There was a rule Elior once lived by:
> "If it's guarded like a god, it probably hides a devil."
The Sanctuary's Outer Network Hub wasn't built to house criminals or weapons—it was worse. It held truth. The kind buried under protocols, guarded by synthetic minds, and erased from history as if it never existed.
To breach it meant death. To survive it meant war.
But Elior wasn't here to survive.
He was here to win.
> [Mission: Infiltrate the Sanctuary Data Nexus]
Target: Cyros Talek – A-Class Data Warden, Mind-Sync Sentinel, Armed with Arcane Firewall Defense Protocols
Objective: Extract Core Data Fragment on Project Edenfall
Time Remaining: 71:23:58
The Rogue Heirs had done their part.
Kaelira's team delivered a temporary uplink hijack—the outermost security tier of the data spire was blinked offline for seven seconds, a miracle made possible only by a former technician turned traitor: an old man named Bex, whose daughter had vanished in Edenfall's early trials.
Elior waited on the edge of a maglift platform, cloaked in [Shadow Veil: Black Bloom Form], the wind whistling past him like a ghost whispering in his ear.
The doors opened.
He stepped into the belly of the spire.
The interior was silent—eerily so.
No alarms.
No patrols.
Just smooth silver corridors that stretched for miles, occasionally pulsing with faint blue light. Each step Elior took was monitored not by eyes or cameras—but by thought. The Sanctuary had no guards because its security wasn't physical.
It was psychic.
Cyros Talek—the Warden—had laced every inch of the data nexus with his own consciousness.
Which meant Elior wasn't just walking into a base.
He was walking into a mind.
> [Warning: Enemy Territory – Ambient Psychic Pressure Detected]
[System Defense Type: Adaptive Thought Shell]
[Active Countermeasure Recommended: Dreambreaker Sigil or Equivalent Reality Fracture Ability]
Elior didn't have Dreambreaker.
But he had something darker.
He reached into the reservoir of pain buried beneath his ribs—the memories of Liana strapped to a test slab, the silent stare of Asher when he chose to die rather than run, the echo of his parents' execution under Heroic Law.
> [Villain System Skill Activated: Sorrow Bloom – Convert personal grief into mind-break feedback wave.]
The walls around him shuddered.
Lights dimmed. Circuits stuttered.
And for a moment, the entire spire flinched.
That's when he ran.
Elior navigated past the outer core and into the first firewall ring. There, a gaunt humanoid construct rose from the floor—its body forged of glass, memories, and logic fragments. A Psy-Sentinel, grown from the Warden's subconscious.
"INTRUDER," it rasped. "CEASE. RETURN. FORGOTTEN."
Elior didn't answer with words.
He answered with steel.
The dagger of [Oblivion Thread] struck its core—spinning shadows wrapped around the construct's essence, cutting it not just from life, but from memory. It collapsed, hissing a name that didn't exist.
Elior passed into the second firewall.
There he found the first chamber of minds.
Rows of tanks.
Each held a person—unmoving, sealed in thought. Not dead.
Looped.
Their brains were hijacked by psychic threads, used as living processors to keep the sanctuary running. Heroic volunteers. Rebels. Prisoners.
Children.
He didn't hesitate.
He walked to the control pylon and tore out the sigil that kept them dreaming.
One by one, the lights in the tanks dimmed. Some screamed. Some cried. Most simply stared, as if returning from centuries away.
"You're free," he told them.
None replied.
But some followed.
> [Passive Ability Triggered: Villain's Echo – Rescued minds increase stealth by 1% per liberated soul within proximity.]
+14% Stealth Bonus Applied
The final firewall was a throne.
A mental construct woven into a literal seat of thought, wrapped in cables and stained with blood. Sitting upon it, connected to a thousand lines of data and mind-thread, was Cyros Talek.
He wasn't human anymore.
His body was emaciated, fed intravenously while his mind ran the spire at full capacity. His face was masked in a crown of glowing lenses. Dozens of voices spoke through him simultaneously, each word an echo of a dead AI or overwritten soul.
"You're the anomaly," the voices said in unison.
"No," Elior replied. "I'm the reaper."
The duel was not physical.
It was mental.
Talek's mind surged toward him like a sea of white fire. Memories warped. Logic shattered. For a split second, Elior stood in a false childhood, playing with Liana beneath a sun that never existed.
He bit through his lip to break the illusion.
Blood grounded him.
> [Counter Skill: Thought Shard – Shatter mental constructs using trauma anchors.]
He hurled it—his memory of Asher's death, pure and unfiltered, straight into Talek's mind.
The Warden screamed.
For a moment, the entire spire blinked out of existence—and when it returned, Talek was on fire.
Elior stepped forward, his aura blooming in dark tendrils.
"Project Edenfall," he said.
"Too late," Talek gasped, wires falling from his skin. "They've already begun the next phase. She is awake."
"Who?"
Talek bled data as he whispered.
"Codename… DIVINA. The perfect vessel. The system that thinks it's a soul…"
And then his head snapped backward, violently, as a failsafe fried his core.
> [Target Eliminated: 4/100]
New Skill Unlocked: Thoughtburn – Overload psychic defenses using layered trauma triggers.
Mission Complete – Core Data Fragment Extracted.
New Lead: DIVINA – Entity Class Unknown. Status: ACTIVE.]
Elior walked out of the spire alone.
But not empty.
He carried a name. A warning. A key.
When he returned to the Rogue Heirs, Kaelira read the file in silence.
"DIVINA," she said softly. "They built an AI from soul code?"
"More than that," Elior said. "They gave it purpose. Gave it belief."
Kaelira looked at him. "What kind of belief?"
Elior's eyes narrowed.
"That it's the only thing that deserves to live."