The sky was not supposed to bleed.
But over the ruins of Orvannis, it did—dripping crimson and code-script like it had been slashed open by a blade too ancient to name. Clouds twisted in fractals, rotating against the laws of gravity, while lightning scrawled warnings in long-dead languages across the heavens. The ground pulsed with the tremors of awakening power. The Rift had opened.
And Rael Kaizen was running straight toward it.
Wind screamed past him as he vaulted a collapsed skyrail, the metallic screech of Dominion decay echoing in his ears. Behind him, the earth cracked, belched steam, and swallowed another squad of screaming enforcers. Bodies flickered—there, then not. Their Dominion Signatures overloaded and imploded, warping flesh into light and light into ruin.
He didn't look back.
Didn't dare.
Every second wasted was another breath closer to collapse. Not just of the city. Of everything.
[WARNING: Syntactical Breach Detected.]
[LOCAL REALITY STABILITY: 4% AND FALLING.]
The Dominion HUD in Rael's vision flickered violently, code lines scrolling faster than he could parse. Scripts broke mid-loop. Syntax correction protocols wept blood-red glyphs. All around him, Velgrath was screaming through its seams.
Rael cursed and kept moving, Dominion boots thrumming against buckling concrete. His heart pounded with every step—not just from exertion, but from the static storm inside his chest. The Code was moving again. Twitching in his bones. Scratching his spine like it was alive. He hadn't felt it like this in weeks.
Not since the last time he came close to Nexaran code.
A blast rocked the ground beside him. A shard of null-energy scorched the air where his head had been a moment ago, leaving a crater of frozen flame. He dove into the cover of a half-buried tram shell, breathing hard, fingers trembling.
Footsteps approached. Heavy. Patterned.
Then her voice: "Rael."
He turned. Elara Veyne stood just meters away, her black cloak torn and stained with ash, Dominion glyphs still sparking on her left gauntlet. Her pale hair clung to her face, sweat dripping down a jagged scar that ran from temple to jawline.
"You're out of your mind," she snapped. "Why are you this close to the core zone? Do you have a death wish?"
Rael laughed, sharp and breathless. "Depends on who's doing the wishing."
Another tremor rolled through the wreckage. Elara didn't flinch. She looked at him like she always did—like she hadn't yet decided if she wanted to kill him or follow him.
"It's active," Rael said, eyes wild. "The Rift is real. Nexara's bleeding through again—I felt the resonance before I got within a klick."
Elara's jaw clenched. "And you ran toward it."
He nodded.
She didn't shout. Didn't scold. She just stared at him for one long, painful moment, then stepped forward and yanked him to his feet.
"Then let's not die in this crater."
They ran together now, weaving through shattered ruins and burning code-nests left behind by Hollow Legion thralls. Around them, Dominion failure zones rippled with deadly beauty—flashes of other realities, voices in reverse, time-jumps that swallowed seconds like falling into holes in history.
The Rift loomed ahead.
It hovered above the center of the city like a wound in the world—black at the core, spiraling with purple fire, webbed with electric glyphs that pulsed in and out of visibility. A column of light speared down from it into the ancient substructures beneath Orvannis, anchoring it to something deeper. Older.
"Is that—?" Elara started.
Rael nodded again. "The Root Core."
No one had seen one in centuries. Root Cores were supposed to be myths—remnants of the lost city Nexara, existing only in corrupted scrolls and the dreams of mad coders. But this one wasn't myth. It pulsed with intent.
Rael's fingers itched. His skin crawled. And the Code inside him responded—lines forming along his arms in shimmering ink, glowing with glyphs even he didn't fully understand.
"Don't you dare interface," Elara warned.
"I wasn't—"
"Rael."
He stopped short of the platform, breathing hard. "I think it's calling me."
"You think a dimension-tearing, world-breaking, code-devouring nightmare is… calling you?"
"Yeah." He stepped forward. "And I think I have to answer."
Then the Hollow Legion arrived.
The sky howled.
Figures descended from the Rift like ragged angels—black-armored, bone-thin, half-organic, their Dominion signatures corrupted and stitched together with foreign code. Their eyes glowed empty. Their weapons sang with entropy.
They weren't here to ask questions.
"Run," Elara whispered.
Rael didn't.
He raised his hand. The Dominion Code flared.
"Kaizen!" Elara shouted.
Too late.
Rael spoke a command. Not a spell. Not a sanctioned script. It was a broken piece of Root Syntax—something that had no right existing in the world.
"Reven'thial."
The Hollow Legion collapsed in mid-air. Their bodies twisted in on themselves, screams turning to data static before vanishing entirely. The wind died.
Silence fell.
Elara stared at him like he'd become something else entirely. "What… what the hell was that?"
Rael's voice trembled. "A name."
"Whose?"
He looked up at the Rift, where new shapes began to flicker behind the veil—massive ones, with wings made of circuits and eyes like forgotten stars.
"I think we're not the only ones trying to get to Nexara."
A low hum began to vibrate through the air. The Rift brightened. The platform beneath them shifted—and a sigil, vast and complex, began to etch itself into the ground at their feet.
Reality fractured.
Rael saw—
—a city in the sky, bathed in silver flame—
—a woman with no mouth speaking truth through dreams—
—a beast coiled in darkness, waiting beneath a forgotten continent—
—a king without time, writing destinies with a broken hand—
—himself, standing alone at the edge of a rewritten world—
Then the visions shattered.
Rael staggered, fell to one knee, retching. Elara knelt beside him, holding him steady as the sigil finished inscribing.
From the Rift, a voice emerged. Not words. Not thoughts.
Intention.
Rael's eyes went wide. He understood.
"Elara," he whispered. "It's opening… not just a gate. A path. A test."
"To what?"
"To see if we're worthy."
Elara's eyes narrowed. "Of what?"
He swallowed hard. "Of waking Nexara."
The air tore open in front of them. A corridor of broken space extended into the unknown—each step lined with crumbling memory-structures and fragments of ancient code.
Rael stood.
He looked back at Elara.
"I'm going in."
She hesitated only a second. Then drew her blade, activated her Dominion Sigil, and stepped forward beside him.
"Then I'm going too."
Together, they entered the mouth of the Rift.
Behind them, the ruins of Orvannis burned.
Ahead, the lost city waited.
And something inside it had already started to wake.