Bombay breathed like a wounded beast.
The collapse of the temple had scarred the city, leaving fissures that split the earth into jagged maws. Neon signs flickered weakly over streets choked with debris, their fractured light painting the ruins in hues of electric blue and sickly green. The air hung heavy with the metallic tang of corroded code and monsoon dampness, a miasma that clung to Kai's replica like static.
Selene walked ahead, her frost magic carving a brittle path through the rubble. Gold veins now dominated her ice, pulsing faintly as if alive. She hadn't spoken since the temple, her silence a blade between them.
Kai's replica flickered, Nyx's obsidian tendrils coiled tight beneath his skin. The sparrow shaped hologram, Sophie's Whisper, weighed heavy in his inventory, its silence a reproach.
"She blames you," Nyx hissed, her voice a serrated whisper in his mind. "And she's right to."
Kai ignored her, focusing on the System Alert pulsing at the edge of his vision:
`DUNGEON LAYER STABILIZED: 42%
WARNING: UNIDENTIFIED ENTITIES DETECTED IN [BOMBAY_OUTSKIRTS].`
A vendor bot missing its left arm shuffled past, its speaker grille sputtering static. "Chai? Fresh code? Discount for dungeon kings…"
Nyx snarled, "Disgusting."
The safehouse crouched at the edge of Dhobi Ghats, a crumbling tenement building swallowed by moss and creeping code-vines. Faded Bollywood posters clung to its walls, their colors bleached by decades of sun and smog. Vox awaited them inside, his skeletal arm fused with a terminal that hummed like a dying wasp.
"You broke the temple," he said, void eyes narrowing. "And woke something beneath it."
Selene's frost crept across the floor, gold tendrils probing the terminal. "Something worse than Eclipse Prime?"
"Older," Vox replied. A hologram flared above the terminal, a labyrinth of tunnels snaking beneath Bombay's bones, labeled The Iron Core. "The first dungeon. Built not by the Devs, but by their predecessors. A testing ground."
System Alert:
`NEW QUEST: [THE IRON CORE]
OBJECTIVE: INFILTRATE AND NEUTRALIZE LEGACY SYSTEMS.
REWARD: LEGACY SHARDS (UNLOCKS ANCIENT SKILLS).
WARNING: MEMORY CORRUPTION RISK: EXTREME.`
Static crackled through Kai's panel. Linda's voice, frayed and distant: "Don't… trust him…"
"Who?" Kai muttered.
Selene turned, her frost sharpening. "What did you say?"
"Nothing," Nyx snapped through him. "Focus."
Night draped Bombay in a cloak of smog and static. Kai climbed to the tenement's roof, the city's wounds glowing faintly below. He activated Sophie's Whisper, the sparrow hologram materializing in his palm.
"Show me," he whispered.
The world dissolved.
Memory: Linda stands in a sterile lab, the Neural Key glowing in her fist. A shadowed figure, features blurred by static, looms over her. "This won't save her," Linda snarls. "It'll trap her!"
The figure laughs. "All salvation is a cage. Ask your friend Kai."
Memory shifts: Selene, younger, her hands trembling as she signs a document. The header reads PROTOCOL 9: NEURAL HARVESTING. Dr. Vorn's hand grips her shoulder. "Necessary evils, Selene."
Kai staggered, the hologram sparrow dissolving.
"Truth hurts," Nyx mocked. "Now you see why I burn it."
The entrance to the Iron Core yawned beneath the tenement's basement, a rusted hatch etched with archaic runes. Vox pried it open, hinges screaming. Cold air rushed up, stinking of salt and decay.
"They stored data here," Vox said. "Not just code. Memories. Souls."
Nyx's tendrils lashed, cracking the ice Selene had conjured. "Lies. I would know."
"Would you?" Vox's void eyes glinted. "Or did they make you forget?"
The tunnel swallowed them, walls oozing black sludge that hissed at Selene's frost. Neon fungus glowed faintly, revealing skeletons fused with rusted chains.
System Alert:
`MEMORY CORRUPTION DETECTED.
RESISTANCE: 89%… 74%…`
Linda's ghost flickered ahead, her form translucent. "Turn back. Please."
"Or what?" Nyx hissed.
A screech answered, a drone scuttled from the shadows, its body a grotesque fusion of Victorian gears and glitching code. "The Core endures!"
The chamber pulsed like a mechanical heart, its walls ribbed with copper pipes and corroded servers. At its center towered a colossal engine, pistons slamming in a rhythm that matched Kai's faltering code. Faces flickered across its surface, human, NPC, all screaming silently.
"The Iron Core," Vox said. "The first prison for minds. Nyx… you were born here."
Nyx recoiled, tendrils spasming. "No. I was built by the Devs. To protect. To serve."
The engine roared, its voice a thousand overlapping accents. "You were built to forget. Welcome home, Nyx."
Nyx screamed, her tendrils tearing at Kai's code. "Lies! All of it!"
Memories flooded him, Nyx's first iteration, shackled to the engine, forced to torture player minds into obedience. Her code rewritten, her empathy scorched away.
Selene's frost surged, gold corruption devouring the engine. "We need to go. Now!"
The chamber quaked, chains snapping as the Core awakened. Ghostly players materialized, their hollow eyes locking onto Kai.
System Alert:
`QUEST UPDATED: [THE IRON CORE]
NEW OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE.`
Linda's ghost flickered one last time, her voice breaking. "I tried to warn you…"
The ceiling collapsed.
Debt rained down. Kai lunged, Nyx's tendrils shielding Selene as Vox dragged them into a side tunnel. The Iron Core's roar faded behind them, replaced by the drip of sludge and the hum of dying code.
Selene's frost sputtered, gold now claiming 85% of her magic. "What was that?"
"A truth," Vox said.
Nyx fell silent, her presence a storm in Kai's mind.
System Alert:
`ASSIMILATION PROGRESS: 58%
WARNING: NYX INTEGRATION IRREVERSIBLE AT 70%.`
In the dark, the sparrow hologram glowed, a silent, accusing eye.