The fog thickened as Ren followed the Siphoner, swallowing the alley and muting the city's distant hum.
Every footstep sounded muffled, as if the surface above them—the worn streets, the lamps, the empty silence—were only a thin disguise over something deeper, older. The parasite in Ren's chest flickered with alertness—restless but quiet, like a predator watching from behind his ribs.
The Siphoner walked without turning back, their cloak trailing through the mist like a shadow with intent.
They kept moving until the last lamp sputtered out. The cracked cobblestones underfoot gave way to uneven slabs of stone, frost-scarred and polished smooth by something that felt older than the city itself. Strange symbols appeared along the walls—spirals carved into rock, jagged sigils etched beneath layers of frost, streaks of metallic paint that pulsed with dim blue currents.
Ren shivered.
The air had changed.
It felt colder. Ancient.
Like standing inside the breath of something that had been frozen for centuries.
"What is this place?" he asked.
The Siphoner crouched beside a rusted drain cover wedged into the icy stone. Their palm hovered above the metal, and the veins along their glove lit with violet static. A pulse of energy seeped downward.
A low thum rolled beneath their feet—
but not like machinery.
More like a glacier shifting in its sleep.
Then the ground split open.
The drain cover sank soundlessly, revealing a circular shaft descending into darkness. A cold wind surged up from below—sharp, moaning, the kind of wind that came from deep, dead places. It stole warmth, sound, and a little bit of courage.
The Siphoner glanced over their shoulder.
"Welcome," they said, "to the Volt Undercity."
They dropped in without hesitation.
Ren swallowed the fear tightening in his throat and followed.
He climbed down a metal ladder, feeling each rung tremble with distant vibrations—like ice cracking miles away, or machinery turning somewhere deep in the earth. When he reached the bottom, the darkness flickered alive.
Lines of blue light traced themselves across the walls—glowing like veins beneath translucent, frozen skin. Conduits and crystalline cables emerged from the stone, pulsing softly, as if the entire cavern were breathing.
But beneath the faint neon glow was something else.
An immense cold.
A stillness so deep it felt ancient.
Ren turned slowly.
The Undercity was not carved by men.
It felt eroded—hollowed out over centuries by a crawling glacier that had since retreated, leaving polished walls smoothed by ice. The stone still held the ghost of its old master: the Silent Tongue, the ancient glacier whose winds once shrieked through these tunnels.
"This…" Ren breathed.
"This was under the city all this time?"
"No." The Siphoner stepped forward.
"This is the city."
Ren frowned. "What are you talking about?"
The Siphoner tapped a glowing conduit.
"The world above is a shell. A distraction.
Everything real—City Volt, neural grids, memory vaults, Auxiliary links—runs through this."
They gestured around them.
"These tunnels weren't built. They were left behind when the glacier withdrew. The Volt system was built inside the wound it carved."
A cold pulse rippled through the cavern.
The parasite inside Ren tightened, sending a sharp jolt up his spine.
The Siphoner's eyes narrowed.
"Yours is reacting."
They stepped closer, studying Ren like someone examining a loaded weapon.
"It can sense the Hive Core."
Ren stiffened.
"The… what?"
A distant rumble vibrated through the frozen stone. The lights flickered brighter—as if something massive, something sleeping, had shifted deeper in the vault.
"The center of all Auxiliary consciousness," the Siphoner said.
"If you get too close, your parasite could awaken fully…"
A pause.
"Or consume you."
Ren's breath caught.
"Consume me?"
"No one knows what a Tri-Linked Vessel becomes when fully aligned."
A low hum vibrated the walls.
"Dragonfly instinct. Spider instinct.
Centipede instinct. Three predators. One host. One heartbeat."
Ren swallowed hard.
"What happens if I can't control them?"
The Siphoner's voice stayed cold.
"Then the city will sense you.
The Sparrow will track you.
And they will tear the Auxiliaries from your body."
A deeper cold filled Ren's lungs.
He glanced at the conduits—glowing like veins in a frozen giant—and wondered how many lives, how many experiments, had been buried beneath this city.
A faint chittering echoed down the tunnel. Sharp. Metallic. Hungry.
Ren stepped back instinctively.
"What was that?"
The Siphoner's posture stiffened.
"We're not alone."
Static rippled across the chamber. Lights dimmed. The cold sharpened.
Something crawled from the shadows, skittering across stone—rapid, articulate, metal clicking against ice. It moved like an organism but echoed like machinery. Its outline was wrong—too many legs, too many angles, too much precision.
The Siphoner raised their hand, violet energy coiling up their arm.
"Stay behind me," they murmured.
"You're about to meet the Undercity's defense system."
Ren's instincts erupted—
dragonfly sharpening vision,
spider tightening timing,
centipede flooding him with controlled adrenaline.
From the glacier-carved tunnel ahead, the creature stepped fully into the blue light.
Not human.
Not Auxiliary.
Not machine.
A hybrid guardian born from ice, metal, and Volt.
And it wasn't alone.