The Masked Virtuoso-Chapter 146: Ethan vs The Rift Servant
The air shattered.
Not like glass, but like time itself had fractured.
Ethan had seen strange Rift distortions before—places where reality blurred, where things existed in states they shouldn’t. But this? This was something worse. This wasn’t just a crack in the world. It was a deliberate break.
And the thing standing before him was its cause.
The Rift Servant.
Its form flickered—tall one second, hunched the next, shifting through states that didn’t belong together. It wasn’t like looking at a creature. It was like looking at a thousand possible versions of the same thing, all at once, layered over each other in a pulsing mass of broken existence.
But its eyes—if they could be called that—never wavered. They were locked on Ethan.
Watching.
Waiting.
Then the clocktower tolled a third time, and the creature moved.
---
A Battle Against Time Itself
Ethan barely had time to react.
The Rift Servant didn’t lunge at him. It didn’t charge or even strike in a way he understood. Instead, it folded toward him, its body warping in impossible ways, closing the space between them in an instant.
Ethan threw himself back—just in time.
A ripple of warped air lashed out where he had stood, carving deep scars into the stone beneath him. The effect was immediate—the cobblestones unraveled, turning into jagged fragments of past and future, flickering between ruin and repair.
This thing doesn’t just attack. It erases.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. His hand surged with Rift-light, dark energy crackling along his arm. He thrust it forward—unleashing a blast of power straight into the creature’s shifting core.
The impact landed.
Or at least, it should have.
Instead, the Rift Servant simply... wasn’t there anymore.
The moment Ethan’s attack reached it, the creature flickered, distorting through space, skipping ahead in time as if the moment where it was struck had been erased from existence.
And then it was behind him.
A clawed limb stretched through the air, shifting in shape—first a hand, then a blade, then something entirely unrecognizable.
It slashed.
Ethan barely twisted away in time, but even as he moved, the edges of his cloak frayed—not torn, but unraveling as if they had never been stitched together in the first place.
It’s not attacking me. The realization hit like a hammer. It’s undoing me.
---
The Rift’s Trickery
"Ethan!"
Mia’s voice cut through the fractured battlefield. She and Orion were sprinting toward him, but the moment they crossed into the distortion’s range, the world twitched.
For a single second, Ethan saw two versions of them—one where they were still running, another where they were frozen in place. The Rift distortion flickered between the two, like reality itself couldn’t decide which one was true.
Mia stumbled, pressing a hand to her head. "Something’s wrong—"
Her voice warped mid-sentence, repeating over itself, the sound looping in real-time. Orion, beside her, yanked off his visor with a growl of frustration. "Damn it. My sensors are—"
His voice, too, cut off, his words swallowed by the distortion. The edges of his body flickered, the Rift struggling to maintain a stable version of him.
It’s not just attacking us. It’s rewriting us.
Ethan’s pulse hammered. He turned back to the Rift Servant, forcing himself to focus.
It had to have a weakness. Every creature he had faced had one. Even Rift-born entities followed some rules.
The Servant loomed ahead of him, shifting, flickering, waiting.
Ethan clenched his jaw. Fine. If I can’t hit it normally—
He raised his hand, Rift-light surging.
—then I’ll change the rules myself.
---
Resetting Reality
Ethan forced his power outward.
Not as an attack. Not as a strike.
But as a command.
The Rift distortion around them fought to break reality, to fracture it into unstable loops and erasures. So Ethan did the opposite. He poured his essence into the battlefield, anchoring everything in place—forcing the moment to hold.
The world resisted.
The Rift Servant twisted violently, jerking as if it had been caught in a net. Its flickering form slowed, its movements becoming sluggish, forced into a single state.
For the first time, Ethan saw it clearly.
A being wrapped in fragmented light and shadow, its true form hidden beneath endless shifting layers. But now—trapped in this moment—it had nowhere to run.
And its head tilted toward him, something like recognition flickering in its countless eyes.
Then it shrieked.
The sound tore through the air, vibrating through reality itself, sending cracks spiraling outward in the fabric of the Rift.
The town around them—trapped in its endless loop—shuddered violently. The frozen rain above moved, droplets jerking mid-air before being forced still again.
Ethan grit his teeth. He could feel the pressure now, the weight of forcing the Rift’s power into a contained space.
Just a little longer—
Then Mia gasped.
"Ethan! Look—"
He turned.
The Rift Servant wasn’t just struggling.
It was changing.
Its body convulsed, unraveling and reassembling, no longer flickering through infinite forms—now becoming something else.
A shape that wasn’t supposed to exist.
A true form.
And the moment it stabilized—
It spoke. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺
---
The Whisper of Something Greater
The Rift Servant’s voice wasn’t a sound.
It was a presence. A force that pressed into the world around it, sending shivers through the fabric of existence.
"You are not meant to be."
Ethan’s blood ran cold.
The words didn’t echo in his ears. They resonated inside his very being, a weight that settled deep in his bones.
The creature took a step forward—just one—but the motion sent ripples through the ground, distorting space itself.
"You were never meant to be."
Ethan forced his body to stay still. Forced himself not to react. But the Rift-light around his hands pulsed in response, reacting instinctively to the pressure of the thing before him.
Mia and Orion stood frozen, their eyes locked on the creature.
Then it whispered, its countless mouths curling in impossible ways.
"He is watching you, Riftborn."
Ethan’s breath hitched.
Not because of the words.
But because the moment the creature said them, he felt it.
A presence.
Not the Rift Servant. Not the distortion.
Something else.
Something beyond the Rift.
Watching.
Waiting.
The realization sent a shiver down his spine.
And then—
The Rift Servant lunged.
---
The Final Blow
Ethan barely raised his hand in time. Rift-light surged, clashing against the creature’s flickering limbs, sparks of raw existence crackling between them.
The pressure around them deepened. The looped town trembled.
Reality itself began to strain—
And somewhere, beyond this place, beyond this moment,
Something laughed.
---
To be continued...
