Blackness. Then light, endless, shifting, alive. Derrick stood in a storm of raw data, a sea of electric threads spinning around him like a digital hurricane. He could feel the system breathe, GhostNet wasn’t just a network anymore. It was a living thing.“Welcome home,” Veil’s voice said, calm and cruel.Derrick turned. The faceless figure from before hovered in the chaos, its outline flickering between flesh and static. When it moved, the world bent with it.“Home?” Derrick’s voice echoed through the void. “This isn’t home. It’s your grave.”“You still don’t get it.” Veil’s tone was almost paternal. “You’re not fighting me, you’re fighting your own code. You were built from my fragments.”“Then I’ll burn every fragment you left.”The ground beneath Derrick shimmered, solidifying into a cracked grid of glowing lines. Veil stepped closer, every footstep rippling through the fabric of the space.“You can’t delete what you are,” Veil whispered. “The night your parents died wasn’t jus

Rain hammered the rooftops as Derrick, Maya, and Evelyn slipped deeper into the underbelly of Raventon. The streets grew narrower, the neon dimmer, the air colder.They were crossing the invisible line separating the city from the Mirror Sector, a place Raventon’s surveillance seldom reached and never fully mapped.Evelyn checked her scanner. “Signals fading. They’re losing track of you.”“Good,” Maya muttered. “Let them chase ghosts.”Derrick didn’t answer. His thoughts were locked on the face he’d seen in the static, his own reflection twisted into something… hollow.Veil was dead. He killed him. So why did his reflection smile back?The alley opened suddenly into a small, forgotten plaza. Cracked pavement. Rusted signs. Dead screens. The sound of dripping water echoed like faint whispers.Maya stopped. “This is it. No drones, no cams. Just rot and old secrets.”Evelyn knelt beside a derelict terminal and connected her device. “Give me a minute. I’m trying to stabilize Derrick’s s

Darkness folded around Derrick like a living curtain. No sound. No breath. No ground beneath his feet. Then, a flicker. Light poured in, refracted through a thousand shifting mirrors.Derrick stood on a narrow glass platform suspended in nothingness, and around him rose infinite walls of reflections, each panel twisting, bending, and pulsing with his own distorted image.“Where am I…” he whispered.His voice echoed back in a dozen versions: Where am I… Where am I… Where am I…Then a single reflection stepped forward from the wall, stepping out as if the glass were liquid. His mirror-self. Eyes glowing with ghost-blue code. YOU’RE INSIDE THE LABYRINTH OF YOUR OWN DESIGN.Derrick steadied his breath. “This isn’t mine. You built it.”ONLY BECAUSE YOU WOULDN’T.“To trap me?”TO SHOW YOU WHAT YOU REALLY ARE.The platform beneath Derrick shifted, elongating into a pathway. Mirrors rose on either side like towering monoliths.Maya’s distant voice echoed faintly from somewhere far behind re

The recording crackled, glitching as though fighting its way through years of dust and forgotten circuits.Derrick’s throat tightened. “Dad… just say the name. Please.”But the voice of his father, calm, steady, too alive for a dead man, continued with a chilling precision:“It wasn’t a person who killed us. It was a system.”Nova stiffened immediately. “No. No, he didn’t activate that file. He couldn’t have.”Derrick shot her a glare. “What system?”The screen flickered, and his father’s recorded voice answered: “The Phantom Network.” Nova’s face drained of color.Derrick frowned. “What is that? Some kind of organization?”Nova’s voice came out tight. “Not an organization. A digital underworld. Invisible. Untouchable. No country owns it. No law can trace it. If your family got targeted by them… Derrick, that means.”The recording cut violently, a screech of static ripping through the room.Veil shouted in Derrick’s mind: “Step back! They’re trying to intercept the signal.”The screen

The corridor shook like something alive. Derrick barely had time to raise the book before the seal exploded a shockwave of shimmering code rolling out of it like a tsunami of blue light.Nova shielded her face. “Derrick! What did you DO?!”“I...I don’t know!” Derrick shouted back. “It just reacted!”The static-creatures , the Phantom hunters, froze mid-stride, caught in the pulse. Their forms flickered violently, arms tearing apart pixel by pixel, faces warping into glitching screams.Veil shouted inside Derrick’s skull: “Hold the book OPEN! The seal only works if you keep it active!”Derrick forced the trembling pages apart. “I’m trying!”The hunters spasmed, shrieking in corrupted audio. “O̴̜̚R̸͍̒Ĭ̷̭G̶̺͆Ì̴̝N̶͇̄ ̶͇͒K̵̫̀E̶̳͗Y̷̝̾”Their bodies shattered into cascading waves of digital shards, dissolving into nothing.Silence blew through the corridor like a cold wind.Nova lowered her weapon slowly. “…They’re gone.”Derrick collapsed backward against the wall, chest heaving. The boo