The sound of leather soles echoed through the quiet marble hallway. The grandeur of Zyphorion's Council Hall faded behind Phantom as he walked with a straight spine, hands tucked into his coat pockets. The lights above cast twin shadows—one his own, the other, Glitch's ghostly flickering form hovering beside him.
"Okay, okay, I gotta ask," Glitch finally chirped, spinning like a coin midair. "How the hell did you pull that off? I mean, even I blinked twice. Two of you, at the same time, same aura. Theatrics were off the charts."
Phantom's mask didn't twitch. But his golden eyes sparkled with the hint of amusement.
"The trick," he said softly, "isn't in being two people…"
He paused, stepping through the next automatic door as it hissed open.
"It's in knowing when to stop being one."
Glitch tilted, confused. "That doesn't explain anything, you cryptic bastard."
Phantom finally stopped. The hallway now opened into a secluded balcony, overlooking the glowing skyline of Zyphorion at dusk. He leaned against the rail, pulling out a sleek, coin-sized prism artifact—its center glowing faintly with pulsing rings of violet and silver.
"Y-tier Prism Artifact," he said. "Custom-encoded. I call it… Echo Mirage. A perfect hard-light hologram. Embedded with my neural traces, combat movement data, voice modulation. It's not just a puppet. It's me… without the burden of my thoughts."
Glitch blinked. "Wait. Wait wait—so Raven back there…"
"Was a clone. A perfect, visual copy. Controlled by subconscious thread-lines from this ring."
He tapped the edge of his mask.
"Phantom was present. Raven was seen. And Mavran bought the illusion—at least for a while."
Glitch gave a low whistle. "Damn. You playing 6D chess while everyone else still setting the board."
"No," Phantom said, turning away, the wind catching his coat as it fluttered behind him."This wasn't chess. This was a mirror."
"One I had to break myself… before anyone else could."
The door sealed behind him with a silent hiss.
Phantom stepped into the dim glow of his private quarters—a minimalistic chamber inside Sentinel's underground operations base. The lights activated automatically, shifting to a soft white hue that reflected off steel walls and matte-black surfaces.
No clutter. No distractions.
Just the essentials.
He walked past a compact workstation, its screen still glowing with encrypted logs from the council meeting. The logs would auto-delete in four minutes. He didn't bother glancing at them again.
He already remembered everything.
Infiltrate Aspen Technology's Core Branch in Zyphorion.
Objective:Extract proof of illicit operations connected to global power manipulation.
Secondary Directive: Map inner structure, monitor behavioral patterns, avoid detection.
Combat permission: Authorized only for Raven persona in case of exposure.
Phantom exhaled slowly.
"Infiltration by me. Extraction by me. Violence... only if I allow it."
He walked to the storage vault embedded in the wall. With a soft pulse of his fingerprint, the doors slid open, revealing the kind of arsenal that didn't belong to a soldier—but to a legend.
He moved like a surgeon prepping for a final operation.
First—The black bodysuit. A second skin woven from reactive polymer-threaded nano-fiber. Light. Breathable. Ghost-tier. Invisible to all but the divine.
Second—A compact kit of spectral lures. Tiny holographic projectors, signal disturbers, silent detonators. Each one a lie designed to save a life—or take one.
Third—Two short axes. Matte black steel. Perfectly balanced. Forged for silence. Etched with fading Old Zyphic runes that no one remembered how to read.
Fourth—Three sets of claws. Slender. Brutal. Interchangeable. Engineered for different moods of death.
Fifth—A halo of daggers. Thirteen, each tuned to Phantom's throw weight. Each one capable of vanishing into a neck before a heartbeat could finish.
Sixth—Two suits. His Sentinel uniform—symbolic, regulated, pristine. And beside it… Raven's attire. Cold. Predatory. Sculpted from void.
And then, behind a hidden panel—other items.
Items he didn't touch right away.
He stood there, gazing at them in silence.
No explanation. No labels. Just a shadowed tray holding things that shouldn't exist—and yet they did. Wrapped in silk. Sealed in stasis. Some pulsed faintly, as if breathing. Others were utterly still, as if waiting.
Phantom didn't hesitate.
He raised his right hand and drew a slow spiral through the air.
Reality rippled.
A dimensional pocket tore open like a quiet tear in the fabric of space—smooth, black, and unnatural. It shimmered with hues that didn't exist on the normal spectrum, bound to him by both science and the forgotten tongues of pre-arcane logic.
His inventory. A personal rift. No one else could access it. No one else could even see it unless he allowed them.
One by one, he placed the gear into the spatial fold. No flourish. No wasted motion.
The daggers. The suit. The axes. The lures. The claws.
And finally—those mysterious, unnamed items. He didn't explain them.
He didn't need to.
Even Glitch remained silent.
The last thing to go in was the ring—Echo Mirage. Still glowing with threads of violet and silver. Phantom held it for a second longer before placing it gently inside.
The rift sealed itself. Smooth. Absolute.
He slid on his gloves, the sync clicking into place with his mask.
"Aspen Technology… A company that doesn't bleed on paper. But blood always leaves a scent. And I've always known how to track it."
He sat down on the edge of the bench, fingers brushing over the gloves.
They weren't just gloves—they were keycodes. Interfaces. Channelers.
The suit recognized him. Synced to his heartbeat. His breath. His will.
Each snap, each buckle, clicked with precision. A ritual, almost sacred.
And then… he muttered:
"Let's bring them together. Science… meet sorcery."
He tapped his wrist.
A faint ripple of light spiraled outward—like ink in water. Lines of code danced in midair, but they weren't just code. They glowed with runic undertones. Symbols older than language flickered beneath binary logic. The screen forming in front of him wasn't projected…
It was solid. A hard-light interface, shaped like a curved obsidian tablet suspended in the air, etched in violet and silver veins. It pulsed with Phantom's rhythm—alive.
Glitch jolted. "Yo. That's not standard Sentinel tech. What the hell is that?"
Phantom's eyes narrowed, a half-smile forming under his mask.
"This… is my system. Not borrowed. Not inherited. Not stolen.Made from scratch. Coded from soul."
He slid his hand across the interface, symbols shifting like tectonic plates. He reached into a side compartment—Ring Of Greed. The ring glowed with an ancient pulse, like a relic remembering its maker.
And then he did what no tech manual allowed:
He fused them.
Twisting his fingers in an unnatural sequence, he pressed the ring against the center of the system screen. A shockwave of light pulsed outward—sharp, controlled, electric.
The ring melted into the interface.
Magic warped into machine. Machine swallowed the arcane.
Glitch backed up. "Oh that ain't normal. That ain't normal."
Phantom didn't blink.
"Didn't want normal. Wanted this."
A second later, the interface darkened… then came alive with a whispering hum that sounded almost… human.
[SYSTEM SYNC COMPLETE]
[UNIQUE NODE: PHANTOM NETWORK INITIATED]
[UNLOCKING CUSTOMIZED SUBSYSTEM NODE 02 & NODE 03…]
[MAGITECH THREADLINES ENGAGED]
[PERMISSION LEVEL: CREATOR]
[WELCOME BACK, CREATOR]
Phantom stared.
Text continued to scroll. Lock icons unlatched. Functions unfolded like origami patterns in fractal light. And yet… it wasn't loud. It wasn't chaotic.
It was clean. Sharp. Deadly.
Like him.
And for a moment—even he felt it.
A flicker of awe.
A system no one else had. Because no one else could.
"Finally," he whispered. "A fantastical system… similar to that of the man who uses shadows that I saw for training."
Glitch hovered back, stunned. "Bro, you literally just created a new metaphysical interface."
Phantom didn't even smile.
He simply turned, his coat fluttering behind him, and walked toward the vault to finish preparations.
He flicked his wrist, collapsing the system into a compact glyph across his glove.
"Let's begin."
He rose.
And finally—he picked up the artifact. Echo Mirage. Still pulsing softly in his palm.
"Raven."
A whisper of command. The ring flickered.
And in the corner of the room—Raven appeared. Same height. Same presence. Standing silently, eyes hidden behind a hollowed black helmet with twin neon-blue lines tracing downward like tears.
They stared at each other.
Identical.
But only one carried the soul.
"A weapon is only dangerous when its wielder is willing to wield it."
Phantom turned away. He didn't need to give further instructions. Raven already knew the mission.
He walked toward the door as it slid open.
The light from the hallway bled in as he stepped into it, the edges of his figure swallowed by shadow.
Preparation was done.
Now came the test.
Arrival at the Devil's Den
The morning air was cold.
Not the kind that bit into skin, but the kind that whispered something was about to change.
Phantom stood in silence as the sleek, black vehicle rolled to a gentle stop beside him. No license plate. No branding. Just efficiency carved into form.
He got in.
No words exchanged. The driver didn't look back. Phantom leaned against the seat, eyes closed, letting the rhythm of the road carve away the static noise in his head.
The car stopped at Haven's Edge—a city gate checkpoint for Zyphorion's commercial hub. From here on, it was solo.
Interviewee. Researcher. Nobody.
He stepped out, donning a subtle techwear disguise—a different identity, carefully layered.
The entrance to Aspen Technology's Zyphorion HQ towered ahead like a glass monolith swallowing clouds. Reflective. Imposing. A building that hid secrets behind smiles.
He walked toward it—steps measured, relaxed.
No sign of hesitation. No twitch of nerves.
But just before he entered—
He paused.
Turned his gaze upward.
To the clouds above. To the unseen watchers. To the audience beyond the fourth wall.
A slow smirk tugged at the edge of his lips.
"Let's begin, shall we?"
And then he walked into hell wearing a calm face.