Chapter 1105: Bitten Words.
Cain’s hand still throbbed from driving his blade through steel. The shaft had carried them up like rats in the walls, but the corridor they now faced was worse—rows of servers humming with unnatural rhythm, threads of light racing across conduits that pulsed like arteries.
Steve’s breath hitched as he stepped closer. "This isn’t just storage. They wired the Grid into itself. Self-repairing, self-correcting—like it knows we’re here."
Cain motioned him back. "Then we don’t give it time to think."
Roselle scanned the rows, pistol raised. Her eyes locked on the red veins of code that flickered across the glass. "I’ve seen this before, deep in the lower districts. People called it the Oracle Spine. Said it didn’t just process information—it judged it."
Susan coughed hard, clutching her ribs. Her voice was raw. "And what does it judge?"
Roselle tilted her head, listening. "Worth. It decides what lives in this city and what starves in the shadows."
Cain pressed forward, blade low, every instinct screaming. "Then it dies here."
The lights dimmed, plunging the corridor into shifting gloom. From the servers rose figures of hard light—men without faces, outlines made of code and armor. They stepped out as if peeling from the walls, their movements synchronized, weapons forming from luminous shards.
Hunter spoke at last, his voice almost reverent. "Sentinels. Guardians of the Spine."
The first swung its spear, the motion trailing digital afterimages. Cain met it with steel, sparks scattering, real and unreal colliding. His blade sank deep, and the figure flickered, reforming itself before his eyes.
Steve cursed. "You can’t just cut them—they’ll loop back from the servers!"
"Then shut the loop!" Cain barked, forcing another strike, shoving the Sentinel back into the wall. The hum rose, deeper, like the building itself was growling.
Susan’s rifle barked, bullets tearing through another figure, its body fracturing into cascading numbers. Yet the fragments streamed back into the nearest column, knitting themselves whole again.
"They’re tethered!" Roselle snapped. She pivoted, firing at the conduits running between the server banks. The red veins sparked, sputtering. One Sentinel froze, its body glitching before shattering like broken glass.
"That’s it!" Steve lunged forward, tools flashing, his hands tearing into the conduits. "Cover me!"
Hunter stepped in front of him without hesitation, his body absorbing the brunt of the digital spears, blood streaking down his arm. Cain’s jaw clenched, cutting another down only to see it reform again.
The corridor shook. The lights above swelled, brightening into blinding white. A voice, not spoken but burned into their skulls, rippled through the air:
"Unauthorized disruption detected. Choice required."
Cain staggered, clutching his temple. The System’s voice was everywhere, the same one that had haunted him since the day it cursed him with too many paths.
The Sentinels froze, standing in eerie silence. The servers pulsed in rhythm with the words.
"You carry four cores. Declare one. Surrender balance. Continue."
Roselle’s head snapped toward him. "Cain, what is it saying?"
He grit his teeth, eyes blazing. "It wants me to choose. Mana. Ki. Spirit. The darkness. It won’t let us through unless I kill three parts of myself."
Susan’s face twisted in fury. "And if you don’t?"
The voice answered for him.
"Noncompliance results in termination."
The Sentinels raised their weapons again, every blade and barrel glowing with lethal finality.
Cain’s breath slowed. His hand trembled over the hilt at his side—not from fear, but from the weight of decision pressing in on him.
Steve shouted from behind, still knee-deep in circuits. "Cain! Whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast! I can’t hold this system open much longer!"
The System’s words rang louder, sharper, the countdown forming in his vision.
30... 29... 28...
Cain raised his blade, sparks arcing across its edge. His eyes locked on the servers as the hum of the city’s soul pressed down on him.
"Then I’ll do what I should’ve done from the beginning."
He stepped forward into the light, ready to defy the System itself.
Cain didn’t look back as they pressed deeper into the core corridor. The hum of the Grid was steady, resonant, as if the city itself were breathing through hidden lungs. Each step pressed their weight into a system too vast to imagine, too fragile to trust. He could almost hear the city whisper, daring them to cut its veins.
Steve hunched by the servers, already unpacking tools, hands moving with an obsession Cain recognized as both brilliance and desperation. The blinking lights reflected in his eyes like a man staring into divinity. "This hub doesn’t just run current," Steve muttered. "It runs memory. Histories. Every face scanned, every passage watched. If I burn it, we erase more than surveillance—we erase the bones the council built on."
Susan leaned against the wall, rifle angled down but tight in her grip. Sweat tracked her jaw, though her eyes remained steady. "Good. Bones rot. The city deserves to choke on the truth it buried."
Hunter’s shadow loomed at the far end of the hall. He hadn’t spoken since they breached, but now his voice carried like iron dragged across stone. "Do that, and the council won’t fight each other. They’ll unify. You’ll gift them clarity in their enemy." His gaze landed square on Cain. "You’ll make yourself the blade they can swing against anyone who resists."
Roselle moved fast, pistol pressed to Hunter’s chest before his words had cooled. "Then they’ll swing until their arms break. Doesn’t matter if they call Cain an enemy. We’re already condemned. Every path ends with blood."
Cain raised a hand, slowing her, though he didn’t deny the words. Hunter’s warning gnawed because it was true. Cut the Grid and the Daelmonts bleed—but so would the rest of the city. People who didn’t know his name would curse it when lights died, when food soured, when clean water dried to rust.
The blade at his back felt heavier with that thought. Tools of war weren’t just meant to kill; sometimes they toppled what couldn’t be rebuilt.
Steve’s fingers tightened on the wires, and sparks lit his face. "Decision, Cain. Every second we stand here, they’re climbing."
The echoes from the shaft were growing clearer now: boots hammering metal, voices calling orders, weapons clashing against the walls. The hunt wasn’t far.
Cain stepped forward, placing his hand on the console, feeling its vibration course through his palm. The hum wasn’t just power—it was life. The pulse of millions, carried on cold circuits. He closed his eyes, let the moment stretch, then opened them again.