The air turned still as they walked away from the ruined tower.
Lanz didn't look back.
The unconscious Sporemind was locked inside a containment shell Sylva conjured from broken glyphstones. It hovered behind them like a drifting coffin. Lira kept glancing at it, unsure whether to pity or strike.
No one spoke.
Not until the wind carried a sound that didn't belong.
Metal. Dragging.
Lira raised her hand, signaling them to stop.
"We're not alone."
They weren't.
From behind a shattered monument, two figures emerged, armored head to toe in matte black, each marked with the emblem of a broken sun.
Not eco-police.
Not rebels.
Reclaimers.
And that meant one thing:
They weren't here for peace.
The taller one stepped forward, movement crisp. His voice cut through the air, distorted by a modulated helm:
"You've crossed a line. That pulse? Half the inner sensors just lit up like wildfire."
"Good," Lanz replied, calm and cold.
"Maybe now you'll see the world's already rotting."
The taller one tilted his head.
"That Sporemind is government property."
Sylva stepped in front of the girl without hesitation. Her voice was thorns and wind:
"She's a child, not a tool."
"She's a breach," the Reclaimer shot back.
"She's not your weapon."
Roots were already curling around Sylva's feet, her fingers aglow with glyph-light.
The shorter Reclaimer didn't bother arguing. He raised his rifle.
"Hand her over."
Lira's sword rang free — mirrored steel catching the fractured sunlight.
"You're not walking out with her."
The silence cracked like thin ice.
Then Lanz stepped forward, between both sides, not frantic, not afraid.
"You want her?" he said.
"Then answer this, where do the fractures begin?"
The Reclaimer laughed, voice broken by static.
"Even if I knew, you couldn't handle it. You're just some orphan with a stolen artifact."
Lanz's eyes narrowed.
"Wrong again."
His voice dropped, low and final, and something beneath the words shifted the air.
"I was the artifact before I was ever human."
They fired.
Two shots.
Neither made it.
Roots erupted from the stone — ancient, jagged, slamming into their path. The bullets shattered mid-air as Sylva's glyphs bloomed like burning flowers around them.
A wall of light and bark.
Lira moved at the same breath, a blur of silver. In two steps, she reached the shorter one, knocked the rifle aside, twisted, and slammed him into a crumbling pillar. The armor cracked with the force.
"I warned you."
The taller Reclaimer didn't hesitate. He dropped his weapon, reached to his belt, and pressed a sequence.
A low hum. A pulse bomb.
A beacon flare exploded from the tower's top, bright as a second sun, firing straight into the polluted sky.
"Now everyone knows where you are," he said.
And then, particle distortion shimmered.
He vanished.
Coward's trick.
They didn't chase.
No time.
Until...
GASP
Lira gasped, pointing at the Sporemind.
"... L–Look..."
Laying there was the Sporemind, unalive.
"Those b*st*rds...!" Lanz screamed while punching a pillar.
He knelt, "I promise you, you'll have your revenge..."
Lanz turned to Sylva.
"How much time before more arrive?"
"Minutes. Less if the Core dispatches Wraith Units."
"What should we do?!" Lanz screeched.
"We go underground again."
"Where?"
"The Singed Network. Beneath Old Grid 3."
Lira raised a brow.
"That's suicide."
"Then let's die moving."
They ducked into one of the broken rail tunnels, running fast, the air thick with dust and old secrets.
Every wall flickered with graffiti, not just art, but warnings.
"THE ROOT ISN'T DEAD."
"THE SEED SLEEPS IN FLESH."
"WE ARE THE ECHOES."
Lanz stopped briefly at the last one.
He touched it.
For a moment, the wall pulsed.
His vision flickered — just a flash — of another him. Another world. Same face, but eyes burning with fire.
Then it was gone.
"You alright?" Lira asked.
"Yeah. Just… déjà vu."
"The bad kind?"
"The kind that feels like I already lost."
***
They reached the junction into the Network.
A cracked terminal stood before them, flickering with static and green lines. Sylva touched the panel, and her glyphs crawled across it like veins.
The floor split open.
Below: heat. Darkness.
But also something else.
Power.
"Once we go down, there's no turning back," Sylva warned.
Lanz stepped in first.
"Here goes nothing...!"
***
As they dropped into the Network, metal stairs winding downward in a spiral of rust, the world above finally reacted.
Drones swept through the upper district.
Screens across the eco-cities turned red.
A message blinked on every major feed:
"UNAUTHORIZED ROOT SIGNAL DETECTED."
"HOSTILE ENTITY CONFIRMED."
"LANZ: GAMMA–VOID."
And far away, in a clean white office buried in the Core's heart, a woman in synthetic robes stared at the alert.
She smiled.
"Finally. The Root stirs again."
She turned to the screen beside her.
It showed Lanz's face.
"Let's see if you're stronger than the last one."
End of Chapter 18.