The sirens of the Zenith Institute didn't just wail; they screamed with a piercing, high-frequency resonance that vibrated through the very stones of the mountain. Above the sub-levels, the city was in a state of absolute, panicked lockdown. Reed could hear the distant, heavy thud-thud-thud of blast doors snapping into place throughout the upper tiers. The sound of armored boots echoed through the ventilation shafts like a drumbeat of approaching war.
Reed leaned heavily on Nyx as they moved through the service tunnels. His body felt like it was made of cooling lead, his veins still humming with the cold, jagged aftershocks of the Void surge. Every time his heart beat, a pulse of violet light flickered behind his eyelids. He was a battery overcharged with a power he didn't understand, and it was threatening to tear him apart from the inside out.
"The main gates are sealed," Nyx whispered, her eyes darting to a flickering holographic monitor at a security junction. She tapped a series of keys on a wall-mounted console, her fingers moving with a frantic, practiced speed. "The High Inquisitor isn't just looking for a student anymore. He's declared a Level 9 Containment Breach. They're going to vent the atmosphere in the lower sectors to 'purify' the area. They'd rather turn this entire wing into a vacuum than let you take another step."
"They'd kill their own people? Their own guards?" Reed rasped, his voice sounding like dry parchment.
"To the Council, you aren't a person, Reed," Nyx said, her voice tight with a bitterness she couldn't quite hide. She pulled a small, black device from her belt—a Shadow Faction scrambler—and jammed it into the door controls. "You're a virus in their perfect system. And they believe they are the only cure."
[WARNING: EXTERNAL LOCKDOWN INITIATED]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO ATMOSPHERIC VENTING: 4 MINUTES]
[SYSTEM ADVISORY: HOST VITAL SIGNS CRITICAL. VOID STABILIZATION REQUIRED.]
"We aren't going to make it to the surface, Nyx," Reed said, his knees buckling. He looked at the glowing red timer on the wall, the numbers bleeding away like drops of blood. "We're trapped in a coffin."
"We aren't going to the surface," Nyx corrected him, her eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp intensity. She kicked aside a pile of discarded crates to reveal a massive, rusted hatch in the floor. It was marked with a fading symbol of a crescent moon eclipsed by a circle—the old mark of the Shadow Faction, painted over decades ago by Institute engineers. "The Shadow Faction doesn't just use the mountain's tunnels. We use the ancient, pre-war sewer lines that lead directly out into the Grey Wastes. It's a five-hundred-foot drop into a trash-chute, but it beats being vaporized by a Purge-spell."
Behind them, the sound of a blast door being torn open echoed through the narrow hall. A group of Sentinels, led by a surviving Inquisitor from the Archive breach, turned the corner. Their golden spears were leveled, the tips glowing with a lethal, sun-bright heat.
"There!" the Inquisitor roared, his hand erupting in a spear of blinding light. "Suffer not the Error to live! Erase the glitch!"
The Inquisitor fired. A bolt of golden energy hissed through the air, melting the metal of the walls as it passed.
"Reed, now! Use the Step!" Nyx yelled, grabbing his shoulder and dragging him toward the open hatch.
Reed didn't have time to calculate. He didn't have time to worry about the "Evil" or the Corruption. He reached into the cold, empty pit of his stomach and pulled on the newest ability the system had granted him. He didn't just want to move; he wanted to not be there.
[ACTIVATING SKILL: VOID STEP]
The world didn't move; it simply collapsed. For a fraction of a second, Reed wasn't in the tunnel. He wasn't in the mountain. He was nowhere—suspended in a silent, freezing gap between the atoms of reality. Then, reality snapped back into place with the sound of a thunderclap.
He appeared ten feet behind the Inquisitor, the air around him rippling like heat haze over a desert. The vacuum created by his sudden displacement knocked the Inquisitor off balance, his golden bolt striking the ceiling instead of Reed's chest.
Reed didn't wait to see the man's reaction. He grabbed Nyx's hand—his fingers brushing against the cold silk of her sleeve—and leaped into the dark, yawning maw of the trash-chute.
The fall was a terrifying blur of freezing wind and the overwhelming smell of ozone and rot. They tumbled through the absolute darkness, sliding down a series of slick, metallic pipes that angled sharply downward. Reed's stomach flipped as they accelerated, the friction of his clothes against the pipe creating sparks of violet static. Just as they hit the bottom—a massive, sickeningly soft pile of discarded scrap, chemical sludge, and grey dust at the very base of the mountain—the mountain itself seemed to groan.
A pillar of blinding white light erupted from the vents high above, shooting out into the atmosphere like a reverse lightning bolt. The Inquisitors had vented the sector. If they had stayed even ten seconds longer, they would have been nothing but ash drifting in the wind.
They scrambled out of the pile of refuse, gasping for the thin, bitter air of the surface. They stood in the colossal shadow of the Zenith Institute. From down here, the floating city didn't look like a paradise; it looked like a massive, jagged fortress hanging above them like a silent, judgmental god. The Grey Wastes stretched out before them in every direction—a graveyard of rusted metal, ruined skyscrapers, and bone-white dust that never settled.
"What now?" Reed asked, wiping a smear of black grease from his forehead. He looked at Nyx, who was staring up at the city with an expression he couldn't quite read.
For a moment, Nyx's mask slipped. She looked toward the Shadow Wing high above, her hand twitching toward a hidden transmitter in her collar. She looked like she wanted to say something—something about the orders she was carrying, or the man who had sent her into that cell to "save" him. But as Reed looked at her, she tucked the thought away, her eyes hardening into the cold, professional sheen of a loyal Shadow-Recruit.
"Now," Nyx said, turning her back on the city and looking toward the horizon where the violet toxic mist of the Wastes was starting to gather. "We go to the one place the Council won't follow. We go to the Dead Zone."
[MISSION UPDATED: THE LONG FLIGHT]
Objective: Reach the Shadow Faction Outpost in the Dead Zone.
Progress: Escape Successful.
Reward: Unlock Core Weapon Manifestation (Pending Arrival).
As they began to walk into the wastes, their boots crunching on the dry bones of a dead civilization, a lone figure stood on a high, dark balcony in the Shadow Wing of the Institute. He watched them through a pair of dark lenses, his black-plated armor absorbing the starlight until he was nothing more than a hole in the sky.
He watched Reed Blackwell stumble, then steady himself. He watched Nyx lead the way with the precision of a hunter.
"The seed is planted," the stranger whispered, his voice echoing in the empty, cold stone room. It was the same voice that had spoken to Reed in the Wastes weeks ago. "Grow well, Reed Blackwell. The world doesn't need a savior. It needs a monster."
He turned away from the balcony, a small, dark coin spinning between his fingers—a twin to the one in Reed's pocket.
"The High Council thinks they are using us to contain him," he murmured to the shadows of the room. "They have no idea that the Void cannot be contained. It can only be unleashed."