The lights didn't flicker in Sector Delta. They breathed.
Soft pulses of white and violet hummed along the corridor walls, like a mechanical heartbeat echoing from the guts of something that should have never been alive. The atmosphere was heavy, thick with ionized dust and the scent of something vaguely metallic—like old blood on rusted steel.
Lira kept glancing behind.
"Footsteps," she whispered.
Plato didn't answer immediately. He adjusted the weight of the Sync Core strapped to his back, eyes trained on a far-off shimmer that kept disappearing each time he blinked. Tiredness was setting in. Spatial fatigue. The corridors bent in the corner of your vision, like fish swimming beneath glass.
"There are no footsteps," he said finally, without much conviction.
"Then what am I hearing?"
"This place... reflects you. Echoes. Memories. Guilt."
She scowled. "You think I feel guilty?"
He turned to her. "Don't you?"
Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing.
The Third had said little since the Spiral. He trailed slightly behind, eyes wide but unfocused, murmuring occasionally in a language even he didn't seem to understand. The amulet on his neck shimmered dimly, but now with faint cracks veining through it.
"The Seal is weakening," Plato noted.
Lira stopped. "If it breaks?"
"He becomes... visible."
"To who?"
Plato didn't respond.
---
They turned a corner. And stopped.
Ahead lay an atrium-like chamber, circular and vast, with no ceiling. A tower of cascading gears and cables spiraled upward into an infinite black void. Surrounding the base were figures in black robes, sweeping the metallic floor with long, ritualistic motions. Their faces were covered with silver masks, featureless, save for a single vertical slit like a closed eye.
The Sweepers.
Lira inhaled sharply. "They're not supposed to be this close to the entrance."
Plato watched in silence. None of the Sweepers looked up. Yet he felt the weight of their perception settle on him like dust.
"They follow entropy," he said. "And we've brought enough of it with us."
---
The Third stepped forward before anyone could stop him. As his foot touched the edge of the chamber, the Sweepers froze.
One raised its head. The mask's slit opened.
Not an eye.
A mouth.
And from it, a single word:
"UNSYNCED."
The chamber began to hum.
"Back!" Plato grabbed the Third by the arm, dragging him behind a pillar. Lira knelt, pulling out a small, dagger-like shard of fractured Sync crystal. It vibrated with chaotic pulses, reacting to the resonance.
The Sweepers weren't moving. But the chamber was. Slowly, the floor itself began to rotate. Symbols etched into the ground—invisible a moment ago—now shimmered with eerie blue light. A summoning circuit. An invocation.
"We triggered a Rite," Plato muttered.
"Of what?"
"Displacement."
"That sends us where?"
He didn't answer. Because he didn't know.
---
A low hiss echoed from above.
Not mechanical.
Breathing.
Something descended. Not through doors or hatches, but from within the spiraling gears above—like ink dripping in water. A shape forming from smoke and limbs. Long. Angular. Bone and shadow.
"A Watcher," Lira gasped.
"No," Plato whispered. "That's a Failed One."
The Third was muttering again. This time faster. The language fragmented. His amulet split with a tiny sound, like a snapped violin string. And with that, something—someone—opened their eyes inside him.
Lira saw it first. A second pupil. Not in his eye. On his cheek.
"He's slipping," she said.
"We have to get out of the Rite. Now."
---
Plato darted toward the rotating chamber, counting steps. He tossed the Sync Core like a grenade into the central ring and shouted:
"Shift Index: Delta-Null. Vector Collapse."
The crystal on Lira's blade screamed. The floor jolted. The Sweepers all turned in unison.
And the world inverted.
A flash of uncolor. A moment of weightlessness.
Then silence.
---
They landed hard on concrete. Wet, cracked, old. A different corridor. Different light. This one flickered with sickly yellow fluorescence.
They were somewhere else.
Lira groaned. The Third was unconscious. His amulet in pieces. Plato coughed, wiping blood from his lips.
"That wasn't a Watcher," Lira said, sitting up.
Plato nodded. "It was a memory."
She frowned. "A memory of what?"
He stared into the dark ahead.
"Of what broke this place to begin with."