As you re-enter the Chamber, you immediately notice a low, unsettling hum that permeates the air…
A hum that vibrates through your proxy’s artificial bones, setting your teeth on edge…
Something about the frequency feels wrong—like the discordant whine of metal being twisted, or the squeal of fingernails across a chalkboard.
Your synesthesia transforms the sound into jagged red fractals that painfully slice through your perception.
You assume the disturbing tone emanates from the remaining An’jels, who still stand in silent vigilance at the chamber’s center.
The lead Adept gestures for you to come closer, his eyes locking with yours in silent command. In total, three of the mystic guardians stand in formation around the suspended attacker, their midnight robes perfectly still despite the chaos that preceded this moment.
The first Adept—the leader—stands tall with piercing brown eyes that seem to penetrate through the galaxies. Beside him, the second Adept has sharp, angular features with a jade-colored sigil embedded in his forehead that pulses with inner light. The third bears ritual scars that trace complex geometric patterns across his visible skin, forming equations your synesthesia instantly tries to recognize as sort of quantum formulas.
You try to speak with some sort of respect for their authority, “You requested my presence?” Your voice sounds thin and cheesy, even to your own ears, as another wave of phantom pain makes your real body’s muscles contract involuntarily. Your proxy feels the ripple of pain—a burning sensation that shouldn’t exist across digital nerves.
As the pain passes, you ask, “Is he possessed or something?” looking deeply at the suspended attacker.
The Jade-Sigil Adept suddenly laughs—a short, sharp sound that echoes unnaturally in the chamber. “Possessed? The child thinks our prisoner is possessed!” His amusement dies as quickly as it erupted.
The Lead Adept doesn’t answer your question, instead gesturing toward the suspended figure above. You step closer, fascinated despite your growing unease. As you approach, the patterns in your mind flicker dangerously. The mathematical beauty of the suspended time loop becomes harder to perceive through the pain and interference—like trying to see clearly through a snow storm.
You have to pause, breathing deeply, letting the pain subside just enough for your pattern recognition to reassert itself. Only then can you see the truth hidden in the temporal distortion. And what you see sends ice through your veins.
The attacker floats about seven feet above the ground, suspended by seven crystalline flint that form a perfect holographic-like geometric pattern around his twisted form. You can sense the tethers between them all. His body is arched backward at an impossible angle, feet higher than his head, spine contorted like a broken doll. The skin around his neck bubbles and blisters as if cooking from the inside out, angry red patches spreading across visible flesh.
But it’s his face that truly disturbs you— through the blue tinted visor shielding his face, his mouth stretches wide in a silent scream, eyes bulging with terror, facial muscles locked in an expression of such profound agony that you instinctively step back. The most unsettling part is how no sound leaves his mouth despite his obvious torment.
As you look closer, you notice something stranger still. He isn’t simply suspended—he’s… stuttering. His entire body seems to glitch between microscopically different positions, like a living GIF caught in an endless loop mere milliseconds long.
The humming increases slightly in pitch, making your proxy’s ears ring uncomfortably.
“Seriously, is he possessed?” The question escapes your lips before you can stop it, your voice strained as another wave of phantom pain ripples through you.
The Adepts exchange glances, subtle micro-expressions flitting across their features so quickly that only your enhanced pattern recognition catches them—disapproval, amusement, and something that might be respect.
“No,” the Lead Adept replies, his voice carrying that strange harmonic quality that seems to counterbalance the dissonant humming. “We’ve pinned him.”
“Pinned?” you inquire, confusion evident in your voice.
“Yes. Pinned him — to a particular moment—in time,” he says matter-of-factly.
You squint, studying the strange distortion surrounding the attacker. “Like… pausing a video? You’ve trapped him in some kind of… time loop?”
The Jade-Sigil Adept nods, seemingly appreciating your simple analogy. “StarBending…” he says slowly and mysteriously.
Your comms instantly displays:
ˈstär ˈbendiNG noun The mythical art or pseudo science of tethering a person, object, or place to a particular moment in time.
You study the suspended figure more closely, your patterns kicking in to analyze the strange distortions around his form. But something else catches your attention—faint threads of energy that your enhanced perception can barely detect, like vibrating strands that seem to connect to… everywhere.
“What are those?” you whisper, pointing at the nearly invisible connections.
The Lead Adept’s expression darkens. “Marks,” he says grimly. “Tethers that have been infected — corrupted.”
The Jade-Sigil Adept steps closer, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper. “They’ve learned to introduce viral vibrations directly into the tethers. Like a disease that spreads through minds rather than flesh.”
You watch, fascinated and horrified, as the faint threads pulse with malevolent energy. “What does it do?”
“It creates backdoors,” the Scarred Adept explains, his ritual markings seeming to shift as he speaks. “Once someone is marked, they can track their mental signature across any body, any plane. Worse—they can trigger those infected minds remotely.”
The implications hit you like a physical blow. “Like the explosion today…”
“Precisely,” the Lead Adept confirms. “They didn’t just hack individual proxies. They infected the entire network of networks, turning every connected mind into a potential weapon.”
As if responding to the conversation, the suspended attacker’s infected tethers pulse brighter. The Lead Adept quickly reinforces the flint containment. “This is why we are most careful with tethering — who accesses it and to what degree. In the wrong hands, the very thing that connects us becomes the thing that can easily destroys us.”
You step closer, fascinated despite your growing unease. “How is that even possible? I thought tethering technology just connected consciousness to artificial bodies — like body hopping… This is…”
“No mere body hopping technology, child!” the Scarred Adept finishes for you with a tone demanding respect, his hands moving in subtle, precise gestures that seem to tighten whatever forces hold the attacker.
“Again, child,” you think to yourself. “How do they know?”
In mid-thought, you feel a slight push away from the attacker—like standing in a gentle breeze that emanates from his suspended form. It’s subtle but unmistakable.
A hairline crack appears in one of the flint closest to you—almost imperceptible, but your synesthetic perception catches it immediately. As it forms, the attacker’s loop expands by a fraction of a second. His contorted face progresses slightly further into its silent scream, and for that brief added moment, you can see a strange warm glow emanating from within his chest cavity. The light pulses outward, silhouetting his ribs and internal structures in a terrifying X-ray display.
You flinch instinctively, stepping back as the crack seals itself slightly and the loop resets. The pushing sensation subtly subsides between loops.
“What’s happening? I see something inside him—a light…”
The Lead Adept studies you carefully. “What do you see, precisely?”
“A glow… from inside his chest. Like something’s… building up in there.”
The Jade-Sigil Adept exchanges a loaded glance with his colleagues. “The child perceives more than expected.”
“What’s happening to him?” you press, determined to understand.
“What do you think is happening?” the Scarred Adept counters, his ritual markings seeming to shift as he speaks.
You consider the strange light, the suspended animation, the way the attacker seems caught between moments… and then it hits you.
“He’s trying to… do something from within. Like triggering something?”
The Adepts nod in unison, encouraging you to continue this line of thought.
The humming grows louder, more insistent. The sound crawls inside your head, making it difficult to focus. You notice that it pulses in perfect synchronization with the expanding and contracting light in the attacker’s chest and the slight force pulsing at you.
“What are they doing?” you ask, gesturing toward the damaged An’jels, still assuming they’re the source of the sound.
“They?” the Jade-Sigil Adept asks simply, his attention never leaving the suspended attacker.
The repelling force grows stronger, now like a pulsing wind against your chest. You have to lean forward slightly to maintain your position.
You notice the flint impaled through the attacker’s body more clearly now. Each crystal shard pulses with inner light, cycling through colors that remind you of fiber optic cables transmitting data at impossible speeds. Where they enter his flesh, the skin has blackened and charred, yet there’s no blood—just scorched tissue that crackles with energy.
As you study him closer, you notice something in the webs between his splayed fingers—strange, shifting patterns that seem to move of their own accord.
You lean in closer for a better view—the Lead Adept immediately moving closer and grabbing you by the shoulder.
“What do you see, child?” he demands.
“Shadows. I see shadows…” you say, pointing to the dark shapes visible in the webs of his fingers. “Between his fingers, they’re… moving.”
The Adepts exchange knowing glances, their micro-expressions conveying alarm and confirmation.
“Look closer,” the Lead Adept encourages, making a subtle gesture that rotates the suspended attacker slightly.
Your synesthesia kicks in automatically, processing the visual data. What you initially took for shadows resolves into intricate tattoos—microscopic symbols that shift and realign as your perspective changes, forming different patterns depending on the angle.
“They’re tattoos?” you breathe, fascinated and repulsed simultaneously.
Another crack forms in a different flint, larger this time. The temporal loop expands again, allowing you to see more progression—the warm glow in the attacker’s chest intensifies, spreading outward through his torso. Now you can see it’s not merely light but energy radiating outward from his chest cavity, causing his skin to begin disintegrating at the molecular level.
The humming rises to a painful crescendo that makes your proxy’s audio receptors distort. The Lead Adept makes another gesture, and the crack in the flint attempts to seal itself—but only partially succeeds.
The repelling force pulses suddenly, now strong enough that you have to brace yourself against it. It comes in waves, each one synchronized perfectly with loop and the expansion of the attacker’s chest glow.
That’s when it hits you—maybe the sound isn’t coming from the An’jels at all. Maybe it’s coming from the attacker. What you’re hearing is his scream and the sound of whatever energy is building inside him, stretched and distorted by the starbending.
“Who is he?” you ask, focusing on the attacker’s contorted face, trying to memorize every detail while fighting the growing urge to flee the chamber.
“Who are they,” corrects a familiar voice, startling you as the Archivist’s translucent form materializes beside you.
The Adepts stiffen momentarily at her appearance before relaxing into recognition. You glance between them, surprised.
“You can see her too?” you ask the Lead Adept.
“Of course. Neither time nor space is naked to the KNOXX. The KNOXX sees all. As long as the KNOXX sees, so can we,” his eyes never leaving the suspended attacker…
The revelation leaves your mind spinning. If the Adepts can see the Archivist… are they connected somehow? Is she some kind of liaison between you and them? How deep does this relationship go, and why weren’t you told about it before now?
“They come in the name of those who represent the lower self,” the lead Adept continues, circling the suspended attacker with clinical detachment.
“The lower self?” you repeat, feeling the weight of important terminology being revealed.
The Lead Adept nods, his eyes narrowing. “His energy reeks of it.” His mouth tightens as if holding back additional words, something unspoken hanging in the air between you.
The feeling ripples through the chamber like a stone dropped in still water. The Adepts exchange subtle micro-expressions, communicating in a silent language your synesthesia partially decodes—warning, caution, assessment.
You open your mouth to press further, but the Archivist cuts you off with a subtle shake of her head.
All seven flint develop hairline fractures simultaneously. Then one shatters into shards of stone. At once — the temporal loop expands dramatically, allowing you to witness nearly a full second of what’s happening. The attacker’s face progresses through its silent scream, skin peeling away from muscle, muscle separating from bone, all in a horrifying loop. The glow from his chest erupts outward with violent force.
The sight burns itself into your mind, your synesthesia processing the mathematical patterns with brutal clarity. And that’s when it hits you—the memory of your own proxy’s destruction hours ago at the ceremony. The same explosive force. The same searing pain. The same violent ejection.
“He’s not glowing—he’s exploding!” you gasp, as phantom pain erupts across your chest with fresh intensity. “He’s a bomb, just like the one that killed me!”
The pulsing waves from the attacker’s suspended explosion grow stronger with each loop. You feel yourself sliding backward across the polished floor. Your hands scramble frantically until you grab hold of a nearby pillar, bracing yourself against the growing force. The smooth column vibrates beneath your grip, resonating with the same frequency as the attacker’s silent scream.
Each pulse hits you like an invisible battering ram. Your pattern recognition kicks in, analyzing the mathematical properties of the force. This isn’t just any pressure—it’s a shockwave, the leading edge of an explosion cycling in time. As another flint cracks to pieces, the shockwave grows stronger, less contained. If all seven crystals shatter completely…
A vicious spike of phantom pain—a solid 6 out of 10—rips through your chest, making you gasp. The sensation is like molten metal being poured directly into your veins.
A third flint shatters…
The Adepts thrust additional flint into the floor, creating glowing energy tethers that they grip like lifelines. Your synesthesia reveals these tethers as brilliant golden strands, anchoring them against the temporal storm.
Terror grips you as you realize the temporal containment is failing. “We have to get out of here!” you yell to the Adepts, your voice nearly lost in the cacophony of the pulsing force.
Through the pulsing chaos, the Archivist walks calmly toward you, completely unaffected by the force that threatens to tear you from your anchor. Her form glides through the waves as if they don’t exist.
“We must continue this conversation elsewhere,” she urges mentally to you through your internal comms.
The Lead Adept steps forward, studying you with unsettling intensity. His eyes seem to see through your proxy, penetrating to whatever connects you to this artificial body. “You will depart soon,” he says with absolute certainty. “Peace and Love to you.”
The other Adepts draw more flint, seemingly from thin air, and begin hurling them with precision into the attacker’s body. Each new crystal slows the expansion of the temporal loop momentarily, but the fractures continue to spread.
Before you can question the strange farewell, you feel it—the telltale vibration that precedes forced ejection. Your consciousness begins to fragment, the tether between you and your proxy unraveling strand by strand.
“Wait—” you begin, but the words dissolve as your perception splits. The chamber, the Adepts, the suspended attacker—all stretch into digital noise like taffy pulled beyond its breaking point.
You gasp awake in the familiar dark space of the Lore Engine. The burning sensation you’ve been experiencing is joined by electric-like pulses that shoot through your limbs. Your hands shake visibly with tremors that make it difficult to focus.
“The Out Caste,” the Archivist says, materializing beside you. The words seems to hang in the air between you, charged with dangerous significance.
“Out Caste?” you echo, the unfamiliar term leaving a bitter taste.
“Yes,” the Archivist confirms, her expression hardening. “The vermin back there was a member of The Out Caste. You saw the tattoos, correct? They’re tell-tale signs.”
“Who are they?” you demand, your voice tight with frustration. “Back there, everyone went silent when I asked about them.”
“No Adept of The Seventh Order is allowed to speak that name to outsiders,” the Archivist explains.
Your temper flares. “That tells me nothing! Why attack the Temple? Why give me these pains?! What do they want?!”
Your rage triggers another wave of phantom pain so intense you double over, gasping. It feels like someone is carving your chest open with a jagged blade of fire, scraping against bone and nerves alike.
When you can speak again, your voice comes out as a ragged whisper. “Please. I need to understand what’s happening to me.”
The Archivist studies you for a moment before responding. “The attacker must have either hacked one of the proxies with Temple access, or members with legitimate access have been turned to the Out Caste cause over time.”
Your synesthesia flares suddenly, connecting disparate threads of information that have been accumulating since your first encounter with the KNOXX. A pattern emerges with crystal clarity—THE CURE is somehow intrinsically linked to Tethering technology — and The Out Caste.
“Is The Cure what the Out Caste are trying to get?” you ask, fighting through another wave of burning sensation that makes speaking difficult.
The Archivist’s expression shifts to something resembling impressed surprise. “It is a major piece of the universe all souls wish to solve—even yours.”
You press further, sensing you’re close to something vital. “What do they want with Tethering technology? Why attack the An’jels?”
“We must move forward,” she says, evading your question.
She gestures, and a glowing list materializes between you:
- The KNOXX
- Ether Rigs
- The Lore Engine
- The Surface
- Tethering
- Fast Travel
- Ether Decks
- Proxies
- The Etherverse
- The Anjels
- The Seventh Order and Adepts
- StarBending
- The Out Caste
“This is what you’ve learned so far,” she says, her voice taking on a lecturer’s cadence. “But there is still much, much more to understand.”
Your frustration boils over. “Stop dodging my questions! You drag me into this nightmare, get me blown up, and now you’re just—”
The phantom pain strikes with savage force, cutting off your words mid-sentence. Your vision whites out as electricity seems to arc through every nerve ending simultaneously. For a terrible moment, you’re certain your body is actually being torn apart again.
When your senses return, you find yourself on your knees, trembling uncontrollably.
A realization hits you with stunning clarity. Your pattern recognition abilities, enhanced by synesthesia, make connections that should have been obvious from the beginning.
“You’re closely connected to the Seventh Order,” you say directly, your voice hoarse. “Why didn’t you tell me you are one of them?”
The Archivist smiles, impressed. “I didn’t tell you because I’m not one of them, but very astute of you.”
“What do you mean, I saw all the tethers—” Another excruciating wave of phantom pain slices through you mid-sentence, this one centered in your skull. It feels like your brain is being slowly crushed in a vise.
She moves closer, examining your trembling hands with clinical interest. “Young child, every living thing is bound by chords to every other thing — The phantom pain will worsen before it improves. Each tethering will reopen the wound until you learn to master the transition.”
The phantom pain intensifies, now reaching a 5 out of 10 on your internal scale. The burning sensation has spread to your neck and jaw, while electric pulses shoot down your spine with increasing frequency.
“The Out Caste, the Seventh Order, the An’jels,” you say, listing the factions whose cosmic game you’ve stumbled into. “Where do I fit in all this?”
The Archivist’s expression turns enigmatic. “That depends entirely on you.”
Before you can ask any more questions about the Seventh Order or the Out Caste or Tethering—answers you’re begging to learn more about—you feel yourself being pulled into another tether.
“Wait, I’m not ready—” you protest, but it’s too late.
Reality fractures around you, the transition more violent than any you’ve experienced before. Your mind is ripped from the Lore Engine and hurled through dimensional space, the pain of your phantom wounds screaming in protest.
You slam into a new body with such force that for a moment, you can’t remember who or what you are. Sensory input floods your system—the stench of blood and animal musk, the rumble of massive jaws, the terror of imminent death — all senses you remember…
Once again you are crouched low to a hover stretcher, leaning over a man, his robes soaking with what smells like blood — the bleeding Adept. Behind you, the jaws of an enormous hippo gape open before you, saliva dripping from yellowed teeth the size of your forearm. Time seems to slow as the massive maw descends, muscles bunching in the creature’s neck as it prepares to crush you both in a single devastating bite.
In this frozen moment of terror, a horrifying clarity washes over you—you remember, this isn’t just some random simulation or training exercise. This is real. This happens. And now you’re about to experience death all over again…
And the hippo’s roar fills your world as all the muscles and tendons in its massive jaws begin snapping to a close…