At the summit of the Virellian Empire, beyond the shrouded cities and slag-choked air, stood the Tower of Lucent Iron—headquarters of the High Ministry. It was here that history was rewritten daily. Decrees passed. Executions signed. Truth sculpted.
And yet, even here… whispers had begun.
> "There's… a ghost in the net."
"Nodes are waking up in the slums."
"A blueprint was intercepted. It was… alive."
High Minister Aurem Valis stood in the centre of the Hall of Ministers, staring into a floating holomap of the empire's central grid. Dozens of red pins flickered—network breaches, minor anomalies. Most would dismiss them.
But Valis wasn't most.
He was a relic of a different age—back when the Empire was still built instead of maintained. His cybernetic eyes flicked between pulses, watching patterns shift like a digital tide.
"This isn't random," he murmured. "This is architecture."
The other ministers exchanged nervous glances.
> "Minister, with respect… it's just static," said Lothen, head of Internal Surveillance. "Slum-level scrap code. Kids hacking street cams."
Valis turned slowly.
His voice didn't rise.
It cut.
> "No street rat designed a self-replicating neural net seeded through forgotten Empire infrastructure. No child wrote a blueprint with recursive AI patterns we barely understand. This is precision. It's surgical. Whoever did this isn't attacking."
He paused.
> "They're testing us."
---
Far below the tower, in the outer shell of the capital's industrial ring, a data courier sprinted through alleyways, heart pounding, clutching a black case to his chest. Inside it: a physical trace of the Nexus schematic—intercepted three days prior during a backchannel raid.
He didn't know what it was.
Only that it scared everyone.
He never reached his destination.
As he rounded the corner into a freight tunnel, a shadow fell from above—silent as gravity.
One precise strike to the neck.
He dropped.
The case was gone before his body hit the ground.
---
In a hidden crawlspace beneath Rail Line 7, Matius Benedictus exhaled as the data scan finished. The retrieved schematic fragment was authentic. No tracking beacons. No security layers he hadn't already anticipated.
He burned it after three minutes.
Every piece of his blueprint must remain fluid—constantly rewritten, mutated, alive. He had learned from the Empire itself.
> Static things die. Dynamic things endure.
Eline sat nearby, watching him. She was quieter now. Sharper. A child no longer blinded by fear, but shaped by it.
"You're not just fighting them," she said. "You're… building something."
He paused.
For a moment, it looked like he might explain. But instead, he said:
> "They build from the top. That's why they fall."
She frowned. "And you?"
"I build from the dirt."
---
That night, Orthus delivered its first full-scale scan of the Virellian core systems.
> "Ministerial comms decrypted."
"Internal Council tension detected."
"Factional divide between BioSovereign Initiative and Steel Faith Directive increasing. Predict conflict in under 60 days."
Perfect.
> "Feed both sides misinformation," Matius ordered.
"Push them toward destabilisation."
> "Confirmed. Shall I engage Echo Seed?"
"No. Not yet."
He opened a secondary terminal.
There, blinking quietly, was a list of names.
Rebel leaders. Underground scientists. Exiled codewrights. Unregistered minds.
Matius had been watching them all.
Some would become threats.
Others… assets.
He tapped one name: Dr. Kael Dorn. Former Empire technomancer. Now a smuggler in the Outer Shards.
> "Prepare contact protocols," he whispered.
---
In the Tower of Lucent Iron, Minister Valis stood before a sealed archive. He inserted his hand into the reader, feeling the prick of the blood-scan.
The chamber opened.
A room filled with forbidden records.
> Project Omega-Zero.
Subject Classification: ANOMALOUS.
Status: LOST.
Intelligence Risk: TERMINATION ON SIGHT.
A single image hovered in red light.
A boy, barely eleven.
Eyes hollow.
Mind infinite.
Valis frowned.
> "You've resurfaced," he murmured.
"I warned them you weren't just a myth."
He closed the file.
And summoned the Inquisitors.
---
Back in the crawlspace, Matius watched the city's pulse through dozens of camera feeds. Every alley. Every tower. Every corridor that mattered.
The Spider Network was growing.
Feeding.
Becoming.
And soon… it would speak.
---