The narrow fissure offered darkness, not safety. Rock dust sifted down as another Purifier lance beam seared the Canyon wall outside, bathing the cramped space in stark, sterile light for a split second. Kael pressed himself deeper, the Seedling fragment clutched tight, Elara's presence a faint, pained flicker against his mind. The Engine's revelation burned hotter than the near-miss: **89.7% RESONANCE. NOT GLITCH. CORRUPTED SYSTEM CODE.** His Null status wasn't rejection – it was a fucking *prerequisite*.
**\[ENGINE STABILITY: 74%\]**
**\[CORRUPTION RISK: 17.1%\]** (The Voidtouch manifestation had left a stain).
**\[ANOMALY SIGNATURE: DETECTABLE (MASKING FAILURE - 65% EFFICIENCY)\]**
**\[ELARA PSIONIC INTEGRITY: 12% - CRITICAL. SYNTHESIS INTERFACE NEAR COLLAPSE.\]**
*Cold… tired… head hurts…* Elara's thought was a threadbare whisper.
"Stay with me," Kael projected, raw fear cutting through his own shock. He couldn't process the existential bomb. Not now. Survival first. Elara first. The Patcher scan pulsed again outside, a wave of sterilizing energy that made his teeth ache. **\[PATROL MOVEMENT DETECTED: 2 SENTINELS CONVERGING ON FISSURE ENTRANCE. ESTIMATED ENTRY: 45 SECONDS.\]**
Down. He had to go *down*. Deeper into the geothermal maze, towards the heat, the only masking left. Away from the rim, away from Malakai's burning hatred radiating across the chasm. He scrambled deeper into the fissure, ignoring the scrape of chitin on rock. The passage narrowed, twisted, dropped steeply. The air grew hotter, thicker with sulfur. The thrumming intensified. **\[GEOTHERMAL SIGNATURE STRENGTHENING. MASKING EFFICIENCY: 68% AND RISING.\]**
Behind him, white light flooded the fissure entrance. A crisp, synthetic voice echoed, devoid of inflection: **"Anomaly Detected. Containment Protocol Engaged."** Energy crackled – the sound of lances powering up.
Kael didn't look back. He triggered **Shadow-Step**, phasing five meters down the twisting tunnel just as twin beams of annihilation lanced through the space he'd occupied. Rock vaporized silently. The heat was intense, even phased. He reappeared gasping, stumbling on the steep decline. **\[SHADOW-STEP COOLDOWN: 14 SECONDS\]** **\[MINOR THERMAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED.\]**
*Kael… falling…* Elara whimpered.
He ran, half-sliding, half-leaping down the treacherous slope. The fissure opened into a wider, steam-filled chamber crisscrossed with glowing mineral veins. Patcher footfalls echoed behind him – precise, unhurried. They were herding him. **\[ANALYSIS: SENTINELS UTILIZING TERRAIN TO MINIMIZE CLEANSE COLLATERAL. PRIORITY: CAPTURE/TERMINATION.\]**
He ducked behind a stalagmite cluster as another lance beam sliced overhead, superheating the steam into scalding fog. Visibility dropped to zero. Perfect. He used the cover, sprinting blind towards the strongest heat source his **Mineral Sense** detected – a roaring geothermal vent at the chamber's far end. The heat was blistering now. His Void-Chitin's **Heat Sink Regulation** whined under the strain. **\[PLATING INTEGRITY: 92%\]**
He reached the vent's edge, a gaping maw spewing superheated steam and shimmering gas. Below, through the haze, he saw it – another network of tunnels, glowing with internal heat. His escape. But the drop was sheer, fifteen meters into boiling mist. **\[ADVISORY: SURVIVAL PROBABILITY WITHOUT BUFFERING: 40%.\]**
The sterile white light pierced the steam behind him. Sentinels emerged, lances leveled. No more warnings.
*No!* Elara's panic spiked, a final surge of energy. *Hot push! Below! Soft rock!*
Kael understood. He didn't jump. He *stomped*. Channeling every ounce of Engine-enhanced strength and the **Alpha Command Aura** into a single, brutal impact on the vent's lip. **\[IMPROVISED ABILITY: TECTONIC IMPULSE (Lvl.0 Unstable)\]**
The rock beneath his feet cracked, then collapsed. Not just where he stood, but a five-meter section of the vent rim sheared off, plummeting towards the tunnels below. Kael rode the falling slab down, the world a blur of steam, heat, and blinding white lances firing overhead. He hit the lower tunnel floor hard, the impact driving the air from his lungs, the falling rock crashing around him. Dust and superheated steam filled the passage. **\[MINOR INTERNAL TRAUMA. STABILITY: 72%\]**
Above, the Sentinels paused at the new precipice, scanning the chaos. He'd bought seconds. He staggered up, clutching the Seedling. Elara was silent, utterly drained. **\[ELARA PSIONIC INTEGRITY: 5% - COMA STATE DETECTED.\]**
He ran deeper into the lower tunnels. The heat was punishing, the air unbreathable without his adaptations. **\[HEAT SINK REGULATION AT MAXIMUM. DURABILITY LIMITED.\]** He followed the thrumming, the geothermal pulse his lifeline. He needed a pocket, a bubble of relative safety within the inferno to help Elara. His **Void-Sense**, strained by the heat and Elara's silence, detected a side passage – slightly cooler air flowing from it.
He ducked inside. It was a small, domed chamber, the walls smooth and glassy, a natural cistern of steaming, milky blue water bubbling gently in the center. The heat was intense but bearable near the water's edge. Crucially, the geothermal signature here was complex, layered – perfect masking. **\[MASKING EFFICIENCY: 92%\]** **\[PATROL SIGNATURE: LOST.\]**
He sank to his knees by the pool, placing the Seedling fragment gently on the warm stone. The purple veins within pulsed faintly, erratically. Elara was a ghost of a presence. "Hold on," he rasped, dipping his hands in the hot water, letting the mineral-rich heat soothe his own aches. He focused his will, not on assimilation, but on *pushing* ambient geothermal energy *towards* the crystal through the Synthesis link. It was clumsy, inefficient. **\[ENGINE ASSISTANCE: MINIMAL GEOTHERMAL TRANSFER.\]** But he felt a faint stirring, a weak pulse of warmth echoing back. **\[ELARA PSIONIC INTEGRITY: 6% - STABILIZING.\]**
He allowed himself five minutes. Five minutes to breathe the scorching air, to sip the hot, metallic-tasting water, to watch the faint pulse in the crystal. Five minutes where the only sounds were the bubbling pool and the deep thrum of the earth. The Engine's revelation clawed at him. Corrupted System code. What did that *mean*? Was the Engine a prototype? A weapon? A failed experiment? Why was Null status required? The questions were a vortex threatening to swallow him whole.
A new alert pulsed, shattering the fragile calm. Not Patchers. Not geothermal. Human. But wrong. Twisted. **\[VOID-SENSE: CORRUPTED HUMAN SIGNATURE. PROXIMITY: IMMEDIATE. BEARING: ENTRANCE.\]**
Kael spun, claws extending. A figure stood silhouetted in the passage entrance. Not a Sentinel. Not Malakai. This figure was hunched, asymmetrical. One arm ended in a crude, fused mass of dark metal and what looked like... chitin. The other clutched a scavenged pulse rifle, sparking erratically. Its face, half-hidden by a tattered hood, was gaunt, eyes glowing with a sickly purple light. A name tag flickered erratically: **\[VEX - ??? Lvl.7\]** **\[STATUS: VOID TOUCH CORRUPTION (ADVANCED)\]**
Vex didn't speak. It raised the sparking rifle. Kael lunged sideways as a wild energy bolt seared past, spattering against the glassy wall. He closed the distance fast, **Hyper-Adrenal Burst** burning through his system. He slammed into Vex before the corrupted human could fire again. The impact was jarring. Vex felt unnaturally dense, cold. Kael's claws scraped against the fused metal/chitin arm, sparks flying. **\[TARGET ARMOR INTEGRITY: HIGH. VOID-TOUCH RESONANCE DETECTED.\]**
Vex hissed, a sound like grinding stone and static. Its corrupted arm lashed out, not with a weapon, but with a grasping claw that trailed wisps of darkness. **VOIDTOUCH**. Instinct screamed. Kael recoiled, but the claw grazed his Void-Chitin chest plate. **\[CONTACT: VOIDTOUCH (CORRUPTED)\]** **\[VOID-CHITIN PLATING DAMAGE: MINOR. CORRUPTION RISK SPIKE: +2% TEMPORARY.\]**
A wave of nausea and alien rage washed over him, mirroring the whispers but amplified tenfold. Images flashed – screaming faces, dissolving landscapes, a hunger that mirrored the Hollow King's. Vex wasn't just corrupted; it was *losing*, being consumed by the void it touched.
*Feed it to the Engine,* the original void-whispers hissed, now tinged with a strange hunger for this *specific* corruption. *Take its taint. Make it ours.*
Kael snarled, fighting the urge. He couldn't risk assimilating *this*. He drove a knee into Vex's gut, feeling unnatural resistance. The corrupted human staggered but didn't fall. Its eyes blazed, and it lunged again, Voidtouch claw leading.
Kael triggered **Shadow-Step**. He phased *through* Vex, reappearing behind it. Before Vex could turn, Kael's claws, sheathed in his own unstable **Voidtouch**, lashed out. Not to kill. To *disrupt*. He aimed for the sparking power core on the back of Vex's scavenged armor. **\[IMPROVISED: VOIDTOUCH DISRUPTION.\]**
His shadow-wreathed claws sank into the machinery. There was no explosion. Instead, the core *imploded*, consumed by the disruptive void energy. Vex shrieked, a sound of pure agony and sudden loss. The purple light in its eyes flickered wildly. Its Voidtouch arm spasmed, the darkness around it recoiling chaotically. It stumbled back, collapsing against the wall, twitching, the advanced corruption visibly receding like a tide, leaving behind a broken, emaciated human form gasping in pain and terror. The name tag resolved: **\[VEX - FORMER WRECKER SCOUT Lvl.3\]**. The corruption had artificially inflated its level.
Kael stood panting, his own Voidtouch fading, the corruption risk subsiding slightly but leaving a deeper chill. He hadn't fed the Engine. He'd broken the corruption, but at what cost? Vex stared up at him, human eyes wide with confusion and pain. "M...Malakai... promised power... fix the glitch... it lied... it *hurt*..." The scout shuddered, curling into a ball.
Malakai. Experimenting on his own people? Trying to replicate Voidtouch? The depths of the man's ambition and ruthlessness sank in. He wasn't just a scavenger boss; he was becoming a monster maker.
**\[WARNING: GEOTHERMAL SIGNATURE FLUCTUATION DETECTED (DEEP SOURCE). HOLLOW KING RESIDUAL CORE: AGITATION INCREASING. POTENTIAL TRIGGER: VOIDTOUCH DISCHARGE.\]**
Kael's head snapped towards the chamber entrance. The deep thrumming had shifted, becoming erratic, angry. Their fight, the Voidtouch clash, had stirred the sleeping horror below. Again.
**\[PATROL SIGNATURE REACQUIRED! ERROR PATCHER SENTINELS: CONVERGING ON GEOTHERMAL DISTURBANCE.\]**
Trapped. Between a wounded, corrupted scout, a destabilized Hollow King fragment below, Patchers drawn to the void-energy spike, and Malakai undoubtedly still hunting. Elara remained a silent, fragile weight in his hands. The revelations kept coming, each more terrible than the last. The corrupted System code within him hummed, a dark mirror to the Patchers hunting him. The only path was *down*, deeper into the burning earth, chasing the fading pulse of the child he'd sworn to protect, while the monsters above and below closed in.