The mag-lev sled screeched to a halt in the bowels of Sector 4, the "Slums of Onyx." This wasn't the Onyx City seen in the glossy corporate brochures—the city of soaring glass towers and clean energy. This was the Underbelly. Here, the sky was a permanent bruise of smog and artificial rain, lit only by the flickering, holographic advertisements for synthetic drugs and cybernetic limbs that no one could actually afford.
Maya hauled Shin out of the sled, her small frame trembling under the weight of a man who felt more like a collapsing star than a human being. Shin's breathing was a wet, metallic rattle. Every time he exhaled, a faint mist of violet sparks escaped his lips, burning small holes in the humid air.
"Don't you dare die on me now, Sovereign," Maya hissed, dragging him toward a narrow alleyway where the smell of burnt ozone and rotting garbage was overwhelming. "I didn't blow up a billion-credit facility just to witness a corpse."
[The City of Eyes]
High above, massive "CCTV Zeppelins" patrolled the smog, their searchlights cutting through the rain like the eyes of a hungry god. Shin looked up, his fractured vision seeing the red "X" symbols blinking on every security camera they passed. The World Boss Protocol was active. The city's infrastructure was already scanning for his biometric signature, whispering his location to the Council's hunters.
"Look at them," a voice whispered in the back of his mind—not the Monarch, but The Other Girl. She was there, leaning against a rusted dumpster in his peripheral vision, her violet dress untouched by the filth of the alley. "A million eyes, and all of them are blind to the truth. They see a target. I see a chrysalis."
Shin didn't answer. He didn't have the strength. His #HIGHIQ mind was currently busy rerouting what was left of his nervous system to keep his heart beating. He was literally "hacking" his own biology to stay alive.
[The Ripper-Doc's Den]
They stopped in front of a heavy steel door marked with a fading neon sign of a cracked skull. This was the "Clinic of Dr. Aris"—a man who was once a lead surgeon for the Organization before he developed a "distaste for ethics."
Maya hammered a secret code on the keypad. The door hissed open, revealing a room filled with the hum of illegal servers and the copper scent of old blood.
"Maya? You're late with my shipment of—" A man with four cybernetic arms and a magnifying glass fused to his eye socket stopped mid-sentence. He looked at the half-dead man leaning on her. "What in the hell is that? That's not a human, Maya. That's a walking meltdown."
"He's a friend, Aris," Maya panted, dumping Shin onto a reinforced operating table. "And he's the only reason Site Zero is currently a crater. Fix him."
[The Diagnosis of a God's Mistake]
Dr. Aris didn't use a stethoscope. He ran a high-frequency scanner over Shin's chest. The machine immediately began to scream, its screen turning a violent red.
"Fix him? Maya, his DNA is literally unraveling! It's like someone took a master recording and started recording over it with white noise. This 'Void' energy... it's not just in his cells; it's replacing them. He doesn't have a heart anymore; he has a gravitational anomaly."
Aris turned to Shin, his mechanical eye zooming in on the violet veins. "You're Subject 001, aren't you? The one the news is calling the 'Global Terrorist'."
"I'm... the one... who survived," Shin managed to say, his hand snapping out with a speed that defied his condition, grabbing Aris by his primary cybernetic arm. The metal groaned under Shin's grip. "Rebuild me. No more... flesh. Flesh is... weak."
[The Forbidden Reconstruction]
Aris looked at Shin's eyes—those twin singularities of violet light—and felt a shiver of primal fear. He saw a man who had stared into the end of the world and decided to come back.
"I have a prototype," Aris whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and scientific greed. "An 'Obsidian Frame.' It was designed to house unstable anti-matter cores. It's illegal, it's painful, and there's a 99% chance it will erase what's left of your humanity. You won't be a man, Shin. You'll be an 'Engine of the Void'."
"Do it," Shin commanded.
[The Agony of Evolution]
The surgery began without anesthesia—Shin's altered biology had rendered all known sedatives useless. As the mechanical arms of the clinic began to strip away the charred remains of his skin and replace his shattered bones with carbon-fiber rods, Shin didn't scream.
He was back in the white space with The Other Girl.
She was sitting on a throne of black glass, watching the process. "They are carving you like a statue, Shin. But remember... a statue is only beautiful because of what was cut away. What are you willing to lose? Your memories? Your mercy? Your soul?"
"Everything," Shin's spirit replied.
In the physical world, the clinic was shaking. The violet energy leaking from Shin's open chest was short-circuiting every electronic device in a three-block radius. Maya stood in the corner, her hands over her ears as the sound of grinding metal and crackling lightning filled the room.
[The World's Response]
Outside, the Zeppelins had stopped moving. They were hovering directly over Aris's clinic. Below them, black tactical vans began to screech to a halt. Men in heavy, matte-black armor stepped out—not standard guards, but "The Inquisitors," the Council's elite unit for hunting high-level anomalies.
"Target located," a voice crackled through the street speakers. "Sector 4, sub-level 3. Execute the 'Contain-and-Erase' protocol. No survivors."
[The Birth of the Obsidian King]
Inside the clinic, Dr. Aris stepped back, his four arms trembling. The operating table was glowing with an intense, dark light.
Shin Van Croft sat up.
He was no longer the pale, bleeding man from the vents. His body was now a sleek, terrifying masterpiece of black obsidian-tech and violet energy conduits. His hair had turned a stark, snowy white, and his skin had the luster of polished marble. The "Obsidian Frame" pulsed with a steady, rhythmic hum, sounding like the engine of a starship.
He reached for The Fractured Monarch, which lay on a side table. As his fingers touched the hilt, the sword didn't just glow—it sang. The cracks in the blade didn't vanish; they filled with the same obsidian material as his new body.
"They're here," Maya whispered, looking at the monitors. "The Inquisitors. There are dozens of them."
Shin stood up, the floor cracking beneath his new, heavy frame. He looked at his hand, clenching it into a fist. He felt... nothing. No pain. No fear. Only the cold, infinite hunger of the Void.
"Let them come," Shin said, his voice now a perfect, terrifying resonance. "I need to test the new hardware."
He walked toward the door, each step vibrating the very foundation of the city. The hunt was no longer about survival. It was about dominance.