The ruins of Zero Wing bled static into the dawn.
Leonis stood at the edge of the shattered undercroft, the wind howling through the skeletal remains of the Syndicate's fortress. The Hollow King was gone, its throne reduced to smoldering shadowglass, but the air still hummed with the echo of its defiance. Beside him, Celia's breath was shallow, her moonmark now a jagged scar, the Lunar Shard's remnants dust in her palm.
*Theyll come for us," she murmured, her voice raw. *The Syndicate doesnt stop.*
Leonis flexed his hands, the fused bloodlines beneath his skin writhing like caged storms. *Let them."
A notification flickered in his vision, hacked into his neural feed:
*The Hollow King is dead. The Sovereign's voice is silent. But the Syndicate's heart still beats.**Find it.**Burn it.*
The horizon flickerednot with sunlight, but with the cold, electric glow of Syndicate drones.Reinforcements.
The descent into the city's underbelly was a descent into a graveyard.
The streets were littered with the wreckage of the CEO's fallen regimeshatt ered drones, smoldering data terminals, the occasional corpse still twitching with residual code. The air reeked of burnt ozone and something darker, something *alive*. The Syndicate's network was wounded, but not dead.
Celia limped beside him, her steps uneven. *The core isnt in the towers," she said, her gaze distant. *Its beneath them. The CEO's final secret."
Leonis's shadow-arm twitched. *How do you know?*
She touched her scar, now a livid brand. *Because I heard him. In the static. He was afraid of it."
A memory flickered at the edge of Leonis's mindthe CEO's face, twisted in rage, screaming not at him, but at something *below*.
*Then we dig." Leonis said.
---
The entrance was hidden beneath a cathedral of dead servers, its doors sealed with runes that pulsed like a slowing heartbeat. Celia pressed her palm to the glyphs, her moonmark flaring weakly. The doors groaned, then*screamed*, their mechanisms tearing apart as if the very metal resisted them.
Beyond lay the Godforge.
It was not a machine. It was not a heart.
It was a *wound*.
A vast, pulsing chasm of liquid shadow and molten code, its surface bubbling with half-formed shapesfaces, limbs, screaming mouths that dissolved before they could finish. At its center floated a single, obsidian sphere, its surface etched with the same runes as the throne.
*The core,* Celia whispered. *The source of the Sovereign's power."
Leonis stepped forward, his shadow-arm recoiling as the forge's heat lashed at him.
*Tt's not just a battery. Its a *gate*."
A gate to something older. Something hungrier.
The sphere *pulsed*, and the voice that echoed from it was not the CEO's.
It was *hers*.
The original Celia.
*tittle shadow," she murmured, her voice woven through with static. *You were never supposed to see this."
Leonis's blood ran cold. *Youre alive?"
*No," the original said, her voice softening. *But Im not gone, either. The forge *recycles*. It takes whats left of usour memories, our willand feeds it back into the system. The CEO was just a *custodian*."
Celia staggered, her scar splitting open anew. *Then *what* is the forge?"
The originals laughter was a knife dragged across bone. *A *tomb*. And a*cradle*.
The sphere *split*, its surface peeling back to reveal-child*.
A girl, no older than ten, her silver hair streaked with shadow, her eyes hollow with something that was not fear, but *recognition*. She floated at the forge's heart, her small hands pressed against the inside of the sphere, her mouth moving in silent words.
*You," Leonis breathed.
The originals voice was a whisper. *The first Celia. The *template*. The Syndicate found her in the static, a mind bom from the code itself. They built me from her. They built *everything* from her."
Celia4is* Celiacollapsed to her knees, her breath coming in ragged gasps.*She's the *core*."
The child's eyes locked onto Leoniss.
And she *smiled*.
---
The forge *screamed*.
Tendrils of liquid shadow erupted from the sphere, lashing toward them like starving serpents. Leonis *Voidstepped*,rematerializing in front of Celia, his flame-arm igniting in a blaze of stolen moonlight. The shadows recoiled, hissing, but the forge was *learning*, adaptingits next strike came faster, harder, spearing through his shoulder and pinning him to the ground.
*Leonis! Celias voice was raw.
The originals whisper slithered through the chaos. *You cant kill her. She's the system's *will*. But you can *change* her."
Leonis gritted his teeth, his shadow-arm thrashing. *How?
*Give her a *memory*."
Celia understood first. She lunged, not for the sphere, but for Leonis's hand- her fingers interlacing with his, their scars aligning. The moonmark on her face *split open*, silver light flooding the chamber.
*Remember," she whisperednot to the child, but to *herself*.
The forge *shuddered*.
The child's smile faltered.
And for the first time, her voice rang out, clear and human:
*f--know you."
---
The explosion was not light, but *color*a burst of crimson so vivid it painted the world in blood and fire. The forge *unmade* itself, its tendrils dissolving, its core collapsing inward like a star eating itself alive. The child- the core*reached out, her small hand brushing Leonis's cheek.
*Thank you," she said,
Then she was gone.
The chamber trembled, the ceiling cracking open to reveal the sky*real*sky, dawn spilling over the ruins like a tide. The Syndicate's towers groaned, their foundations crumbling as the networks heart finally *stopped*.
Celia sagged against Leonis, her breath shallow. *Did we-win?"
He looked down at her, then at the horizonwhere the first true sunrise in a decade painted the world in gold.
*No," he said. *We *remade* it."
And somewhere, in the static between worlds, the original Celia laughed.
---
*The forge is broken. The core is free. But the war is not over.**
The Syndicate's remnants still linger.**
And Leonis?**He has *plans*.*