The first weeks in the rifts were hell.

Ayla had no concept of time, food, nor shelter, all she knew was only endless darkness and Eclipsed that hunted anything that moved.

So she ran, she hid and she learned how to survive in this forsaken place.

The first time she tried fighting an eclipse was almost a disaster, one that almost caused her to lose her life, but she survived.

She learnt how to deal with them, and by the tenth time, she hunted them, it was almost too easy.

By the hundredth, it was routine.

Her umbra energy grew stronger the longer she stayed.

The shadows, unlike her parents, did not reject her, they accepted and fed her.

They moved when she commanded,they answered when she called and they protected her when she needed it.

She learned to use umbra not because she wanted to, but because she needed it to stay alive.

She slept by burying herself in shadows and only ate by killing the Eclipsed that tried hunting her.

She survived by becoming something which even the Eclipsed in the rift feared. Why did she cling so desperately to survival?

Even she had no idea, but Ayla was sure of one thing, she would survive no matter what it takes.

And just like that, two years passed.

She remembered the day the entire Eclipsed realm suddenly started trembling, almost as if it was collapsing.

She sat in the center, surrounded by both her shadows and corpses of Eclipsed that easily numbered to a hundred.

They ranged from tier 1 to 4, and the largest looking one, a tier 5.

The surrounding started cracking as if a shard of glass, but she didn't panic, no it would be more accurate to say she didn't know how to panic anymore.

Instead, she watched as the cracks got larger by the second before everything around her suddenly shattered and wen the darkness cleared, she was no longer alone.

A woman who wore a white robes with golden patterns, and blindfold covering her eyes stood before her.

Even with the blindfold, Ayla could tell that the woman was looking directly at her and the first thing she felt when she looked back was an overwhelming pressure.

It felt warm but at the same time drowning, and yet, the woman had a smile on her face as she regarded her.

Ayla was sure that the umbra energy she produced was clear as day since she wasn't even attempting to restrain it, but this woman didn't recoil.

Instead, she simply knelt in front of a child covered in blood and shadow and placed a hand on her head.

"You survived," she said, "good job."

Ayla looked strangely at the stranger crouching before her, unable to understand her actions.

Wasn't the first reactionsm to sensing umbra energy disgust or even fear, but this woman showed none of that.

Instead, she just patted her head?

"Strange."

***

Ayla's eyes suddenly snapped open as she realized that she was back in the rubble and the Eclipsed was approaching.

Its pressure elevated by the second and soon enough, she was sure it'd reach pseudo tier 6.

But she didn't panic, instead, she slowly rose from the rubble, assisted by the shadows and she stepped out of the crashed wall.

"The shadows accepted me," she muttered, "let me show you exactly what they can do."

The Eclipsed curiously waited for what she would do next as she watched the shadows spread in a wide area from beneath her feet, stopping just before they could reach the Eclipsed, which confused it.

"Rise."

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, until a while later when the Eclipsed suddenly teleported backwards in caution.

From within the shadows, figures started to rise.

At first, they looked like normal animals, but the more they rose, the more disfigured they looked.

"These are Eclipsed I fought before," She calmly explained, teleporting to the front, "they are reanimated through my shadows."

The Eclipsed now looked wary as it looked at the creatures standing behind Ayla.

Nox, who was still trying to escape, froze as he looked at the Eclipsed standing behind Ayla.

As unbelievable as it sounded, she had somehow managed to summon Eclipsed and according to her words, they were ones she fought before.

Unlike normal Eclipsed, these ones seemed to almost be intangible, instead of solid, but the pressure they released couldn't be denied.

Following her lead, the Eclipsed also summoned multiple other Eclipsed by its side, hoping to even the battlefield.

Ayla just calmly looked at it before stretching her hand forward, "go."

On her command, all the shadow Eclipsed around her rushed towards the tier 5 Eclipsed as it also commanded its Eclipsed to attack.

The clash happened in the center of the settlement, but only one side was immediately overwhelmed and it was not Ayla's.

The moment her shadows came in contact with the tier 5 Eclipsed's, she suddenly felt the umbra energy flowing through them, and with a snap, it was absorbed into her Eclipsed.

The tier 5 Eclipsed let out a distorted shriek as its lesser summons were torn apart, and it's umbra energy was forced out of them, reinforcing Ayla's shadows.

It finally reacted.

It slammed its hands together, the ground beneath it collapsing inward as a massive surge of umbra erupted outward, shredding buildings and flinging debris into the air.

Nox just hung around and looked at the spectacle before him as he had long given up on trying to escape since his SE wasn't responding the way he wanted.

Ayla didn't move.

The shadows rose like a wall in front of her, absorbing the impact entirely. The wave vanished into them, as if swallowed by a void.

Though, most of her shadows were immediately crushed and they dispersed only to reform themselves a second after.

Though, Ayla did feel a bit of pain from them being crushed, she just shrugged it off.

"…That won't work," she said quietly before adding, "now then, let's finish this."

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