I'd fallen into a rhythm.

  Wake up, choke down whatever passed for breakfast, rotate, fight, feed, train, sleep, repeat.

  My days bled together in a blur of combat and hunger. Two weeks had passed since I'd discovered Mabel and my ability to control the worms, but it had felt like months.

  The barracks lights flickered on with their usual harsh buzz.

  I rolled off my bunk, my muscles aching in places I hadn't known existed before coming to this hellhole.

  My body had changed.

  Where I'd once been lean, I was now corded with muscle.

  "Rise and shine, my gloriously mediocre host," Mabel's voice echoed in my mind. She'd taken to waking me with increasingly creative insults. "Another day of not dying awaits us."

  I grunted, pulling on my uniform.

  The fabric felt tighter across my shoulders and chest. Two weeks of daily combat will do that to you.

  "You know, if you'd let me redesign your musculature, we could optimize for both strength and speed," she continued. "Your current biological arrangement is so... pedestrian."

  "Shut up, Mabel."

  "Such wit! Such a repartee! Truly, I am blessed with the most articulate of companions."

  I ignored her, trying to focus on the day ahead. I had a bridge rotation in an hour. The routine had become almost comforting in its predictability.

  Two weeks ago, I'd been a mess.

  The worms would erupt at the first sign of combat, a feeding frenzy I could barely control. Now? I could fight an entire rotation without losing myself. The hunger never stopped—a constant gnawing beneath my skin—but I'd learned to direct it.

  The mess hall was filled with the usual sounds of prisoners shoveling food into their mouths. I grabbed my tray and sat alone. No one wanted to sit near the worm freak, which suited me fine.

  Kaz entered the hall, his massive frame dominating the doorway. His amber eyes scanned the room before landing on me. He nodded once, the closest thing to approval I'd seen from him lately.

  "You have ten minutes, get your asses to the third bridge." He announced to our team, scattered around the room.

  I finished my food and headed to the equipment room.

  The worms stirred beneath my skin as I prepared, anticipating the coming fight. By the end of the first week, I could form a basic construct in seconds rather than minutes.

  The crude spears and shields I'd managed at first had evolved into something more refined.

  "Your designs are improving somewhat," Mabel noted as I flexed my arm, watching as some of the more excited worms crested the surface of my skin. "Though your aesthetic sensibilities remain tragically underdeveloped. Would it kill you to add a flourish? Perhaps a nice decorative pattern along the edge?"

  "We're not going to a fashion show, Mabel."

  "Life is a fashion show, my drab little companion."

  Bridge Three was a stone span stretching across an impossible void. The tear shimmered at its center, a wound in reality leaking dimensional energy. Our team formed up, shields interlocking, as our ranged fighters positioned themselves behind us.

  "Hold the line," Kaz ordered, his voice carrying across the bridge. Golden light leaked from his skin, his Origin activating in preparation. "Fish up front and tank our left side. Stay mobile, but do not—I repeat—do not break ranks unless ordered."

  I nodded, taking my position. The tear pulsed, widening. Something was coming through.

  I watched as the first wave of goblins poured out of the wound and onto the bridge. Screeching and banging their make-shift weapons together.

  "Advance!" Kaz shouted, and our line moved forward as one.

  Two weeks ago, I'd have broken formation immediately, charging ahead like a rabid dog. Today, I held my position, forming a long worm-blade along my forearm as we met the goblin wave.

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  The combat was brutal but controlled.

  I slashed through three goblins in quick succession, their flesh parting under my blade. The worms hungered for their essence, but I kept them in check.

  A larger tear opened behind the goblin wave, and an orc lumbered through. It was nine feet of muscle and bone, wielding a club made from what looked like bones of a human leg.

  "We got a heavy hitter!" Zo called from somewhere to my right. "Kaz, on your six!"

  Kaz turned, his golden axe already swinging to meet the orc's charge. The clash sent vibrations through the stone beneath our feet.

  I cut down another goblin, then glanced at Kaz's fight. The orc had him pinned against the bridge's edge. Without thinking, I formed a javelin from my palm and hurled it.

  The worm-spear struck the orc's shoulder, burrowing deep into its flesh. It wasn’t a killing blow, but enough it was enough to piss it off.

  Kaz seized the opening I'd given him, bringing his axe down cleaving through the orc's neck in one clean swing.

  The head tumbled into the void below.

  When the last goblin fell, I finally let the hunger take over. The worms extended from my skin, consuming the fallen creatures, drawing in their essence.

  I felt the familiar rush of power flooding through me, it was exhilarating, almost euphoric.

  "Nice throw," Zo said, appearing beside me as I finished feeding. Her cyan hair was pulled back, and her magenta eyes were bright with something between mockery and appreciation. "Your fighting style is totally different now."

  "It’s almost attractive, in a might eat my face kind of way." She looked me up and down, a smirk playing at her lips.

  She laughed at whatever crossed my face and rejoined her squad before I could respond.

  Mabel's satisfaction radiated through our connection, though she'd never admit it aloud. She simply stopped criticizing for a full three seconds.

  The scout worm operated independently now, deployed during meals and rest periods.

  After I returned to my bunk each night, it would come back and share what it had sensed. The process had become routine over the last two weeks.

  "Your spy returns with news that continues to be spectacularly useless," Mabel announced as the small worm slithered back under my skin. "Unless you're particularly interested in who's sleeping with whom in barracks, which—judging by your previous reactions—you are not."

  The problem was that the worm, despite Mabel's intelligence guiding its interpretation, remained naive about human social dynamics. It couldn't distinguish what mattered from what didn't.

  "I have cataloged today's failures for your review," Mabel continued, her mental voice dripping with theatrical frustration. "First, we have learned that the man with the scar in barracks two—the one who looks like he lost a fight with a cheese grater—is apparently quite the romantic poet. The worm spent forty-three minutes listening to him compose an ode to someone's eyes. FORTY-THREE MINUTES, Fish. Do you know what I could have accomplished in forty-three minutes? I could have redesigned your entire digestive system for optimal nutrient absorption!"

  I suppressed a smile. "Anything actually useful?"

  "Define 'useful.' Is it useful to know that the twins in barracks seven are not, in fact, twins, but rather the same person manifesting in two places? Is it useful to know that the woman who spits venom—snake-scale patches across her throat, remember her?—is terrified of actual snakes? Is it useful to know that your reputation as the crazy one and feeding frenzy guy who eats goblins remains intact?"

  Most of the scout's reports were gossip, though.

  This was how I learned that there was romance budding among some of the prisoners. Beautiful young Sacred locked together with death hanging above their heads… Many felt life was too short, time to seize the day.

  I was excluded from this entirely, of course.

  I'd positioned myself as the unlikable lunatic, I had no time for anything except training. I was wary of getting close to anyone, afraid my true nature might be exposed.

  Mabel dismissed the romantic intelligence as useless noise, beneath consideration, a waste of our reconnaissance capabilities. But I noticed the loneliness settling into my bones.

  The cover worked. That's what mattered. That's what I told myself.

  Just like that, day after day passed, slowly turning into weeks.

  The grind continued. Before I even knew it, two weeks had elapsed since I met Mabel for the first time.

  I sat on my bunk, letting the accumulated exhaustion settle.

  Two weeks of grind solidified into whatever readiness I'd managed.

  Mabel's presence hummed through our connection. "You've made considerable progress," she said, her tone suggesting she was bestowing a rare gift of approval. "You're more ready than before. Though no one is ever truly ready for what's coming."

  She phrased it like criticism of the universe's timing rather than concern for my welfare…

  I was about to ask her what she meant by what was coming, when the alarms began.

  These weren't the normal rotation alarms.

  Something deeper. More urgent. A sound I'd never heard before but immediately understood it meant there was a catastrophic threat.

  The barracks erupted. Veterans moved with urgency. Newer prisoners froze, confused, terrified. I was already on my feet, worms dancing beneath my skin, responding to the surge of adrenaline.

  Curtis's voice boomed through the fortress speakers, cutting through the chaos like a blade.

  "All personnel to battle stations. This is not a drill. Multiple tear breaches detected. There is a Cascade event imminent. All bridges. All sectors. Everyone fights."

  "Oh my," Mabel's voice sharpened in my mind. "A cascade event… isn't that when dimensional pressure exceeds breaking point. Isn’t this what Kaz warned about?"

  Through the barracks window, I saw the sky above the Shattered front tearing. There were multiple tears visible, rippling with different colors. Not one breach.

  Hundreds of dimensional tears shredding like dimensional fabric.

  Kaz appeared in the barracks doorway. Golden light already bleeding from his skin as his Origin activated, turning him into something more than human, a sun in human form, ready to burn. His expression was grim but controlled, amber eyes glowing like molten metal.

  "Let’s go. This is what we trained for."

  I followed him out into the rush as prisoners made their way toward their stations. Around me, Sacred of every type prepared for battle.

  "Two weeks of preparation," Mabel observed as we moved toward the staging area. "Time to see if it was enough. Time to see what we've become."

  She said it like a challenge rather than a comfort, daring me to prove worthy of her instruction.

  I reached my station and saw the tear field beyond… It was a nightmare landscape of dimensional wounds, legions of beasts were already pouring through.