2025-06-25 06:30:09It 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 hell it was, wasn't some fever dream born from trauma and sleep-deprived rage. It was embedded in my nervous system, talking to me, feeding off me. And real tech? It had owners or enemies. The interface shimmered out as I closed it with a thought. Behind me, the rusted pipes let out a groan like the building was exhaling in its sleep. Twelve feet by eight. Cracked walls. Mini-fridge full of rot. Sheet metal bolted over a broken window. No cameras. No visitors. No warmth, except for the photo still taped to the wall. Me and Lena. She was smiling. I wasn't. I reached for it, then stopped halfway. Didn't matter. Not anymore. Not since last week when I found her in that synth-silk apartment with Donovan Cross. A low-tier clan enforcer. All implants and perfect teeth. Her hands were still around his waist when she saw me. She didn't flinch. Just looked me in the eye and said, “You're not going anywhere, Jace. And I can't keep waiting for someone who already gave up.” No screams. No explanations. Just that. I took the punch. Left without a word. But the echo? Still there. Footsteps in the stairwell snapped me back. Not the chaotic shuffle of attics. No stumbles. No coughs. Just the clean, measured pace of someone trained. I stood. Blood still warm. Heart still calm. The door creaked once. Then a knock. “Jace Ronan,” a woman's voice called. Smooth. Controlled. “I'm not here to kill you.” People who weren't going to kill you didn't start sentences like that. “Who are you?” I asked, voice low. A pause. “Someone who saw what you did tonight. Open the door, or I break it.” I hesitated. Part of me wanted to make her earn her entrance. But the rest of me, the part that had nothing left, unlocked the bolt and stepped back. The door opened. She walked in like the room owed her something. Tall. Lean. Black trench coat. Midnight braid. No visible weapon, but her posture was blade sharp. Cold. Efficient. Beautiful in a way that made you hot. “Name's Yui,” she said. “You just painted a target on your back.” I gave her nothing. She stared. “You really don't get it, do you?” “Saving a girl from a train's illegal now?” She scoffed. “Activating a banned protocol during a street fight is suicide. You think the clans don't have watchers?” I didn't answer. She moved past me, scanning the room like someone judging a corpse. I glanced at the photo again, her fingers still wrapped around Donovan's belt. “You're going to kill me before I go rogue?” “If I was, you'd be bleeding already.” Her eyes didn't blink. “I'm the only one who might help you survive what comes next.” “Why?” “Because the Ragnar Protocol isn't just outlawed tech. It's a living system. Adaptive. Experimental. Designed to evolve and choose.” “And you know what it is?” “Barely,” she admitted. “But I know enough to be afraid of it.” Yui tossed a sphere on the floor. It blinked red. “Anti-surveillance. We can talk now.” I crossed my arms. “So what now? You want me to be your errand boy?” She leaned in. “No. You're the hammer. I'm the eyes. If you want to survive, you work with me.” I laughed bitterly. “Guess I'm good for breaking things. That's all I've ever been.” She saw something in my face then. Maybe it was the old wound, not the fresh one. “What happened to you?” She asked. I didn't answer. Didn't need to. She nodded once, as if she already knew. Then the system chimed. [New quest. Chain reaction. Objective: Survive a live encounter with a teary cultivator. Reward: Skill unlock. Time limit: 72 hours. Failure: Forced system lockdown.] I exhaled. “You've got to be kidding.” Yui smirked. “Welcome to the upgrade.” She turned to leave. “Don't die before I find you again.” Sleep never came. Instead, I sat on the floor beneath the flickering bulb and stared at the photo one more time. Lena. The woman I bled for. Stole for. The woman who kissed me like I was her future and left me like I was her past. I tore the photo off the wall. It ripped down the middle. And still, her smile remained. By morning, I was in the old gym. Dust on the floor. Cobwebs in the rafters. Faint bloodstains on the mats. The place where I learned to fight. Where I earned my name before I lost it. The punching bag still hung from the ceiling. I wrapped my fists and I hit. Over and over. Bone. Bag. Breath. Again and again. [Training detected. XP applied. Progress 18%.] Pain didn't matter. Nothing did. Not Lena. Not the betrayal. Not the city that forgot me. That night, Yui messaged. INCOMING. I climbed to the rooftop, wind tearing at my coat. She crouched there like a gargoyle, tablet in hand. “Got something,” she said, showing me the screen. A man's face. Scar. Cybernetic eye. Tattoos like a map of violence. “Vico Dron,” she said. “Tier E cultivator. Drains street kids and feeds off their Chi. Clan protected.” “And if I stop him?” “You live. You level up.” “And if I fail?” “You die.” I stared out at Black Rift, drenched in sirens and decay. Lena's voice echoed somewhere in the bones of my memory. ‘You're not going anywhere.’ She was right. But not in the way she meant. I was done surviving. Now? Now I was rising. I cracked my knuckles and smiled. “Then I guess I better win.”
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Chapter 9: Echoes in the Fortress
The Void Chain Syndicate didn't build cities. They engineered leviathans. The fortress was called Monarch, and it moved across the wasteland like a god dragged through ash. Its frame stretched half a mile long, its wheels wide enough to crush. Monarch didn't settle. It fed on ruins, on data, on flesh. Inside its belly were labs older than most nations, prisons with no doors and secrets buried in silicon and blood. And somewhere within that mechanical beast lived a name. Ellen Troth, a neural scape architect. One of the few engineers who helped build the original Ghost Circuit. Back when it was still theory, still hope. He'd defected years ago, vanished beneath the radar. Some said he sold personality fragments on the black market. Others claimed he went mad, living in a dream he coded for himself. But I didn't care who he'd become. I needed what he still knew. Yui crouched beside me beneath a fractured overpass as Monarch groaned past us, slow and seismic. The rain was acidic he
Chapter 8: The Defectors Code
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.
Chapter 7: The Lieutenants of Fire and Flesh.
They said the inner sanctum of the Gilded Fang was a myth, a place that moved, a phantom fortress that slipped through cracks in the city's bones. Some claimed it was digital, housed in data and dream, only reachable by those willing to give up something real. Others swore it had been swallowed by war and rubble. They were all wrong. It was real. It didn't move. It hid. It waited. And I was going in. Sector 4 had another name, passed down by those who never left it. Ashlock. The last breath of light before the city went dark. No sunlight reached here. Not anymore. The buildings leaned like old men, windows bricked or blacked out, corners still scorched from wars no one remembered. Sigils seared into the walls, pulsed faintly, like coals that refused to die. Even the air carried history like a disease. Smoke, ash, and the smell of something ancient trying to crawl out. Yui walked beside me in silence. We wore the clothes of the forgotten. Ragged coats over armor-thin weave, no
Chapter 6: Ash In The Bloodline
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
Chapter 5: The Clan That Never Forgot
There are places in Blackrift where the air itself forgets how to move. The district they call Dagger Mile was one of them. Twisting alleys filled with rusted pipes, boarded windows, and the leftover whispers of those who vanished without headlines. It wasn't the kind of place people went unless they wanted to disappear, or bleed. That's where Yui sent me next. A name. A location. No explanation. I didn't ask why. I didn't need to. Something was always unraveling behind her eyes these days. Like she knew more than she was ready to say. And maybe she did. The building was buried behind a burned-out market. Three floors of concrete covered in black soot and faded blood glist. The doors were welded shut. The windows shattered. But something told me the place hadn't been abandoned. Not truly. I pushed through the side gate, hand resting on the hilt that the blade's growl had given me. The grip felt warmer these days, like the weapon had decided to stop judging me and start listening.
Chapter 4: The Ghost Circuit
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
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