Code Ascendant: The Soldier who Leveled Past Reality

Chapter 37: Operation Phantom Veil

The engine hum of the Stealth Interceptor echoed softly through the cabin, its noise muffled by layers of adaptive damping and next-gen acoustics. Aaron Velcris sat at the command seat with his Symbiosis-linked HUD overlaying the glass canopy, highlighting mission zones across the digital terrain of the Afrelis Deadzone. The Rift Pulse had destabilized the area two hours ago, and for the first time in months, the ARX Directorate was preparing to deploy Shadow Platoon deep behind enemy-occupied dimensional fractures.

"Altitude 12,000 feet and descending," Kara's voice crackled through the comms. She was flying the interceptor like it was part of her bloodstream, neural-linked and wired into the ship's cortex.

Aaron's eyes narrowed on the virtual map. The rift data readouts spiraled in his peripheral vision—arcane patterns, quantum instability thresholds, and a pulsing anomaly core codenamed: Oblivion Seed. RS-I's glowing lines shifted around him, reading the anomaly's escalating power.

[Reality Sync Update: Hazard Class B upgraded to A-. Estimated Hostile Complexity: 78%]

He exhaled. "Phantom Veil is a go. Drop in five."

---

Ten minutes later, the ground beneath their boots was a graveyard of time-frozen wreckage. The team moved like phantoms across ashen soil, clad in Obsidian-Shell Recon Armor, heat-suppressed and cloaked in spectral field distortion. The squad consisted of:

Lira Velcrin – Pyrosynchron specialist and frontline arcanist.

Rei Syfax – Precision sniper with the Augur-Eye System.

Karn Drax – Heavy weaponist bonded with the Proto-Gaian core.

Mina Korix – Dual-mode hacker and RS-I data manipulator.

Aaron Velcris – Commander and Symbiote Prime.

Rei knelt beside a collapsed hover-tank, scanning the anomaly nexus 300 meters ahead. "Multiple readings. Unstable life signatures. Something's... off. I'm seeing oscillating ghost values."

Aaron's HUD confirmed it. "They're not fully phased in. Echo-spawn or worse."

[RS-I THREAD ALERT]

> Symbiote Status: Active

Dimensional Tether Strength: 89%

Warning: Phantom Strain Presence Detected

Effect: Cognitive Drift + Reality Lag

Initiating Cognitive Stabilizer...

Aaron's mind pulled against the pressure. It was like walking through liquid memory, as if each step in the rift zone tried to rewrite reality just a little.

"Hold your vectors. Mina, any clean paths through?" he asked.

She jacked a data cable into a rusting survey pylon and her eyes glazed with data influx. "I can open a safe corridor through Phantom Drift... but you've got 90 seconds before it collapses."

"Move now," Aaron ordered.

The squad advanced, rifles drawn, but it wasn't bullets they needed. Not here. Phantoms emerged from broken reality—flickering shadows wearing stolen faces, laughing in voices that weren't theirs. They were fractured echoes of soldiers long lost to the rift.

Rei fired first—plasma-round laced with nullwave destabilization—and a Phantom exploded into screaming blue mist.

Aaron activated Reality Anchor: Sigil Vector, his Symbiosis Core flaring violet. The digital tether linked everyone in the squad, shielding them from the dissonant effects. For now.

Then the ground cracked open.

From the depths of the anomaly, it rose—a massive hybrid construct of tendrils, chrome, and arcane armor. The Oblivion Seed Entity had manifested.

"Command! We've got Seed breach. Deploying contingency!" Aaron shouted.

[BATTLE INTERFACE – INITIATED]

> Name: Oblivion Seed Entity

Class: Dimensional Apex Tier

Threat Level: S-Class (Fragmented)

Weakness: Unknown

Phase Shifts: 3

The first clash shattered the silence.

Karn unleashed his Gaian armament, summoning massive basalt tendrils to crash down on the enemy. The Seed responded by warping gravity itself, collapsing the field into a twisted, half-liquid terrain.

"Reformat! Phase 1 beginning!" Aaron shouted.

His RS-I synced the team into a reality combat rhythm, pulses of light feeding them combat projections. Aaron blinked between timelines—dodging hits before they landed, seeing futures crack before his eyes.

Lira blasted the creature's flank with chainfire plasma, charring chunks of its semi-organic shell. Mina initiated data corruption through RS-I overlays, destabilizing the creature's meta-code.

[Reality Sync — Phantom Entity Corruption: 8.3%]

But it wasn't enough.

The Seed entered its second phase—splitting into multiple mirrored selves. The air trembled. Rei fired a null-round that bounced reality itself, refracting the copies into phasing stasis—but not before one slammed into Karn, sending him flying.

"Karn—status?" Aaron called.

"Alive... barely," he grunted.

Then, from within the fractured terrain, Aaron felt it—a call. A resonance with his Symbiote Core. It was the Seed's origin. Something buried in the dimensional overlap beneath them.

"I'm going in," he said, pulling free his Etherblade.

"Alone? You're insane—" Lira began.

"No. I'm synchronized. The core's calling to me."

He dove into the rift, the air folding like paper as his body vanished.

---

Inside the riftfold, Aaron stood in a place that defied geometry. Time curled in loops and gravity twisted sideways. He faced a mirror of himself—a figure in jagged armor with burning silver eyes.

"You are not whole," the being said.

Aaron blinked. "What... are you?"

The being unsheathed a blade identical to his own. "I am the part you buried. The Ascension you fear."

Suddenly, understanding dawned. This was no echo. This was himself—from a timeline he had severed. A version that had chosen to bond with the Symbiosis Core's full might... and become something not quite human.

"If you want the Seed," the Echo-Aaron said, "you must become what you refused to."

Aaron gritted his teeth. "Then so be it."

The battle inside the rift was like poetry written in lightning and steel. Ether clashed. Code rewrote itself mid-strike. They fought across memories, through fragments of old battlefields, moments with Alexia, his childhood, his death and rebirth.

And in that final moment, Aaron did not destroy his echo.

He accepted him.

[Symbiosis Update: Phantom Integration Completed]

> Trait Gained: Paradox Step

Effect: Briefly exist in two overlapping timelines for 2.3 seconds. Cooldown: 45s

New Core Fusion Trait: Reality Piercer (Passive)

Effect: Attacks bypass 33% of dimensional shielding and illusionary barriers.

He rose from the rift just as the team was about to be overwhelmed.

Aaron leapt in, landing behind the Seed's third copy.

"Let's finish this," he said.

With a single gesture, his blade extended into a beam of warping violet force. His Paradox Step triggered—two Aarons attacking in perfect sync.

The Seed screamed.

It fell.

---

Silence settled. The anomaly collapsed inward as the core cracked and released a shockwave of reality-stabilizing resonance.

Mina exhaled, collapsing to her knees. "That was... pure madness."

"Just another day," Lira muttered.

Rei holstered his rifle. "Not even gonna ask how you pulled that stunt."

Aaron only stared at his hand, now faintly glowing with phantom sigils.

"We've got bigger problems," he finally said.

"Like what?" Karn asked, limping.

Aaron turned to the horizon. The rift storm was spreading.

"That Seed was a fragment. There's more."

And deep within RS-I's hidden thread queue, something new activated.

[Hidden Protocol Unlocked: Project: Ascendant Signal]

To be continued...