I came to with a jolt, unsure if I was dreaming or rebooting. The air didn’t stink of blood or solvent, which was already suspicious. No cold slab under my back. No restraints. Just fabric, actual, breathable, non-synthetic fabric, and a faint hum in the walls, like something asleep but listening.
The hexagonal chamber around me wasn’t familiar. Walls were patched together from alloy panels etched with sigils, numbers, and chalk diagrams that looked halfway between machine code and cult scripture.
A sculpture, if you could call it that, dangled overhead. Melted glass, frayed cables, and something that might once have been a med-drone, all pulsing faintly like it remembered what a heartbeat used to be.
This had to be Rayjin’s place. Just met the guy once, but it feels like his home. Same layered chaos. Same smell of metal, ozone, and ego. Eccentric enough to be sacred. Slum wealth in a fancier wrapper.
I sat up too fast. Bad idea. The walls melted for a moment, my pulse thudding in my teeth. Skin prickled like I was still half-frozen.
My uniform waited on a frame nearby, suspended like a ghost mid-exit. When I touched it, the fibers curled around my fingers, warming like recognition. It slid over my limbs, tightening thread by thread until it sealed at the neck. Breathing with me.
Voices came through faint and sharp from the next chamber.
“…was never the plan,” Aedan’s voice, cool and precise.
“It is now,” Vex clipped. “Unless you’ve got a better idea hiding in that shiny wristband of yours.”
I stepped through the threshold.
They looked up. Aedan by the warped window, arms crossed, the cuff on his wrist glowing like a loaded threat. Vex pacing tight arcs, fingers flicking invisible data. Rayjin half-submerged in a nest of cabling and tools. Vulkred leaning against a radiator, sipping something sickly suspicious.
Vex cocked her head. “Well. Look who’s still breathing.”
“Prince charming,” I said, rubbing my neck. “With a working Neurolink, I hope.”
Her smirk twitched. “You sound alive, alright.”
I crossed the room as they made space. Aedan tossed a folded schematic onto the table. Vex flicked her fingers across it, lines lighting up in pale green.
“Hollow Thorn,” Aedan began. “Old transit nexus gang. They’ve been digging through ruins. Pulling tech. Testing it on… volunteers.”
Subtle name. Probably wore skulls for hats.
“They’re parasites,” Vex cut in. “And worse, curious ones.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And you want me to just stroll in?”
Rayjin snorted, which ended in a raspy cough.
“They’ll want you,” Vex said, eyes glinting. “You’re already famous. Valcor’s parade turned you into a myth.”
I frowned. “So, I’m the bait.”
“A gift,” Aedan corrected. “Offered up from a rival slaver faction. No fuss.”
“So, I’m back on the auction block,” I said flatly.
Arvie chirped, “Excellent, my favorite strategy: minimal intel, hostile territory, bait protocol.”
“They’ll strip you,” Vulkred added, holding up a scanner like a blessing totem. “Left alone in a chamber for processing,”
“Lovely.”
“That’s your breach window,” said Aedan, pointing at the map. “Secondary hatch. Locked. You crack it, drop through a service chute, lands you in zone 12-O-1.”
“Infested,” Vex noted, a little too gleefully. “Nether beasts. Toxic miasma.”
“You’ll have to move fast,” Aedan added. “Quiet.”
I gave them a long, slow blink. “And how exactly am I doing all this with no weapons, zero gear?”
Silence.
Arvie scoffed, “Want me to do it for you? I’ll just manifest a mech-suit out of sarcasm.”
“Seriously,” I said, “I’m not diving into a beast den naked and empty-handed. I left my satchel with the Directorate. Mutacell’s still in it.”
That landed like a dropped wrench.
“Mutacell,” Vex muttered, glancing at Aedan. “That changes things.”
I nodded. “If I have it, this whole thing might not be suicide.”
Rayjin leaned back in his chair, gears hissing beneath. “And you think they will just hand it to you if we ask them?”
“If Larek’s alive,” I said, “and we save him? He’ll hand me the whole damn tower.”
Vulkred said I was likely to die either way, and seemed oddly content about it.
“We extract Larek first,” Aedan decided. “That changes the equation.”
Rayjin sighed. “Fine. Just don’t bring another corpse back to my doorstep.”
“Let me check.” Aedan’s eyes glazed for half a breath, cuff pulsing faintly. He blinked, focused, jaw tight.
“Got something. Not confirmed, but strong enough to move on. Larek might be held near the old silos. Vult Rive’s turf.”
Arvie muttered, “Perfect. Neighborhood’s only got three stars on the crime index.”
Aedan scanned our faces. “We move soon. Regroup at mine. Plan tight. No second chances.”
He turned and walked off.
We followed.
Didn’t make it two blocks before the drums kicked in.
Low and bone-hollow, echoing down the tunnel ribs like some ancient machine trying to breathe. I clocked it as gang noise at first, maybe a funeral, maybe just another turf tantrum. But no. Too clean. Rhythmic. Ceremonial. Clack of staves. Chanting like a ritual had broken loose and started freelancing.
We turned a corner. And saw them.
A procession, dozens deep, creeping through the arterial dark. Robes patched from old banners, cracked synthsilk and communion cloth, painted with radiant spirals and sigils that pulsed sickly green under the tunnel light. Some wore half-masks, glowing, like saints who’d outlived their sins.
At the front, high above their heads, they carried an armored figure etched into plates of mirror-glass and bone-white alloy. The likeness wasn’t exact, but it stopped me cold. Same cut of jaw. Same silver-blue streaked through the sculpted hair. Same damn eyes.
My eyes.
A woman near the front caught sight of me. Her torch dropped. Then she screamed.
“Duvainor reborn! The waking flame walks again!”
And just like that, chaos.
The procession cracked open like an artery cut loose from its vessel. Voices cascaded into a single roar. Hands reached. Feet stamped. People threw themselves forward, scattering incense and bone-totems across the floor.
Vex: “Shit.”
Aedan: “Double that.”
“Triple,” I muttered right before the mob surged and lifted me like stolen cargo from a divine heist.
They didn’t ask. They just hoisted. Shouted. Paraded. Like I was the climax of some long-forgotten prophecy and they’d been holding their breath for centuries.
Arvie crackled into my skull with pure delight.
“Well, well, well. Look who tripped the parade fuse and unlocked bonus saint mode.”
Someone pressed a rusted halo of old circuitry onto my head. A child smeared ash across my cheek like it was sacred geometry. Someone else tried to kiss my boots, sobbing like I’d walked straight out of the holy firmware.
Symbols everywhere. Tattooed into skin, carved into tunnel walls, etched on repurposed riot gear held high like temple banners.
Vex was trailing us, looking like she wanted to stab the entire procession out of sheer principle. Aedan trailed slower, scanning, silent, that familiar processor-light in his eyes.
“They think I’m a saint,” I muttered. “Or something worse.”
“According to the banners,” Arvie chirped. “You are the Ash-Walker, the Flame-Born, the Sovereign of Collapse, the Saint of the Final Seal. Honestly, I’m flattered just being with you.”
“How much of that is real?”
“You’re asking the wrong half of your brain.”
The tunnel widened into a broken amphitheater, carved from the bones of an old transit interchange. Burnt signage overhead still flickered in four dead dialects. They called it the Sanctum. I believed it.
A half-circle altar of relics loomed, plasma engines split open like mechanical scripture, old memory vaults hardwired into the walls.
At the center: a dais. Or maybe a joke disguised as one, built from broken drone torsos, shattered war masks, and a spinal coil the size of my leg. The kind of thing you didn’t sit on unless you meant it.
They set me into it like I belonged.
Vex arrived last, arms crossed. “Well, your holiness. Enjoying the cult experience?”
I tried to answer, but Arvie got to me first.
“By the Divines. Full prophet tier unlocked. Next stop: accidental empire.”12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBPXl63Tgsm
