The ruins changed as they moved deeper into the district. What had been broken neon billboards and hollowed apartments gave way to something older, stranger. Towers bent at unnatural angles, as if pulled by forces outside of gravity. Static crawled through the air, clinging to their skin. The streets hummed faintly beneath their boots, like a living heartbeat buried under concrete.
Mateo felt it first, the echo of a pulse not his own. He slowed, eyes narrowing as the others followed his gaze toward a shattered skyscraper ahead. Half its frame had collapsed into the street, its glass long since melted into slag. But in its depths, faint lines of light still glowed — not neon, not circuitry, but something holier, etched into the foundation like a sigil carved by hands beyond human reach.
"There," he murmured.
Ramon rested his hand on the hilt of his blade. "A vault."
Liwayway tilted her staff, the dawnlight in its crystal faintly resonating. "No. More than that. Something… bound here."
Jun whistled, pretending not to be nervous. "Bound? Please don't say it's another shapeshifter nest. I've only got one drone left, and it barely works."
Andoy's fists crackled faintly with residual flame. "Doesn't matter what's inside. We'll break it if it tries."
But Nico, silent until then, stared at the skyscraper with a hard, haunted expression. "I know this hum. My father told stories… about places where heaven's fire touched man's machines. They said one weapon escaped the purge."
The hum grew louder as they approached.
The descent into the skyscraper felt like trespassing into another age. The upper floors were collapsed and useless, so they followed a broken stairwell spiraling down into the earth. Each step vibrated with static. The air smelled like scorched iron and ozone, but underneath, Mateo caught something older — incense, or the ghost of it.
The basement was not rubble. It was a vault.
The walls were plated in a steel that shimmered faintly like obsidian oil. Symbols ran along them in rows, half circuitry, half angelic glyphs, neither entirely legible nor entirely broken. Jun trailed his fingers near one, only for a spark to leap, stinging him back.
"Don't touch anything," Ramon snapped.
"I wasn't gonna!" Jun muttered, rubbing his hand. "Just… looked familiar. Like some of the old Syndicate schematics."
The hallway ended at a chamber, circular and vast. Collapsed scaffolding lay twisted on the floor, glass tubes shattered and leaking faint mist. The air rippled with unstable energy, faint arcs of light snapping between cracked conduits.
And at the center — suspended within a broken containment frame — floated the relic.
It looked at first like a weapon: a spear of blackened steel, veins of light running down its length, its edge humming faintly as if alive. But when Liwayway stepped closer, the form rippled, folding into a gauntlet of the same obsidian alloy, its surface etched with glowing sigils. Then, as Mateo's gaze locked onto it, the relic shifted again, collapsing into a core of pure light and shadow, spinning slowly like a star caged in glass.
Each of them saw something different.
Ramon whispered, "A weapon."
Liwayway said softly, "A tool of healing… or destruction."
Jun's eyes widened. "It's a reactor. A living power cell."
Andoy's fists flared. "It burns like fire. My fire."
Nico trembled. "No… it's judgment. Just like the stories."
Mateo stepped closer, every nerve in his body thrumming. The relic pulsed once, hard enough to shake the chamber. The containment frame cracked, sparks flying.
Jun swore. "That's not good."
The lights along the walls flared alive.
The vault defended itself.
From the shadows, constructs rose — drones long dormant, fused now with abyssal shadow. Their frames were skeletal, wings of data-fiber sparking, faces blank masks that glitched between human expressions and static noise. The air filled with their chorus, a droning hum that pressed into the skull like pressure.
The floor split. Segments shifted, jagged tiles rising and sinking in patterns. EMP bursts flared from the walls, scrambling Jun's gear and searing the edge of Liwayway's staff.
"It's alive!" Jun shouted, clutching his ruined drone. "The whole chamber's wired as a defense system!"
"Then break it!" Ramon roared, charging forward, sword raised.
The constructs swarmed.
Andoy met them with fire, his fists detonating blasts that turned the nearest three into slag. Nico charged with him, fists ablaze with divine gold, striking in rhythm — though every impact sent him closer to losing control. Liwayway's light carved through illusions, exposing the true forms of the drones, even as EMP arcs seared against her arms. Ramon's blade cleaved through steel and shadow alike, anchoring the fight.
Jun dove between cover, slamming wires together, hacking on instinct. Sparks burst as he overloaded a panel, sending a wave of static through the constructs, staggering them.
Mateo's voice cut above the chaos. "Focus! You've seen this before — adapt!"
They remembered. Chapter 15's lesson — fight as one.
Ramon took the front, anchoring. Andoy and Nico struck in bursts against openings. Liwayway swept illusions away so every strike hit true. Jun disrupted the chamber's systems, forcing glitches into the drones. Mateo called timing, every command landing sharp.
The relic pulsed again, harder this time. A shockwave of divine-cyber energy rippled out, dropping constructs like marionettes with their strings cut.
Silence.
Mateo approached slowly. The relic flickered between forms, humming, alive. He reached out a hand, but stopped short of touching.
"It's not mine," he said softly.
The others looked at him.
"It's not anyone's yet. It's waiting."
The relic shifted again — spear, gauntlet, core. A weapon, an engine, a tool. Its glow reflected in all their faces. For each, it resonated differently: Ramon's discipline, Liwayway's healing light, Andoy's fire, Nico's grief and rage, Jun's restless hunger for discovery.
But Mateo felt something deeper: the relic was not offering power. It was offering choice.
"This," he said, voice steady, "is not just a weapon. It is a chance. And chances change wars."
They made camp above the vault, a small fire glowing in the neon twilight. The relic lay between them, its light muted but steady, humming softly like breath.
Jun poked it with a stick, then thought better. "So… we just picked up a god-weapon slash power plant slash toolkit. No big deal, right?"
Ramon's eyes hardened. "Relics like this don't stay hidden. Entire factions will hunt us now. Syndicates. Cults. Even the Watchers."
Liwayway closed her eyes, listening to the hum. "They already know. I can feel their eyes."
Andoy cracked his knuckles. "Then let them come."
Nico said nothing, his fists still trembling faintly.
Mateo watched the horizon. In the distance, the city lights flickered, as though warning them. "We carry more than survival now," he said. "We carry the war's future."
Above them, unseen in the smog, a cloaked drone hovered, its lens fixed on the relic. It recorded, transmitted, and vanished.
Somewhere in the ruins, factions stirred.
The fellowship had found a weapon. The world had just found its reason to bleed again.