The metallic smell of Skylight Underpass caught in Raiko Vernier's throat as he climbed down the rusted hatch. A single line of purple light filtered in from the street and glared down on the grim faces of the Grey-Contract gang, who'd been offered "easy money" for a Wild Graft hunt.
"Move it, scrapper," growled Varka, the leader, adjusting his shoulder pad with its cracked skull insignia. "If you really hear 'the voices,' we have...
Raiko didn't answer. That voice—more a heartbeat than a whisper—had been echoing for weeks, guiding him here; but to admit it would have been to admit his own madness. He moved forward, carrying only a liquid phosphorus flashlight and a half-blanketed knife.
The tunnel ended in a concave cave: a Level 0 Élan Chamber recently revealed by a collapse. The walls didn't seem to be rock; they trembled gently, like clear skin tissue. Time itself moved more slowly: the condensation droplets seemed to take eternities.
"This is dead," Varka murmured, disappointed. "A Monolith without a pulse is worthless."
It's not dead.
The phrase flashed through Raiko's head, so clearly that he believed, at first, he'd said it. He took a step forward, and the flashlight trembled: in front of him, suspended a meter above the ground, was an oblong obsidian crystal tinged with deep, iridescent cracks. Beneath each crack, tiny golden flecks curled, like glowworms.
"There's your wild symbiote," Varka exclaimed greedily. "Tonight we're having top-notch Catalyst Wax."
The squad deployed a containment cage: a circular reinforcement with inhibitor runes. When it was activated, one edge of the ring glowed red, and a shrill hum shook the atmosphere. The crystal responded; A pressure wave pushed Raiko back, and he aligned the lantern.
Stay back, the voice returned, urgent.
"Who…?" Raiko didn't finish the sentence. The lamp opened like a glass flower, and a cyan filament of light pierced his chest.
Pain. Cold fire writhing through her nerves. The whole chamber was stained with gray ash. Varka and the others were flung out through the opening through which they had entered, as though hurled by a fiery exhalation. The cage slammed behind them with a click that was audible as a sentence.
Raiko was left alone.
A number…
The light gathered, elaborated, and took shape in his presence. It was an emblem: a shining grain that throbbed to his heartbeat.
I am Aureos. And you found me.
Raiko fell to his knees. The filament spread over his body, unfurling translucent plates that covered his right arm and side of his body; Thin fragments of armor that looked like fluid glass veined with gold.
"L-let me go!" he moaned, trying to tear them off.
Not yet. I have to eat. Light, warmth, hope...
The runes on the cage changed color: from red to amber, then to poisonous green. A countdown appeared projected in the air:
30... 29... 28...
The Élan Chamber was crumbling.
Panic-stricken, Raiko sought egress. The passage they had passed through was closed by stone plates mending with each slow heartbeat. Every digit that dropped off the runes echoed in his cranium.
"I can get us out," Aureos whispered inside her mind. "Give me what I need. Your inner light."
"How. What.
Your little flashes of tomorrow. Your plans. Give them to me and I'll stop for just enough time."
Raiko thought of her sister, prostrate in the canvas attic they called home, barely breathing without the treatments only Catalyst Wax could afford. If she died there, she would be lost too.
"Take them,"
An invisible gust emptied her chest, as if someone had plucked a handful of imaginary fireflies from her heart. The world froze. The countdown stopped her fall at number 7. Even the trembling of the walls remained suspended, dust and rocks floating heavily in the air.
Now run.
Raiko found that his form vibrated; it fainted away against the gray background, like matches' smoke. Every step was a leap, each inhalation a soundless blast of condensed light. He passed through the crevice that just before had been a seam-closed wall. The moment resumed itself: some terrible roar shook the tunnel and the implosion chamber burst behind him, swallowed by that same darkness.
He leaped into the light, gasping. The night of Lower Skylight was a circus of alarms and sirens: the district's line of automated defenses had sensed the dimensional implosion. Drones with UV lamps roamed rooftops; fugitive Grey guests on ion-cycles, unaware of the situation. On Raiko's chest, the photonic plates rearranged themselves to form a tiny emblem: a spark enclosed between three ridges—the symbol of Dust-Tier, the lowest echelon of the newborn Ten-Tier Adventurer System.
"This is just the start," murmured Aureos, with a voice almost affectionate.
"Let's begin then," Raiko whispered, as the spotlights ignited around her and her newfound invisibility flickered like a pent-up lightning bolt.