Location: Reactor Core Depths – 10:23 AM
The containment chamber collapsed like a dying lung.
Steel warped. Glass shattered. Sparks flew in arcs as red lightning licked the walls.
Ryoji yanked Aiko behind a ruptured console just as the first shockwave hit—an invisible force that flattened metal like paper and knocked Miura off her feet. The roar of pressure wasn't sound—it was force, vibrating through bone, bleeding into the mind.
The thing that stepped free from the cracked chrysalis of its prison wasn't just alive.
It was waking up.
RAZIEL stood nearly three meters tall, wrapped in a shifting mantle of scorched metal and artificial sinew. Glowing threads pulsed across its chest like veins of magma. Its face, masked beneath a shell of cracked obsidian, bore no eyes—only a burning slit where vision might've once existed. From its back rose elongated spines, trembling like antennae feeding on fear.
"I thought it was just a myth," Miura gasped, crawling to her feet, gun shaking in her hands. "RAZIEL wasn't real—it was never finished."
"No," Ryoji said, stepping forward, blades in hand. "It was abandoned."
Aiko trembled. The Seal on her arm flared without her command—responding to the thing before them. Not because it was part of her, but because it recognized her.
RAZIEL turned.
And it spoke.
Not with a mouth. With memory.
"You carry the Root."
Aiko staggered, as if struck.
"You—how do you know—?"
RAZIEL tilted its head, curious, ancient, almost reverent.
"I was made to consume it."
Then it moved.
Ryoji barely had time to tackle Aiko aside as RAZIEL lunged forward, the floor erupting in fire behind it. A massive arm, sheathed in serrated armor, crashed into the control deck. The blast knocked out all light, all sound, all breath.
Miura rolled, firing. Her bullets disintegrated in midair.
"Nothing's penetrating!" she screamed.
"Of course not," Keisuke's voice crackled through, distorted by interference. "That thing was built to kill gods. The only thing that can hurt it is inside Aiko!"
Aiko's eyes widened. "You mean—?"
"The Seal!" Keisuke shouted. "You have to unlock more of it—"
"I can't!" Aiko sobbed. "I don't know how—!"
RAZIEL surged forward again, and Ryoji met it head-on, knives flashing in a storm of steel and desperation.
He struck.
RAZIEL caught the blade between two fingers.
Snapped it like glass.
Then punched.
The impact sent Ryoji flying into the far wall, leaving a crater of cracked concrete and blood. He slumped down, unmoving.
"Ryoji!" Aiko screamed.
RAZIEL advanced.
Each step shattered the ground.
Each breath brought heat like a forge.
Miura unleashed a flurry of plasma fire, trying to stall it—but it was like shooting lightning at a mountain. RAZIEL didn't even notice.
Its focus was Aiko now.
She backed away, heart pounding, the Seal on her skin now burning.
"Why me?" she cried.
RAZIEL paused.
"Because you are the last gate. The Root inside you is the lock. I am the key."
And then—
A memory flickered.
Not RAZIEL's.
Hers.
A vision—blurred, dreamlike.
Of another lab.
Another experiment.
And a boy.
Chained. Screaming.
Becoming something he was never meant to be.
RAZIEL.
She remembered him.
And he remembered her.
RAZIEL's next strike stopped inches from her face.
It hesitated.
The voice inside its mind—fractured, tortured—wavered.
"…Aiko?"
And in that second of hesitation—Ryoji rose again.
Bleeding. Broken. Furious.
He leapt with his last blade drawn and drove it into the glowing sigil between RAZIEL's shoulders.
RAZIEL screamed—a real, human scream.
Then turned, fury reborn.
Its body split open like a burning flower—and revealed more.
A reactor core embedded in its chest, pulsing like a cursed heart.
Keisuke's voice screamed in their ears.
"That core—if it ruptures, the entire undergrid will collapse! Get out—NOW!"
RAZIEL charged.
No more hesitation.
Only annihilation.
To be continued in Chapter 81