The Vale District's skyline flickered between shadow and static.
Billboards looped Kane's emblem — a crimson reaper's mark — like a curse etched into light itself.
Every corner of the city hummed under his control.
Traffic lights pulsed erratically.
Phones rang with silence.
And behind every digital eye… Kane watched.
But deep within that storm — someone else stirred.
Inside the void of his mind, Lucian floated in darkness. The digital tendrils that once bound him had started to crack, leaking faint white light.
Each memory pulsed like a heartbeat — Yumi's smile, Arata's warnings, Sera's trembling voice.
> "I'm not gone yet."
His hand clenched, shattering one of the black chains. The ripple echoed across Kane's control, causing a few city lights to flicker.
Kane's voice echoed from the dark.
> "Still fighting? How human of you."
Lucian glared into the nothingness.
> "You used me… turned everything I built into a nightmare."
> "No," Kane replied softly, "I freed you. The city only remembered your lies. I gave them truth."
Lucian's voice hardened.
> "Then I'll remind them who I really am."
Atop the half-ruined tower, Sera stood beneath the rain, her coat clinging to her skin. The mark of the reaper glowed faintly on her phone screen — a message from nowhere.
She tapped it open.
> "SERA. DON'T TRUST THE SYSTEM."
"LOOK FOR THE LIGHT IN THE DARK CODE."
Her heart pounded. The message was unsigned… but she knew that phrasing.
"Lucian," she whispered.
She didn't know how he was reaching her, but if his mind was fighting back from inside Kane's domain, then the battle wasn't over — not yet.
She opened her encrypted files and began tracing every flicker of data corruption in the city grid, following it like a pulse back to its source.
Meanwhile, Arata stood before the remaining officers, his jaw tight.
"Half the systems are under lockdown. Every signal could be him."
Raghav asked quietly, "So what now, sir?"
Arata looked at the wall map. Half the city was glowing red with Kane's control.
He took a deep breath. "Now… we stop trying to hunt a ghost. We draw him out."
He slid a single file onto the table — an old project folder labeled 'Project Seraph.'
Raghav frowned. "That's… classified tech. Weren't those Lucian's algorithms before he went rogue?"
Arata's eyes narrowed. "Exactly. Let's see what happens when the monster meets his own creation."
Back in the digital void, Kane felt the shift. His data streams fluctuated.
> "He's trying to overwrite me," Kane hissed.
Lucian smiled faintly within the cracks of code.
> "Not overwrite. Rewrite."
The white light burst across the black sky, searing through the corrupted lines. For a moment, both Kane and Lucian shared the same vision — Sera's face, the city, the broken mirror — everything they'd both touched and destroyed.
Kane's grin faltered.
> "You're merging us."
> "Only one of us should be real," Lucian whispered. "And I choose me."
Reality trembled.
In the city, all the crimson reaper symbols suddenly distorted — turning white for a fraction of a second before flickering back to red.
Sera gasped as her screen pulsed with a new message:
> "HE'S WEAKENING. FOLLOW THE LIGHT."
Arata, watching the city map, noticed the same pulse.
> "Something's happening. The system's fighting back."
He didn't realize — that light was Lucian.
Deep in the void, the black seal that bound Lucian's consciousness shattered halfway.
Half of his soul was now awake. Half was still chained to Kane.
The storm was only beginning.
In the city outskirts, lightning struck the water, illuminating a lone figure standing on the dock.
Lucian's body — Kane's shell — breathed heavily, steam rising from his skin as his veins flickered between gold and black.
He whispered, voice layered with two tones.
> "One city… one code… one of us will fall."
The reflection in the water split into two faces — Lucian's and Kane's — staring back at each other.
And for the first time… both smiled.