It was 4.03 a.m. when I stumbled back into my flat, blood on my knuckles, sweat soaked through my shirt, and something new humming beneath my skin. Not adrenaline. Not fear. Power. The kind I hadn't felt since the underground fight rings. Back when the world still called me something other than loser, janitor, or has-been. Back before betrayal turned my spine to glass and my heart to rot. I dropped onto the edge of my bed, the frame groaning beneath me like it was tired of carrying my weight, too. My hands trembled. Not from the fight, but from the change. A faint flicker lit the air in front of me, blue and ghostly. [Skill: basic combat enhancement. Strength: +10%. Speed: +10%. Reflexes: 10%. Status: stable. Synchronization: 76%] I flexed my fingers. The knuckle I'd split against a thug's jaw wasn't even bruised anymore. The skin had already begun to heal. “Okay.” I muttered. “This is real.” And that was a problem. Because real meant dangerous. This Ragnar Protocol, whatever

The rain hadn't stopped in three days. It beat against Blackrift's rotting skin like judgment. Steady, cold, and uncaring. I walked through it like a shadow, head down, hands buried in the pockets of my torn jacket, my breath fogging in the night air. The city's filth clung to everything. To the sidewalks slick with oil. To the gutters that choked on bones and rust. To the eyes of those who still wandered the streets long after decency slept. I didn't sleep. Not since Vico. His face haunted me. Not because I felt guilt. No. I didn't regret what I did to him. But what he said before he lost consciousness clung to me like a splinter under the skin. ‘You don't know what that thing in you really is.’ And worse... I didn't. The train graveyard in Sector 10 was where I disappeared when I didn't want the city to find me. Rotting engines stretched into the dark like sleeping giants, their insides gutted, their metal bodies split open and devoured by moss, rain, and rust.I sat on the sid

The outer sectors of the Fang's reach weren't protected by sigils or soldiers. They didn't need to be. They were forgotten. And forgotten things rot on their own. Here, the city peeled back its skin. Chain-link fences sagged like broken teeth, layered in static mesh and graffiti long since burned away by acid rain. Street terminals sputtered with lifeless screens, weeping rust like old wounds.The air stank of battery acid and something sourer, like history fermenting in gutter water. Sector 17 didn't welcome visitors. It devoured them. I moved through the alleys with my hood low. Every step soaked in red rain. The sky bled dust and ash from some distant fire. Maybe a factory explosion, maybe a silent war, no one had the energy to report. The drops fell like rusted needles, painting streaks down my coat, seeping into the seams. I didn't mind. My conscience was already stained. The building I needed rose like a carcass between collapsed towers. Four stories tall, spine-cracked, w

We ran. Not for fear. For time. Through soot-choked alleyways and under the bones of highways that hadn't carried traffic since the last real government fell. Each step kicked up ash, fallout, and reminders. The kind that stuck in your throat like regret. Fang retribution would be swift. Surgical. Merciless. I didn't need the ghost circuit to whisper that. Yui didn't speak. She just moved. Dropped into an old tram station buried beneath the Ashlock District. A graveyard of rust and glass. Yui pried opened the interface of a shuttle grid and patched into a dead feed. Her fingers danced like she was born with code in her veins. A decommissioned cargo tram groaned to life, lights flickering like it was waking from a nightmare. It was loud. Sloppy. Lit up on every outdated satellite like a beacon for bounty dogs and zealots. But it was fast. Now, that was enough. We didn't talk until Blackrift was a smear behind us, reduced to shadows and sirens beneath the poisoned horizon.

The shard wouldn’t stop pulsing.It started the night after Monarch burned — faint at first, just a weak flicker under my coat, like a dying ember clinging to life. Then it grew steady, rhythmic, deliberate. A heartbeat that didn’t belong to me. When I closed my eyes, it followed me into the dream — that same one, repeating like a broken reel. A tunnel made of glass veins. Light bleeding through the cracks. Whispers that weren’t words, not really, but streams of binary that felt… devotional. Like something out there was praying through me instead of to me.When I woke, my pulse wasn’t mine anymore. It matched the shard’s.Yui didn’t say anything at first. She just watched me. From across the camp, under the turbines, face half-lit by the dying fire. Rainwater clung to her lashes; the smell of static still hung in the air. She kept her hand near her weapon, though she didn’t think I noticed. But I did. I saw it in the tension of her shoulders, in the way she measured every breath aroun