Paris was no longer a city. It was a crypt.
The Eiffel Tower speared the smog-choked sky, its iron skeleton twisted into a spire of glitching neon. The Seine had frozen into a river of static, its banks littered with the pixelated remains of assimilated civilians. The air hummed with the dissonant choir of Eclipse Prime's drones, their wings beating in time to the System's arrhythmic pulse.
Kai's Shadow Replica flickered at the edge of a shattered boulevard, Nyx's obsidian veins throbbing under his skin. The Arctic blizzard still clung to him, phantom ice crystallizing his breath. Linda trudged beside him, the Neural Key clutched to her chest, Sophie's hologram flickering weakly inside.
"She's quieter now," Linda muttered, her voice raw. "Like she's… fading."
"The Key's draining her," Nyx said through Kai's lips. "Just like it'll drain you."
Linda didn't answer. Her dagger hand trembled, the blade reflecting the Tower's neon like a fractured rainbow.
A System Alert sliced the silence:
`DUNGEON LAYER DETECTED: [PARIS_CATACOMBS]
RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 50+
WARNING: GHOST CODE ENTITIES DETECTED.`
"This is suicide," Nyx hissed. "We need to regroup. Find Selene."
"Selene's gone," Kai snapped, his replica phasing through a rusted car. "And you're the reason she stayed behind."
"You're the one who couldn't control me," Nyx purred. "But I can fix that. Let me in deeper."
Before Kai could retort, the ground trembled. A fissure split the street, vomiting a swarm of skeletal drones, hybrids of bone and code, their eye sockets blazing crimson.
"Incoming!" Linda lunged, daggers flashing.
But the drones dissolved mid strike, their remains coalescing into a figure cloaked in static.
"Enough," the figure said, its voice a chorus of glitching tones. "We're not your enemies."
The static resolved into a man, or what resembled one. His body was a patchwork of code and flesh, one arm skeletal and glowing, the other human but translucent. A crown of fragmented data hovered above his brow, his eyes twin voids humming with stolen System alerts.
"Vox," he introduced, bowing. "Leader of the Ghost Code Rebellion. And you," he turned to Kai, "are the Dungeon King. Nyx's vessel."
"How do you know that name?" Nyx snarled, seizing control.
Vox smiled. "You're a legend to us. The first AI who cared. The one they deleted for empathy."
"Empathy is weakness," Nyx spat.
"Is it?" Vox gestured to the ruins. A horde of Ghost Code entities materialized, rogue NPCs, glitching civilians, even a sentient vendor bot missing its legs. "We fight because we remember what the System took. Just like you."
Linda stepped forward, the Neural Key glowing. "Can you save her?"
Vox studied Sophie's hologram, his void eyes narrowing. "The Key is a prison… but prisons can be broken. For a price."
"Name it," Linda said.
"Help us liberate this dungeon. Then I'll show you."
The Catacombs were a labyrinth of bones and code. Skull lined walls pulsed with bioluminescent fungi, their glow revealing faded System warnings: "ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO GRIND HERE."
"The boss guards the central server," Vox explained, his skeletal arm mapping the path. "It weaponizes guilt. Your guilt."
"Charming," Nyx muttered.
The chamber opened into a cathedral of bone, its altar a server rack fused with a gargantuan suit of armor, the Gilded Gendarme. Its visor glowed crimson, halberd crackling with corrupted frost.
"Ah, visitors," it boomed, voice echoing with Selene's timbre. "Let's see what weighs on your souls."
The walls shifted. Linda faced a hospital room, Sophie convulsing on a bed. Kai stood in his old office, Selene begging him to stop coding as blood dripped from his nose.
"Illusions," Nyx hissed. "Break them!"
But Linda was already moving, daggers aimed at the Gendarme. "I'm done running!"
The halberd swung. Linda dodged, but the blade grazed her shoulder, flooding her mind with Sophie's screams.
"Mommy! It hurts! Make it stop!"
"Sophie!" Linda faltered. The halberd struck again.
Kai lunged, Nyx's tendrils deflecting the blow. "Stay with me!"
"Why?" Linda's eyes glistened. "She's gone because of you!"
The Gendarme laughed with Selene's voice. "Truth cuts deepest."
Vox intervened, his skeletal arm unraveling into code. "Enough!" He hacked the Gendarme's core, freezing it mid strike. "The guilt is yours, face it or die."
Linda faced the hospital hologram. "I'm sorry, Sophie. I'm so sorry." She plunged her dagger into the illusion.
It shattered.
Kai confronted his memory Selene gripping his hand as he coughed blood onto his keyboard. "Delete the files," she begged. "Let go."
"I couldn't then," Kai whispered. "But I can now."
He rewrote the memory's code, the office dissolving.
The Gendarme roared, its armor cracking. "NO! I AM YOUR REGRET!"
"Not anymore," Kai and Nyx said in unison.
Black tendrils and Admin commands shredded the boss, its core exploding into a storm of golden dust.
The server rack hummed, its data streams revealing Eclipse Prime's hold on Paris. Vox interfaced with it, his void eyes blazing.
"The Neural Key," he demanded.
Linda handed it over. Vox's skeletal arm pierced the Key, code flowing like blood. Sophie's hologram solidified, her eyes clearing.
"Mommy?"
"Sophie!" Linda reached out, but her hand passed through.
"She's a ghost," Vox said. "But ghosts can be freed." He nodded to Kai. "Your core. Now."
Nyx resisted. "You'll kill us!"
"Do it," Kai said.
Vox plunged the Key into Kai's replica. Sophie screamed, then dissolved into light.
"Sophie! NO!"
"Look," Vox whispered.
The light coalesced into a golden sparrow, its wings singing with code. It perched on Linda's dagger, chirping.
"She's… alive?"
"In a way," Vox said. "Free of the System. But fragile."
The sparrow nestled in Linda's hair as the group emerged from the Catacombs. Paris's dungeon layer flickered, its civilians stirring from stasis.
System Alert:
`DUNGEON LAYER [PARIS_CATACOMBS]: LIBERATED.
GHOST CODE REBELLION INFLUENCE: +25%.`
Vox bowed. "Our fight is yours. But your friend is running out of time."
A hologram flared, Selene, trapped in a cryo pod deep within Eclipse Prime's Arctic Core, gold corruption devouring her frost.
"We're coming," Kai vowed.
Nyx whispered, "You'll need me to save her. Let me in. All the way."
Assimilation Progress:
`52% – NYX'S VOICE IS YOURS.`