The core pulsed again, and Kairo bled memory.
Not his own.
He dropped to one knee, clutching his temple as visions lanced through his skull. Towering glyphs carved into flesh. Armored priests dragging chained gods through cathedral dungeons. Cities built upon harvested spines of deities long dead—or merely dreaming.
And then a voice.
"You brought the cycle with you... again."
Kairo snapped back into the present, sweat slicking his brow. The fractured god core embedded in the wall ahead of him blinked once, like a dying eye.
> [Core Sync: Expanded. Trait Extracted - Echo Channel Lv.1] Allows temporary auditory contact with ancient dormant intelligences. Use at your own risk.
He stood slowly, body still aching from the last fight. Two hunters lay behind him, unconscious but breathing. They'd ambushed him at the edge of Sector 12-B thinking he was a rogue spawn. They hadn't expected him to bleed red.
His system blinked again.
> [Alert: Nova transmitting secured pulse.] [Message: 'Don't speak to it. Whatever it says, it lies.']
Kairo exhaled. "Too late."
He walked through the low tunnel ahead, ducking beneath thorned wires. The air was warmer here, laced with something ancient and metallic. Behind the walls, the vein-lights pulsed slower now—synchronized to his steps. A rhythm that hadn't existed until he arrived.
You are not of this cycle, the voice continued. And yet you wear its ruin like a crown.
He didn't answer aloud.
> [Warning: Trait Resonance Unstable.] [Mental Pressure Rising: Core Contamination 23%]
Then the walls widened. A vast underground cathedral lay hidden beneath Bastion-Null's oldest levels, long forgotten by the living and left to rot with myth. Its ceiling arched high with wires strung like nerve-fibers. Runes still flickered along the ground. Statues of headless gods watched silently, weapons turned downward.
A single figure stood at the center.
Not spawn.
Not human.
A girl. Maybe fifteen. Hair tangled. Eyes black, as if someone had poured stars into a mirror. Her skin cracked with glowing glyphs.
"You heard it too," she said softly. "Did you answer it?"
Kairo studied her. "Who are you?"
She tilted her head. "The only one left listening."
The system buzzed.
> [Entity Identified: Hybrid Vessel - Class Unknown. Memory: Fragmented.] [Risk Rating: Red. Core Contamination Source: 64% Trace Match.]
Kairo kept his stance loose, but his hand twitched behind his back. If she moved wrong, he'd strike.
"They told me it would speak to you," she said. "That it would show you what they couldn't kill. You touched it, didn't you?"
"It touched me first."
She smiled. "Then you're part of it now. Whether you wanted to be or not."
She raised her hand.
The cathedral groaned. And the wall behind her split.
Not collapsed—opened.
Inside, a chamber pulsed with raw energy. A dungeon heart—but it wasn't dead. It wasn't even sleeping.
It was waiting.
> [DUNGEON CORE BIND REQUESTED] Core Class: Sovereign Seed (Origin Type)
Kairo took a slow step forward.
The girl whispered, "If you touch that one, there's no coming back."
He looked past her. "You think I came this far to go back?"
She didn't stop him.
He crossed the threshold. His boots hit sacred stone. The heartbeat of the city thundered now, not just in his ears, but in the bones of the world.
He placed his hand on the core.
> [SOVEREIGN SEED ACCEPTED] New Trait: Domain Instinct (Lv.0) - You may imprint a dungeon with your will.
> WARNING: Cross-world sync pattern detected. Initiating lockout bypass...
> [Trait Collision Detected: Worldbreaker Residue + Dungeon Sovereign Instinct] MUTATION POSSIBLE. OBSERVE CAUTION.
Kairo grinned. "Of course it mutates."
He closed his eyes.
And saw his old empire burning.
He didn't scream. He just listened.
To the god that was not dead.
To the city that wanted to live.
To the throne that would rise again.
The core burned beneath his palm, radiating threads of origin magic into his bloodstream. Information surged—arcane layouts, ritual codes, dungeon territory laws encoded in a lost divine syntax. And deeper than that, memory.
His own voice echoed, not from this world, but the last. "Unify or fall."
Kairo staggered back. The chamber accepted him now, but the cathedral did not. The statues wept black ichor. The lights blinked red.
"You've awakened it," the girl said. She sounded afraid.
Kairo wiped blood from his nose. "No. We woke each other."
And far above them, Sector 12-B began to shift.
A dungeon was forming. Not summoned. Not placed. Not created.
Claimed.