The mech hissed one last time as its core shut down, limbs twitching in death. The silence afterward felt unnatural—like the city had been holding its breath through the fight, and now it didn't know how to exhale.
Veyrix stood still.
The Core Seed pulsed softly in his chest, the green glow casting faint ripples across the fractured plaza. Behind him, steam hissed from the collapsed machine. Ahead, the ghost-rain resumed its downward fall, carrying fragments of memory and broken code through the atmosphere.
And that voice still echoed in his mind.
"You were never supposed to wake up."
But this time—he recognized something in it.
Not just a voice.
A presence.
Soft. Serene. But terrible in its clarity.
He'd heard rumors before—whispers traded among rogue archivists and driftwalkers. Of a seer hidden behind a veil of encryption. A data-prophet who spoke through fractured systems. Always watching.
The Oracle of the Parallax Singularity.
She had spoken. Not from a mouth—but through a system buried in the city's bones. Maybe even inside the mech itself.
Veyrix turned slowly, scanning the nearby data structures.
No sign of her. Of anything.
Only static.
But that whisper had been real.
And it meant only one thing.
They were watching again.
He knelt by the broken machine, eyes narrowing, mind sharpening.
If the Oracle was moving her pieces, then this city—this whole dead world—was just a board.
And he was still part of the game.
The green glow from his boots and cyber shorts dimmed slowly, but the faint thrum of the Core Seed in his chest remained steady—deeper now, almost… satisfied. The Wraith Cloak rippled around his shoulders, retracting the cyber-spider limbs back into its folds like a breathing creature folding its legs.
He examined the mech's chest plate. The symbol of the old Core Defense Force was scorched into its frame—a circle of rotating triangles, now half-obscured by rust and blood.
"What were you still doing here?" he muttered.
No answers. Only the low crackle of static from the dying machine and the soft sizzle of code-rain hissing as it struck exposed circuitry.
Then, a pulse from the cloak.
A data fragment. Active.
His fingers moved quickly, adjusting a panel near the mech's thorax. A sputtering holo-interface blinked into existence.
[SECURE LOGFILE — PRIORITY BLACK]
[ORIGIN: CORE CRYPT-7 — PARALLAX ZONE — 4 CYCLES AGO]
"Crypt-7?" Veyrix frowned.
He triggered the playback.
A distorted image appeared.
A man in a white coat stood before a sealed chamber lined with what looked like organic fiber.
"They'll find him eventually," the man said. "The Core isn't dead. Just dreaming."
A nearby guard grunted. "They said the boy was stabilized. But if he's leaking energy like that—"
"He's not just leaking. He's syncing. The city's starting to hear him again."
A third voice—cold, synthetic.
"And if he remembers—?"
The screen cracked. The image flickered out.
[FILE ENDED — MEMORY STAMP INCOMPLETE]
He closed his fist.
That phrase again.
"If he remembers."
He wasn't a person to them. He was a rupture in protocol. A threat coded into flesh.
His cloak coiled tightly, shielding him. The green lines along his boots steadied.
He stood and left.
Veyrix ran.
His cyber boots whispered across broken ground, propulsion softly humming. His shorts shifted texture as he glided through fractured highways, past collapsed monorails, past abandoned shrines still flickering with neon prayers.
And above?
He was being watched.
High atop a shattered spire, a figure in silver-black robes observed. Its visor glowed red. Digital prayer beads coiled around its wrist. It bore the mark of a broken circuit.
The sigil of the Parallax Singularity.
TARGET CONFIRMED: VEYRIX — CORE-BORN — ASCENT CLASS 1.
Other signals chimed in—more watchers on other rooftops.
"He survived Reclaimer Zone Theta."
"Stabilization confirmed."
"Do we notify the Oracle?"
"Not yet. He remembers nothing."
"And if he starts to—?"
"…then the Core Crypts burn again."
Far below, Veyrix reached the edge of a wide breach in the city—The Code Scar.
It dropped into darkness.
The ground pulsed.
He saw something. Not footsteps—displacement ripples in the code layer.
Someone else had passed here. Recently.
Someone like him.
He engaged the cloak's descent mode.
It flared, limbs unfolding.
He dropped—boots and cloak adjusting.
Weightless.
Silent.
Green.
The Understeel opened before him.
Dark. Silent. Ancient.
He moved carefully now, boots casting light as they activated pulse-field sensors.
The walls shimmered with sleeping data. His breath clouded. The air was stale.
Then he found it:
A symbol etched into the wall. Simple. Sharp.
∇
The mark of the Parallax Singularity.
A voice rose behind him.
"You shouldn't be here, ghost."
He turned.
A woman stepped from the shadows. One eye cybernetic. A drone circling her head.
"That cloak," she said. "You steal it?"
He said nothing.
"You feel it too, don't you? The waking? You've been syncing."
He stepped forward.
"Who are you?"
She studied him.
"The one who's going to help you remember… before it's too late."