[Velmora — Slave District Theta]
The mud was warm with chemical runoff, thick with ash from refineries that never slept. Kiro moved through the ruined edge of Velmora's outer slave district, hidden among shattered cargo units and collapsed rails.
His eyes scanned the terrain—guard towers humming with suppressor fields, chain-linked fences made of Viora-treated alloy, and cameras etched with El'Vertigos' family crest.
He clenched his fists.
His home had been turned into a corpse that still breathed.
As he passed the chain pits, two children peered at him from under a wrecked transport frame—too starved to speak, too broken to flee.
Kiro paused.
He reached into the shredded remains of his cloak and pulled free a canister—salvaged from Gaeth-9. Nutrient gel. He placed it gently beside them and vanished before they could blink.
A whisper spread behind him.
"He moved like wind..."
"Did you see his eyes?"
"Blood-colored..."
He didn't stop walking.
[Core Signature Stabilizing...]
Blood Core: Synchronization Level 52%
Lost Core Detected: "Ash Rebirth" — dormant.
[System Notice]
Caution: Viora energy saturation on Velmora exceeds safe parameters. Survival recommended through stealth or immediate core shielding.
"Yeah," Kiro muttered, "I figured."
He scanned the horizon. At the heart of Velmora, beyond the toxic haze and industrial smoke, rose a gleaming black tower—new, obsidian-built, untouched by rust or ruin.
The Spire of El'Vertigos.
And beneath it... the prison cells. The heart of it all.
Kiro's blood began to boil again.
[Elsewhere — Imperial Relay Bastion: Orbiting Gaeth-9]
"...so you teleported him away."
The voice was sharp, almost amused.
Sulfur stood at the center of a blackstone war chamber aboard the orbital bastion above Gaeth-9. The storm of Viora energy had faded from his frame, but the heat of it still lingered like molten metal under his skin.
Across from him, in a throne of glass and bone, sat Lady Vorrika Vanta.
Tall. Pale. With circuitry fused into her skull like a crown of thorns. One of the Executrixes of House Vanta.
Sulfur didn't flinch.
"The System acted before I could end him. It has deeper protocols than we realized."
Vorrika tapped her chin, amused. "How lucky for the Apostle."
She leaned forward.
"Gaeth-9 is yours now. I'll send my tech-wrights to extract the ascension node's fragments and begin assimilation. But you—"
She paused.
"—you will go to Velmora."
Sulfur raised an eyebrow. "To finish what Voneto failed to start?"
"No," Vorrika said coldly. "To test what that System will allow him to become... and what he will destroy to survive."
[Back on Velmora]
Kiro knelt in the ruins of an old Velmorian temple—half-buried beneath slag. The wall carvings were barely visible, but he traced one with his fingers.
A circle of fire. A beast coiled in ash. A single eye watching from beneath.
A memory of something older than Viora.
A whisper echoed from the System.
"Awaken the Lost Core... and become what they fear."