Ethan tried to ask, but no sound emerged.

  Just before the portal swallowed him, he caught a glimpse of something vast moving within its depths—something with too many eyes and a consciousness that felt impossibly ancient. It regarded him with cold curiosity, like a scientist examining a particularly interesting specimen.

  *For what comes next,* it answered.

  Ethan felt a lingering echo of that cold curiosity as he surfaced from the dream, the feeling jarringly alien. The voice felt chillingly familiar, echoing the sterile tone of the System's first message in his mind.

  ---

  Ethan gasped awake, his body jerking upright on the thin mattress someone had placed on the gym floor. His vision swam, then gradually focused on his surroundings. He was in what appeared to be a former gymnasium, now converted into a makeshift hospital. Rows of cots and sleeping bags stretched across the wooden floor, most occupied by injured survivors. The air smelled of antiseptic and fear. A few folding tables held basic first aid supplies—whatever they'd managed to gather in the chaos.

  "Easy there," a woman's voice said. "The poison's still in your system, though it's weaker now."

  He turned to see a slender woman in her thirties with close-cropped hair and steel-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. Her hands glowed with a soft amber light as she held them over his wounded shoulder. A Mount Sinai hospital ID badge hung from her scrubs—she must have been working when everything started.

  "Who—?" he began, his voice cracking from dryness.

  "Celia," she answered simply. "I'm what passes for a doctor around here now." Her smile was tired but genuine. "You're lucky. My healing could only slow the toxin; it didn't stop it completely. Whatever is going on with your body, your... System... it fought off the worst of it. Most people wouldn't have lasted an hour."

  Ethan tried to sit up further, wincing at the pain that flared through his body. "How long was I out?"

  "About six or seven hours, maybe?" Celia replied, gently pushing him back down. "Hard to say for sure. Time's been... strange since the portal appeared, seems to flow differently closer to it. The ones who brought you in have been busy. Ray's organizing another supply run, and Marlene's been grilling me about your... unique abilities."

  "They told you?" Ethan asked.

  "That you can combine essences?" Celia nodded, her expression turning serious. "Everything's changing so fast, everyone's adapting, learning... but so far, we haven't seen anyone else manage more than one basic essence type. The System seems to limit most Awakened. And Marlene mentioned you grasped how to *use* it, how to take essence, almost instantly. Most people we've seen are still trying to figure out what, if anything, happened to them, let alone actively *use* an ability like that. But you...you're different somehow. You can do something no one else we've found *can*. I wish I understood why."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means you're valuable," came Ray's voice as he approached the bed. He looked even more haggard than before, dark circles under his eyes, but his gaze was sharp. "And not just to us."

  "What's happening out there?" Ethan asked.

  Ray's expression darkened. "The portal's growing. Getting bigger, more unstable. We're hearing the military's trying to establish a quarantine around the area, but if they are, they're not here yet. The creatures are spreading faster than anyone can contain them. They're getting smarter, too—like those shadow things. The one that got you had those phasing abilities, but we've seen others with different tricks."

  "And they adapt," Marlene said, joining them. Her voice was tight. "Conventional weapons work against the lesser creatures, but the evolved ones adapt too quickly."

  Ethan struggled to process it all. A few hours ago, he'd been a nobody, just trying to survive. Now he was apparently crucial to humanity's resistance against... this invasion. The memory of creating Berserker's Will flashed - the searing pain, the feeling of raw power coalescing.

  "There's something else," Celia added, her voice dropping lower. "While you were unconscious... we *thought* we saw something. An energy signature flickering around you, like static reacting to... well, reacting to *you*. Almost like it was tied to your System interface, though obviously, we couldn't see the interface itself. It was faint, and gone before we could be sure. We've never detected anything like that from another Awakened."

  "What are you implying?" Ethan asked, a cold feeling spreading through his chest.

  "It means," Ray said grimly, "that maybe you're not just another Awakened. Maybe you're something else entirely."

  Outside, a distant explosion rumbled, making the rec center's windows rattle in their frames. The sound of panicked shouting filtered through from the barricades.

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  "They're coming again," Marlene said, her eyes already beginning to glow. "And there are more of them this time."

  Ray checked his shotgun, then fixed Ethan with a hard stare. "Rest time's over, kid. We need every able body—especially ones who can create new abilities out of thin air. Can you fight?"

  Ethan's body ached, the poison still burning in his veins. His mind was a whirlwind of questions without answers. But as another explosion shook the building, he knew there was only one real choice.

  With effort, he swung his legs over the side of the cot and stood, swaying slightly but remaining upright. He could feel the power inside him—Berserker's Will, now recharged after hours of unconsciousness, offering a familiar surge of raw strength and that sharp, predatory focus waiting to be unleashed. The power born from that agonizing first synthesis—a pain he suspected was unique to his unstable way of forcing essences together. Rending Claws felt ready, almost eager, to manifest. But the Phantom Stride essence felt different—a cold, volatile energy that seemed to writhe under his control, threatening to activate unpredictably. Mastering it would be crucial, and dangerous.

  "Yeah," he said, steadying himself, pushing down the unease from the unstable essence. "I'm ready, let's do this."

  As they moved toward the barricades, Ethan cast one last glance back at the quiet space of the infirmary. In what felt like both an eternity and the blink of an eye, his entire world had been rewritten. He was no longer just Ethan Alvarez, struggling nobody from the South Bronx.

  He was Awakened. He was changing. And he steeled himself for what waited beyond those doors.

  The interface still hovered at the edge of his vision, a constant reminder of how much had changed. He'd never seen anything like it before—translucent blue text that seemed to float in the air, yet was clearly visible only to him. It was both fascinating and unsettling, like a mirror showing him a version of himself he barely recognized.

  He took a deep breath, feeling the weight of his transformation. The System had changed him, made him into something more than he was. But as he followed Ray and Marlene toward the barricades, he knew one thing for certain:

  Whatever came next, he would face it as Ethan Alvarez. Not just a nobody from the South Bronx, but someone who had chosen to fight back against the darkness. Someone who had chosen to survive.

  ---

  Ethan flung himself away from the barricade as a monster clawed its way through, talons slashing the air where he'd just been. The makeshift barrier of cars and rubble groaned under the assault. Gunfire echoed between the buildings, punctuated by inhuman shrieks and the occasional crackle of an Awakened ability. Ray was already firing his shotgun into the breach, the blasts staggering the grotesque creature trying to force its way in. Marlene stood firm, her hands pushing out waves of shimmering force that slammed into attackers, sending them reeling back.

  "Ethan, left flank!" Ray bellowed, racking his shotgun.

  Ethan didn't hesitate. He channeled the primal energy within, his hands lengthening into the familiar, wickedly sharp Rending Claws. He lunged, not with grace, but with the desperate speed Berserker's Will granted him. The claws tore through the tough hide of a dog-sized, multi-legged horror trying to scuttle past Ray's position. Dark ichor sprayed, and the creature collapsed.

  He felt a faint, almost imperceptible surge as the monster died – not a new essence, but a settling within his existing ones. His claws felt marginally sharper, his movements a fraction quicker. He saw it in the others, too. A defender near Marlene swung a pipe with slightly more force than before; Ray's reloading seemed a hair faster. Killing these things, surviving the fight, it was changing them, honing them.

  Another creature, vaguely insectoid with snapping mandibles, charged him. Instinctively, Ethan reached for the Phantom Stride essence, wanting to phase through the attack. The world flickered... but didn't shift. Instead, a wave of dizziness washed over him, his feet stumbling on the debris-strewn asphalt. The cold, slick energy of the unstable essence writhed, refusing to obey.

  "Watch it!" Marlene shouted. A blast of her energy intercepted the insectoid, sending it tumbling away before its mandibles could clamp onto Ethan's leg.

  "Thanks! It's... not working right," Ethan gasped, shaking his head to clear it. He refocused, summoning the Rending Claws again and charging the downed creature to finish it. With each kill, the volatile energy of Phantom Stride seemed to calm, just slightly, the chaotic thrum lessening, though it still felt unpredictable, dangerous.

  He fell into a brutal rhythm: identify threat, engage with claws, feel that minute strengthening, try—and mostly fail—to utilize the phase, relying on his raw speed or timely saves from Ray and Marlene when the unpredictable essence failed him or put him in a worse position. The barricade held, but barely. The Awakened among the defenders were crucial, their abilities doing what bullets alone couldn't against the tougher monstrosities. Slowly, the relentless pressure from the attackers seemed to lessen.

  Then, a familiar chilling presence made the hairs on his neck stand up. Slipping through a gap in the defense line with unnatural fluidity, the Shadow Creature appeared. Its green eyes fixed on Ethan, burning with cold malice. It was faster, more solid than he remembered from the alley.

  "That thing again!" Ray yelled, firing both barrels. The pellets seemed to almost hit it, shimmering through its form as it executed a short, impossible phase-dodge.

  It lunged, not at Ray, but straight for Ethan. Time seemed to slow. He saw its shadowy claws extending, felt the memory of its poison burning in his shoulder. Desperation surged. He didn't consciously try to use Phantom Stride this time; it was pure instinct, a primal scream from his core demanding survival.

  The cold, volatile energy erupted.

  For a split second, Ethan felt utterly insubstantial. The Shadow Creature's attack passed through his chest, its claws meeting empty air. But unlike before, he didn't reappear yards away, disoriented. He snapped back to solidity almost instantly, still inside the creature's guard, Rending Claws already flashing upwards in a savage arc.

  The claws connected. There was a sickening tear, and the Shadow Creature shrieked – a sound utterly different from the lesser monsters, filled with shock and pain. It staggered back, green eyes wide, clutching a deep wound in its torso. Before Ray or Marlene could react, Ethan lunged again, burying his claws deep.

  The creature dissolved, not into dust, but into fading wisps of shadow, leaving nothing behind.

  As the last mote of darkness vanished, Ethan felt a profound shift within him. The Phantom Stride essence settled completely. The cold, unpredictable writhe was gone, replaced by a smooth, responsive hum of power. It felt stable. Integrated. His.

  He stood there, breathing heavily, claws dripping ichor. Around them, the remaining lesser monsters seemed to falter at the demise of the Shadow Creature, their assault losing its coordination. Ray and Marlene, along with the other defenders, pressed the advantage, driving them back.

  Minutes later, an eerie silence fell over the street, broken only by the crackling of small fires and the ragged breathing of the survivors. The immediate attack was over.

  Ray clapped Ethan on the shoulder, his expression grim but relieved. "Nice work, kid. Damn lucky timing with that phase."

  Ethan nodded, flexing his hand, feeling the stable power of the Phantom Stride now resting within him alongside Berserker's Will and Rending Claws. Lucky, yes. But also earned.

  The streets were quiet. For now.