The team had retreated from the Singed Network. They are now at Sector 7.
Sylva insisted.
"That Core is breathing now. And you touched its heart."
"I didn't mean to," Lanz muttered, staring at the scars running down his arm.
"Didn't matter. It marked you."
"Lira crossed her arms, pacing.
"We can't stay here. Echelon must've felt that Warden's collapse. They'll move."
Sylva's voice carried a sharp urgency now, brittle at the edges like dried leaves ready to snap.
Ash still drifted from the sky, glowing faintly in the dying light.
Lira cleaned her blade with one slow drag of cloth.
"They've probably already moved."
Sylva shook her head, jaw tight.
"No. They won't just move."
She looked toward the east, toward the sky that hadn't stopped bleeding.
"They'll send the Chainborn."
The name fell heavy, like rusted iron dropped into a still lake.
Lanz turned sharply.
"I heard that word."
His voice was low, almost hesitant. "In the Warden's final thoughts. When it died, it was… afraid."
"What are they?" he asked.
Sylva met his gaze.
For the first time since he'd met her — the woman of roots, defiance, and glyphlight — she looked genuinely afraid.
"Living weapons," she said. "Not rebels. Not soldiers. They were bred in tubes and bound by lawless minds."
She crouched near the scorched bark of a tree, pressing one hand to the soil.
"They were born in captivity. Wired from the start with neural chains. Embedded with directives, obedience spells, rewritten memory."
She stood slowly, voice dropping lower.
"Each one was made for one purpose only, to break systems. To erase anomalies. To kill what doesn't fit."
Lira scoffed, trying to shake off the weight in the air.
"Okay, but how many of these myth-freaks are we talking? Ten? Twenty?"
Sylva didn't blink.
"Four."
She turned toward Lanz.
"And all four are coming for you."
The sky over Sector R7 cracked.
Not from thunder.
From orbit.
A streak of violet tore through the clouds, burning across the artificial stratosphere like a god's scream. Most civilians didn't look up in time.
The ones who did?
They never forgot the shape falling from the heavens.
A figure. No parachute. No sound.
Just gravity.
And chains.
MOMENTS AGO
The white room pulsed with cold, rhythmic light. Not from bulbs. From something deeper, something mechanical, arterial. The sound was like a heartbeat echoing through glass and metal veins.
A woman stood alone in the chamber. Her robes shimmered with synthetic fibers that crawled and twitched across her shoulders, glowing faintly blue. Data shimmered across her irises.
Before her stood four stasis pods, ancient but alive, marked with carved numerals: Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ, Ⅳ.
She whispered, and the temperature in the room dropped.
"Target: Root Catalyst. Identifier: Lanz. Anomaly class — Gamma-Void. Authorization: Echelon Zero."
In response, the room sighed, not in relief, but like a machine bracing for violence.
The chains coiled back, slithering with wet clinks of metal.
And the pods began to open.
The first to move was Ⅰ.
He stepped out like a dissection in motion. No mouth. No nose. Just a breathing vent fused into skinless metal-flesh. His limbs were surgical precision incarnate, fingertips ending in filaments glowing orange-hot, trembling with ambient heat.
His voice came from a speaker embedded in his chest.
"Unchain One: Directive accepted."
Ⅱ emerged like mist, barefoot, her movement too smooth to be human.
Red cords spiraled through her black hair and under translucent skin, as though her veins had been replaced. Her eyes were pure matte black. Her lips sealed shut, stitched delicately with threads of golden wire.
She said nothing.
But around her, the glass cracked, not from force, but from the idea of her pressure.
Ⅲ and Ⅳ stepped out together. Twins in design, though their movements betrayed entirely separate instincts.
Mirrored armor reflected the sterile room around them.
Ⅲ carried a staff of condensed light, its hum like frozen thunder.
Ⅳ held a sword carved from a god's spine, each vertebrae etched with runes older than machines.
In perfect harmony, they spoke:
"Unchain Three and Four: Sync ratio, perfect."
The woman nodded, once.
"This mission is clean. No debris.
Leave no echoes.
Burn the Root."
SECTOR R7 — SURFACE LEVEL
Wind bent the dead trees sideways. Ash spiraled through air like memory turned tangible.
Lira's hand went to her sidearm.
She felt it before she saw it, that ripple in space. Not in the physical world, but something beneath it.
Like the land itself had inhaled sharply.
"Something's coming," she muttered. "Fast."
Sylva's glyphs ignited across her forearms, flaring gold, then dimming to green.
But… they flickered. Like a signal being jammed.
"What the—"
She touched one.
"It's disrupting our casting field… something's—"
Then Lanz saw her.
Figure Two.
Walking out of the ash like an angel rewritten by nightmare.
Bare feet. Black eyes. Red cords pulsing like a second nervous system.
There was no sound to her steps, but the air seemed to shrink around her.
The trees behind her bent away.
Sylva's breath hitched.
"That's Two," she whispered. "The Silent Compression."
Lira narrowed her eyes.
"She's alone?"
Sylva's lips barely moved.
"No.
They never separate."
A crack split the air, not sound, not light, just the absence of both.
A shape fell from the canopy above, a streak of silver. A mirrored figure — blade-first — slammed into the ground before Lira, weapon already mid-swing.
Ⅲ.
The impact sent out a shockwave. Lira raised her sword just in time, the strike sent her flying back ten meters, boots carving trenches in the dirt before she flipped and landed hard.
"They're here," she hissed, crouched, eyes scanning.
"And they hit like singularities."
Sylva grabbed Lanz's wrist.
"We have to move. Now."
But he was already stepping forward.
The glyphs on his right arm had begun to pulse again — not flicker, not blink — pulse, like a signal returning to life.
And this time, it wasn't just ink and magic.
From behind his shoulders, roots unfurled.
Not wood, not vines, but light in the shape of memory. Tendrils that shimmered with ancient code and sun-grown will.
They floated outward, forming a halo, no, wings — of living, inherited defiance.
"They want to burn the Root?"
His voice came low, steady.
"Let them try."
The forest detonated.
Two vanished from sight, and reappeared inches from Sylva. She didn't move — she arrived. Like reality had shifted to accommodate her.
Her hand rose slowly.
Around her, trees wilted, bark turning to dust.
Even Sylva's magic began unraveling mid-cast, threads of glyphlight tearing apart like old thread.
"She's erasing the arcane!" Sylva shouted.
"I can't hold spells near her!"
Lira met Ⅲ again, steel against steel, mirror against mirror, but his mirrored blade reflected hers every move a half-second before she made it.
Each clash sent out pulses that cracked the soil.
Their fight carved trenches through the dying forest.
But Ⅳ did not move.
He stood back, sword idle, eyes locked on Lanz.
"Why is he just staring?" Sylva breathed.
Lanz didn't answer.
Because he already knew.
"He's not watching," Lanz said quietly.
"He's listening."
Then Lanz stepped forward.
And their thoughts collided.
"You woke the buried promise."
Ⅳ's voice wasn't sound. It was thought. Precision-cut and ancient.
"You are not the boy they wanted."
Lanz clenched his fist, and the roots behind him coiled and solidified, forming a crystalline shell of radiant green around his frame. Like armor made from living memory.
"I'm not what they expected," Lanz said.
"Then prove it."
In a blur of motion, Ⅳ disappeared from the ground, and reappeared midair above Lanz, sword already swinging.
Lanz didn't flinch.
He raised his right arm, the Root's light spiraling up it like a living circuit, and caught the blade.
Impact.
The moment exploded, a shockwave of white and green light tore through the clearing, flattening trees, scattering ash, and rupturing silence.
The forest split like paper.
And the real battle had only just begun.
End of Chapter 20.