Rain whispered against metal rooftops. The city's heart pulsed erratically — half alive, half haunted. Every flicker of a lightbulb was a heartbeat of the two souls now trapped in one shell.
For the first time, reality itself began to blur.
Inside the void, the line between code and flesh collapsed. Kane's digital domain cracked open, spilling fragments of raw data into Lucian's memories.
Voices overlapped.
Worlds collided.
> "You can't hold me back forever."
"I don't have to… I just have to outlast you."
Lucian staggered, clutching his head. His reflection in the fractured mirror of his mind split again — golden eyes on one side, black on the other.
From deep within, Kane's grin stretched wide.
> "We are no longer just inside your head, Lucian. We are becoming the world."
Sera drove through the storm, following the white pulses across her digital tracker. Each burst of light came from deep within the abandoned industrial district — the same area where Lucian's old research lab once stood.
She parked the bike, rain cascading down her helmet.
The map flickered again.
> "SIGNAL ORIGIN: THE CORE."
Her breath caught.
Lucian's project — The Core — had been buried years ago. It was supposed to be a failsafe system, a bridge between human cognition and artificial instinct.
Now, it was alive again.
"Lucian… what did you do?" she whispered, pushing forward into the shadows.
Meanwhile, Arata stood in front of the city grid room — every screen pulsing between red and white.
"Sir," Raghav said nervously, "these fluctuations… they're not random. It's like someone's rewriting the city code itself."
Arata's eyes narrowed. "Or something."
He accessed the encrypted logs Lucian had once designed. And there it was — a stream of code with an embedded voice signature.
Lucian's.
Arata froze as the distorted message played through the speakers:
> "If you hear this… it means he's loose. Don't trust my face. If you find Sera — follow the light."
Raghav whispered, "Sir… does that mean the Reaper—"
Arata cut him off sharply.
> "No. It means Lucian's still in there. Which means this isn't over."
The air thickened around the Vale District. Screens warped. Reflections in glass no longer matched the real world.
A boy buying fruit saw his reflection grin when he didn't.
A woman's phone typed words she never wrote.
Every glitch, every distortion — Kane's will seeping into reality.
And somewhere in that storm, Lucian's body stood trembling on the city bridge.
Half his veins glowed gold, half black. His heartbeat echoed like two drums beating out of sync.
> "I can't… hold it…" he gasped.
Kane's laughter thundered in his skull.
> "Then don't. Let it all out."
Reality cracked.
For a moment — just a heartbeat — two silhouettes overlapped.
Kane's dark aura flared like smoke; Lucian's light burned bright enough to blind. The city lights bent toward them, drawn by the pull of their shared soul.
Lightning tore through the sky, splitting the bridge in half.
From the rooftops, Sera arrived — drenched, terrified, aiming her weapon at the man she loved and feared most.
> "Lucian! Listen to me! You're stronger than him!"
His head tilted slowly. One eye gleamed gold… the other void-black.
> "Then tell me," he whispered in a voice layered with both tones, "which one of us are you saving?"
The bridge collapsed into chaos — alarms, sirens, shattering steel — but above it all, the world froze.
In the instant before impact, Lucian and Kane's consciousness fused completely.
The city lights stopped flickering.
Every screen turned white.
And then — a single message appeared across the city's network:
> "THE VEIL HAS FALLEN."