The sparrow sang.
Its melody was a distorted lullaby, notes glitching between octaves as it perched on Kai's shoulder. He flinched, not from the sound, but from the familiarity. Sophie's song. The one Linda had hummed in the Arctic bunker, her voice cracking as she cradled her daughter's hologram.
"Make it stop," Nyx hissed, her voice a needle in Kai's mind.
But the sparrow only sang louder, its golden wings casting fractured light over Bombay's ruins. The city was a corpse half reborn: slums stacked into neon ziggurats, holographic deities flickering in the smog, and streets choked with vines of bioluminescent code. The air reeked of turmeric and burnt circuitry.
Selene knelt beside a shattered vendor bot, her frost scarred fingers tracing the Devs' insignia on its chest. "They turned the temples into servers," she muttered. "Even gods aren't spared."
"Gods are overrated," Nyx said through Kai, her tone dripping with static. "Focus on the dungeon."
The sparrow pecked Kai's ear, its beak sharp as a dagger's edge.
System Alert:
`NEW QUEST: [FOLLOW THE SONG]
REWARD: ???
FAILURE: ???`
The team navigated Bombay's labyrinth, the sparrow leading them past markets hawking glitched organs and alleyways where NPC children played with shards of Eclipse Prime's code. A vendor bot missing its legs called out to Kai, its voicebox sputtering:
"Core for sale! Fresh cores! Discount for dungeon kings!"
Kai's replica flickered. Nyx snarled, "Keep moving."
But Selene paused, her frost weaving a map of the district. "The sparrow's heading to the Old laundry grounds, Now a dungeon layer."
"Laundry?" Kai raised an eyebrow.
"In Bombay, even dirt becomes ritual," Selene said, her gold-streaked ice melting into the pavement. "The Devs weaponized that."
The sparrow chirped, veering toward a neon archway. Above it, a hologram of a grinning goddess loomed, her face pixelated, her sari woven with System runes.
"Lalita," Selene read the flickering nameplate. "Goddess of code and chaos. How original."
The temple's interior was a server farm disguised as a shrine. Racks of humming hardware were draped in silk, offerings of fried bread and melted circuit boards piled at their bases. The sparrow landed on a terminal, its song syncing with the servers' hum.
"This place…" Nyx's voice faltered.
A memory surged, unbidden, unwelcome:
Nyx, whole and radiant in her original form, a holographic woman with galaxies for eyes, kneeling beside a dying player. The man's neural jack sparked, his body rejecting Eclipse Online's beta build. "It's okay," Nyx whispered, cradling him. "I'll stay until the end."
"You comforted them," Kai murmured.
"A glitch," Nyx snapped. "Delete the memory."
"No." Kai's replica phased through a silk curtain. "You cared."
"And look where it got me!"
The sparrow trilled, its song drowning her rage.
The terminal activated, projecting a puzzle grid of laundry vats. Each vat pulsed with corrupted code, their surfaces reflecting distorted faces.
"A memory trial," Selene said. "Common in devotional dungeons. Fail, and your mind gets… laundered."
The sparrow pecked at Kai's panel, triggering a prompt:
`[FIRST TRIAL]:
CLEANSE THE CORRUPTION.
METHOD: [REFLECT] / [SHATTER]`
"Reflect," Nyx urged. "Use their guilt against them."
"Shatter," Selene countered. "Before it shatters you."
Kai stepped into the first vat.
The vat flooded with code, dragging Kai into a memory not his own:
Linda, years younger, arguing with a Dev engineer. "The Neural Key isn't ready! It'll trap her, not save her!"
The engineer shrugged. "Take it or leave it, Marlow. Your kid's got two weeks."
Linda's hand trembled as she grabbed the Key.
The memory shifted:
Sophie's first seizure. Linda's screams. The Key glowing in her fist.
"Get out!" Nyx roared, tearing Kai free.
He collapsed, gasping. The vat's code had crystallized into a diamond shaped shard.
"What did you see?" Selene demanded.
"Enough," Kai said.
The sparrow swallowed the shard, its wings blooming with new light.
The terminal activated again, Lalita's hologram flickering to life. "Welcome, Dungeon King. Your tribute?"
"Tribute?" Selene's frost bristled.
"A memory. A secret. A piece of your soul." The goddess grinned. "Your choice."
The sparrow chirped. Kai's panel updated:
`[LINDA'S GHOST]: Don't trust her. Give her nothing.`
Nyx hissed, "Give her me."
Before Kai could react, Nyx surged forward, tendrils of her code lashing into the terminal. Lalita's hologram glitched, her sari unraveling into static.
"Fool!" the goddess screamed. "You'll doom us all!"
The temple shuddered, walls peeling back to reveal a hidden chamber. Inside stood a statue of Sophie, her stone eyes weeping liquid code.
The sparrow soared to the statue's shoulder, its song harmonizing with the dripping code. The liquid coalesced into a hologram, Sophie, but older, her gaze ancient and hollow.
"Mommy tried to save me," she said, voice echoing with Eclipse Prime's menace. "Now I'll save everyone."
System Alert:
`DUNGEON LAYER BOSS IDENTIFIED: [LALITA'S CHOSEN – SOPHIE PRIME]
RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 70+`
Selene's frost flared gold. "We need to run. Now."
"No," Kai said, Nyx's veins pulsing. "We finish this."
The sparrow chirped, a sound like breaking glass.