The inside of the Spire was a cathedral of horror.
Walls pulsed with a sick light, and the floor was a spongy membrane that squelched with each step. The air was thick with spores—Mira erected a thin spatial filter around their faces to avoid inhalation.
Echo's Error-Sight was overwhelmed with data—biological processes, energy flows, defense protocols. He pushed through, focusing on the strongest energy signature deeper within.
They encountered Corrupted Hybrids—former Veridian farmers, now twisted into four-armed monstrosities with scythe-like limbs. They fought with disturbing coordination.
Leyla engaged two, her Moonstalker Stage 2 allowing her to briefly phase into shadows, striking from impossible angles. Mira used spatial shearing to slice limbs clean off. Echo channeled their combined energy through the Resonance Field, unleashing a wave of silver-blue force that stunned the hybrids long enough for finishing blows.
But with each kill, the Spire seemed to pulse in pain. It was learning.
At the heart chamber, they found the commanding entity.
It was not a beast. It was a Corrupted Thinker—a pale, humanoid form fused into the Spire's core, its head a mass of crystalline nodes flickering with data-light. Dozens of umbilical cords connected it to the walls.
It spoke, its voice the sound of grinding glass and whispering corpses.
"Anomaly detected. Pattern does not compute. You are… irregular. The Legion wishes to study you. To consume your irregularity and become… more."
Echo raised his blade. "You're not taking anything from this world."
"This world is already taken. You are merely… inventory."
The Thinker's nodes glowed. From the walls, eight Corrupted Reapers peeled free—elite drones with blade-arms and swift, jerking movements.
"Leyla, with me! Mira, support and find a weak point in the Thinker's core!"
The battle was chaos. Echo and Leyla moved as one, a dance of silver and steel, parrying blade-arms, ducking acid sprays. Mira's eyes were closed, her senses expanded, searching the Thinker's energy matrix.
"There!" she shouted. "The central node—it's projecting a feedback loop into the Spire's nervous system! Disrupt it, and the whole structure goes unstable!"
Echo saw it—a flickering line of energy in his Error-Sight. He lunged, but a Reaper intercepted, its blade slicing his armor, drawing blood.
Pain flared, but the bond absorbed it, shared it, diluted it. Leyla howled, leaping onto the Reaper's back, tearing its head off.
Echo reached the Thinker. It tried to defend, firing neural-static pulses, but Echo's anomaly nature absorbed the mental attack—it was just another error to him.
He plunged his energy-blade into the central node.
The Thinker screamed—a sound that was part machine, part dying child. The Spire shuddered. The Reapers froze, then dissolved.
"The Legion… is infinite… You delay… inevitability…"
The Thinker crumbled to ash.
The Spire began to collapse around them.
"Run!" Echo yelled.
They fled as the fleshy walls liquefied, the tower coming down in a wave of decaying biomass. They burst into the open air just as the Spire imploded, leaving only a smoking crater.
Around them, the remaining Corrupted forces spasmed and fell still.
Silence, broken only by their ragged breathing.
They'd done it.