The silence was the first thing that clawed at Diego’s senses. It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of a library or a deep forest; it was the suffocating, hollow void of a world that had forgotten how to breathe.Diego pushed himself up, his palms scraping against jagged, rusted metal. His breath hitched as a sharp, metallic tang filled his lungs. He blinked, the gray sky above blurry and swirling like dirty dishwater."What in the world… where am I?" he muttered, his voice sounding thin and foreign in the cavernous space.He looked around. He was lying in the middle of a massive graveyard of twisted steel. Skyscrapers, or what was left of them, leaned at impossible angles, their skeletons exposed like rotting ribs. Cables dangled from broken beams like hanging vines, twitching in a breeze that carried no scent of life."Hello? Is anybody here?" Diego called out, his voice cracking. He scrambled to his feet, his knees trembling violently. "This isn't my room. This isn't… this isn't anywhere I

The girl’s scream was short, sharp, and cut off abruptly, like a radio signal losing power. Diego didn’t think. The hesitation that had held him back moments ago—the moral weight of his own humanity—evaporated under the heat of pure, kinetic instinct.He didn't run; he blurred.His boots struck the debris with an unnatural silence, his body moving with a fluid, predatory grace that defied his own physical limitations. He swung around a leaning support pillar, catching sight of the plaza. The three creatures weren't just hunting; they were corralling. They moved with a mechanical, coordinated intelligence that made his blood run cold.The girl—Renata—was on her knees, desperately trying to pull a jagged piece of metal from a crack in the pavement. Her yellow raincoat, bright and incongruous against the gray ruins, was torn at the shoulder."Hey!" Diego shouted, his voice echoing through the hollow plaza.He picked up a heavy piece of rebar, his fingers curling around the cold iron. He

Diego kept his eyes fixed on the crumbling concrete of the tunnel floor, his boots scuffing against the dust. The weight of Renata’s question hung in the stagnant air, heavier than the tons of ruined steel pressing down from above. He wasn't ready to answer it—he wasn't sure he even knew the answer himself."Don't read too much into it," Diego said, his voice clipped and strained. "It was just a tactical decision. You had information about the transit grid. That makes you valuable. Don't make it into a scene, okay?"Renata walked a half-step behind him, her eyes tracing the lines of his posture. "You’re lying through your teeth, you know."Diego stopped abruptly, his shoulders tensing. He turned, the weak light from the tunnel’s phosphorescent moss casting deep shadows across his face. "I’m not lying. I’m just trying to keep us both from becoming fertilizer for whatever is lurking in this hellhole. Why are you so obsessed with my motivations? We’re alive. That’s the only win condition

The heavy, metallic silence of the chamber was broken only by the sound of Diego’s ragged breathing and the faint, dying sizzle of the guardian’s short-circuiting core. The dark energy that had erupted from Renata’s fingertips hung in the air like a phantom scent—something cold, ancient, and utterly wrong.Diego didn't move. He stood frozen, his hand still half-extended toward her, his eyes wide as he stared at the spot where the dark shield had been."Renata?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "What the hell was that?"Renata didn't answer immediately. She was staring at her own palms, turning them over as if they belonged to a stranger. "I don't... I don't know, Diego. I really don't.""You just stopped a ten-ton killing machine with a literal shadow," Diego said, his voice rising in pitch. "That didn't look like any 'System' power I’ve seen. It didn't have the blue light. It didn't have the math. It just felt like... like the world was dying where you touched it.""Stop it," she sn