The distant, final clang of the Net Closure Protocol’s magnetic locks was a period on a sentence of doom. It was the last sound of the Grid’s cold logic they would hear for a long time. Silja Valis did not look back. There was nothing behind them but a cage. Ahead, the air began to shimmer, the hard lines of rusted gantries blurring as if seen through heat haze. They were stepping out of the frying pan of a tactical lockdown and into the fire of a full system crash. They were forced to travel through a highly unstable Bleed Zone.
There were no safe havens left. No hidden passages, no friendly workshops, no forgotten tunnels. Every bolthole was compromised, every potential ally either bought or running. The only path was forward, deeper into the Sump’s unmapped, decaying strata where the walls between worlds were thin as gauze.
The air grew thick, tasting of ozone and something else, something organic and sweet like rotting fruit. This was not the passive strangeness of the Sobbing Gallery. This was active, malevolent. The Weaver, hunted by Corbin Vance and his relentless logic, was lashing out in fear and rage. Its consciousness, a ghost woven into the fabric of the city, was pulling that fabric apart. The team was not just navigating a hazardous environment; they were caught in the crossfire between a hunter and a god.
Reality began to warp. A solid steel catwalk beneath their feet flowed like liquid for a half-second, sending Rhys stumbling in his massive Husk-Frame. The sound of grinding, distant machinery degraded, the metallic protest shifting in pitch until it sounded less like stressed metal and more like a chorus of organic screams. The laws of physics were not just breaking; they were being rewritten into a language of pure horror.
— Power at 35%, — Rhys’s voice crackled over the comms, laced with static. — The joints are seizing. This place is playing hell with the actuators.
— Keep moving, — Silja’s reply was clipped, her breath short.
They pressed on, a trio of ghosts in a dying world. Their resources, both physical and psychological, were bleeding away with every step. Silja’s stamina, once a deep well of endurance, was a shallow puddle. She moved with the same efficiency, but a tremor ran through her hands. Her internal metrics registered a system running at 40% capacity.
Orina’s morale was a flat line. The death of her naive trust in Jago’s betrayal had hollowed her out, leaving only a brittle shell of fear. She followed Silja not out of hope, but because stopping meant being consumed by the screaming chaos around them. Her spirit was a flickering light, guttering at 10% and threatening to go out.
Even Rhys’s Husk-Frame, their one bastion of physical power, was failing. The machine, designed for the predictable stresses of gravity and combat, was being assaulted by forces it had no diagnostics for. Its energy reserves were critical.
The psychological pressure intensified. The Bleed Zone was no longer just warping the world; it was reflecting the broken state of their own minds. It found the cracks in their psyches and poured poison into them. For Rhys, it was the phantom smell of burning insulation, a constant harbinger of catastrophic failure. For Silja, it was the whispers of past failures, the ghosts of comrades she had failed to save, their voices woven into the static between worlds.
But for Orina, it was worse.
She stumbled, catching herself on a railing that felt disturbingly warm and soft. She looked down at a puddle of iridescent fluid that had collected in a dip in the floor. It was not water. It was thick, like oil, and it swirled with colors that had no name. She saw her reflection.
It was her face, pale and smeared with grime. But the eyes were wide with a terror beyond her own, and the mouth was open in a silent, unending scream. The image was a perfect mirror of the shrieking terror she felt coiled in her own chest, a fear so profound it had no voice. Her own internal diagnostics, had she possessed them, would have registered a fear level of 95%.
She froze, mesmerized by the silent horror of her own soul made manifest. The screaming face in the puddle was the truth of her situation. A girl who had trusted a perfect system, now trapped in its agonizing death throes.
— Orina.
Silja’s voice cut through the paralysis. She had doubled back. Her hand clamped onto Orina’s shoulder, hard and grounding.
— Look at me, — Silja commanded, her pale eyes boring into Orina’s. — Not at that. At me.
She pulled Orina away from the puddle, her grip bruising. She did not offer comfort. She offered only forward momentum, the one thing that could keep them from being swallowed whole. The action cost her. A wave of dizziness washed over Silja, and she swayed, her own depleted reserves protesting the effort. She fought it down, her jaw tight. She was holding the team together by sheer force of will, and her will was beginning to fray.
The only way was forward. They moved through a landscape of waking nightmares. Walls wept a viscous, black fluid. The air itself seemed to congeal, making every breath a conscious effort. They were walking through the last, violent thoughts of a dying machine.
The path ahead offered only a different kind of ruin.
The air grew still, and the constant screaming of the world faded to a low hum. A single, pure drop of condensation fell from a pipe, landing with a clear, resonant chime.
The path forward was a bridge made of silent, shimmering light.
