Before the first light of NeoLuna could touch the Spire's chrome summit, the Neon Umbra assembled at its hidden service entrance—an unmarked flood door tucked beneath an abandoned mag-rail station. Tuckling tightened the straps on his breacher pack, eyes flicking between reinforced panels and the Prism's faint glow behind containment glass. Nyx crouched beside him, valence cables snaking into her deck as she prepared to ghost through the Spire's firewalls.
Aris led the way, alloy rod humming low in his grip. Eira wove lunar mana into their shadows, cloaking their silhouettes from the Spire's surface drones. Rho and Kael fell in beside him, twin kinetic shields reflecting the corridor's harsh LEDs. Each footstep sent a distant echo up the tower's steel spine.
At the flood door control, Nyx's fingers flew across a holo-terminal. Alarms ticked in her earpiece as she forced the panel into a half-open state. Pressure seals hissed, and they slipped inside a maintenance lift platform. Aris pressed the call plate—nothing happened. The car shuddered, then plunged straight down, bypassing programmed stops.
Lights flickered, and they passed through levels uncharted on any public schematics: the Helix Core sub-basement, where coolant rivers ran beneath grated walkways; the Lost Archives, where datacrypts hummed with forbidden research; and the Blackwater Foundry, heavy with phantasmal steam. At each landing, they paused only long enough for Nyx and Tuckling to suppress security nodes and reroute patrol drones. Eira's runes flared whenever a scan approached, turning the team effectively invisible to company optics.
When the elevator finally stilled, the doors parted on a circular chamber carved from obsidian alloy: the Spire's lower sanctum. Here, crystalline veins pulsed in time with the Prism's resonance, attuned to its frequencies. Aris felt the artifact's heartbeat thrum through his spine. He stepped forward, alloy rod raised in warning.
Suddenly, a wall of augmented wardens and cyber-sentinels blocked the exit corridor—corporate guardians deployed ahead of time. Their armor gleamed red in the low light, and a commanding voice echoed from hidden speakers: "Hold position. Surrender the Prism."
Mara whispered, "We've been expected."
The Prism in its lattice cage flared bright, casting fractured patterns across the chamber's curves. In that dazzling pulse, the Umbra braced for the first strike of a battle that would decide not just their fate, but the future of NeoLuna itself.