The dawn over the ruins of the central hub was a lie.
Leonis knew it the moment the sky's soft blue flickered glitch in the system's desperate attempt to mimic peace. The air smelled of ozone and burnt code, the ground beneath his boots still warm from the Sovereign's death throes. Celia stood beside him, her moonmark quiet but her eyes sharp, scanning the horizon where the Syndicates towers pierced the false sky like blackened teeth.
*They're still out there," she murmured. *The real war starts now."
Leonis flexed his hands.
The bloodlines had merged, but the fusion was unstablestempest of shadow and flame simmering beneath his skin. The
system's final notification pulsed in his vision:
*Return to reality. Reclaim what was stolen. Reward: A future worth fighting for.*
A future. As if the Syndicate would let them have one.
Fenrir was gone. Thoren was gone. Their sacrifices had bought a victory, but the cost etched itself into Leonis's bones like a brand. He turned to Celia, her silver hair catching the artificial light. *How do we get back?"
Her fingers brushed the cracked Lunar Shard at her beltits power spent, but its resonance still humming. *The same way we came in. Through the ruins of the Heartforge."
A shudder passed through the ground. Distant, mechanical, a sound like gears grinding against bone. Leonis's shadow-arm twitched, tendrils curling into fists. *Theyre already digging."
---
The Heartforge's carcass was a grotesque monument.
What remained of the colossal heart had collapsed into a crater of fused shadowglass and pulsating data fragments. The air above it warped, a visible tear in realitythe thinning barrier between the game and the world beyond.
Celia knelt at the crater's edge, her palm pressed to the ground. *" The forge's energy is still leaking. If we channel it'
*-we can rip the door open," Leonis finished.
A gamble. The forge's remnants were volatile, their power corrosive. One misstep, and they'd dissolve into the same static that had consumed the Sovereign.
Celia's moonmark flared as she raised the shard. *Hold onto me.*
Leonis didnt hesitate. His hand closed around hers, their scars aligning his from the Syndicate's toxin, hers from their experiments. The contact sent a shockwave through the crater, the ground splitting beneath them as the forge's dying energy *reacted*.
The world *unfolded*.
Reality returned in a scream of sterile white.
Leonis gasped, his back slamming against cold metal. The scent of antiseptic and burnt wiring flooded his senses. *Fluorescent lights. Glass pods. The hum of servers.*
They were in a lab.
*His* lab.
The one where he'd been injected, where the Syndicate had erased him.
Celia staggered beside him, her breath ragged. The moonmark on her scar pulsed erratically, reacting to the room's oppressive tech. *This isnt just any facility," she whispered. *This is *Zero Wing*. The Syndicate's core."
Leonis's shadow-arm lashed out instinctively, tendrils slicing through the nearest console.
Sparks erupted, the system's alarms blaring to life. *Good. Saves us the trouble of finding them."
Then the doors hissed open.
A dozen figures in black armor stormed in, their rifles humming with charged energy. At their head stood a man Leonis recognized*Director Veyne*, the Syndicate's executioner, his face a mask of cold amusement.
*Welcome back, anomaly," Veyne said. *Weve missed you.*
---
Leonis moved first.
His shadow-arm *detonated* outward, tendrils spearing through the nearest soldiers. Their screams were cut short as the darkness *consumed* them, their armor crumpling like paper. Celia was a blur beside him, her blade carving moonlight through the chaos, the shard's remnants guiding her strikes with lethal precision.
But Veyne didnt flinch.
He raised a hand, and the labs walls *shifted*, panels sliding open to
reveal rows of glass podseach holding a silver-haired woman in stasis.
Celia's breath hitched. *No-
*Meet your replacements," Veyne purred. *Version 2.0. No memories. No flaws."
The pods hissed open.
The Celias inside *awoke*. ---
Leonis saw it thenthe flicker in *his* Celia's eyes Not fear. *Recognition.*
These werent just copies.
They were *her*.
Every version the Syndicate had scrubbed, reprogrammed, *discarded*.And now they stood between her and the truththat she was never meant to rebel. That she was always meant to break him.
Veyne's grin widened. *Which one will you kill first?*
Celia's blade trembled.
Then *lowered*.
*T remember," she whisperednot to Veyne, but to the copies. *T remember*all* of you.*
The Celias froze.
For a heartbeat, the lab was silent.
Then the first copy *stepped forward*and turned her blade on Veyne.
---
Chaos erupted.
The copies *moved*, not as one, but as a stormtheir movements jagged,
their loyalties fracturing. Some turned on the Syndicate. Others lunged for Leonis. Celia *screamed*, her moonmark blazing as she tore through the chaos, her voice raw with a command that wasnt hers to give:
**Remember him!**
Leonis didnt wait.
He *Voidstepped*.
For three seconds, he was *nowhere*a-ghost in the lab's wiring, a spark in its shadow. He rematerialized behind Veyne, his flame-arm igniting as he*plunged* it through the director's chest.
Veyne gasped, his eyes wide. *Youre just a glitch-
*And glitches," Leonis snarled, *'rash systems."
He *twisted*.
The explosion tore through the lab, the force hurling them both through the glass wallinto the open sky beyond.
Wind roared in Leoniss ears as he and Veyne plummeted, the Syndicate's tower shrinking above them. The director's laugh was a wet, broken thing.
*" You think this changes anything? The Syndicate is *everywhere*.*
Leonis's shadow-arm coiled around Veyne's throat. *Then Ill burn it all down."
The ground rushed up to meet them.
Impact.
Darkness.
---
Leonis woke to Celia's hands on his face, her voice frantic. *Look at me.*Look at me.*"
He coughed, blood spattering the rubble beneath them. The tower's wreckage smoldered around them, the skyline beyond it alight with the Syndicate's panic.
*Did we win?" he rasped.
Celia's smile was a razor. *We just pissed them off."
A notification flickered in Leoniss visionnot from the game, but from the*real* world, hacked into his neural feed:
*The Syndicate's heart still beats. Find it. Rip it out.*
Leonis grinned.
*Now* the real fight began.
---
**End of Chapter 15**