The Underlayer breathed like a wounded beast.
Down beneath the city of Nytherion, far below the pulse of neon skies and humming skytowers, the resistance crawled through hollow bones of the old world. Cracked subway tunnels. Flooded data conduits. Forgotten marketplaces now overgrown with luminous fungi and creeping roots that drank static.
Syra hated it down here.
Too quiet. Too damp. Too alive.
She preferred the cold hum of code. Predictable. Contained. This place? It pulsed. Shifted. Watched.
They moved through the tunnels in silence—Kael, limping but refusing help; Bren, chewing on dried rations like they were gourmet; Jax, silent with the Source Key clutched in his satchel, and Syra, leading the way.
They approached a heavy vault door set in the wall like a sunken eye. No lock. No keypad. Just a series of concentric circles etched with old world symbols—part machine, part rune.
Syra stepped forward and placed her hand on the center. The steel shimmered, then peeled open like a blooming flower.
Inside waited the Cipher Witch.
Her sanctum was a cathedral of wires—walls of hanging servers, humming consoles, and floating data sigils. A single beam of synthetic moonlight cut through the ceiling, illuminating her throne: a twisting lattice of scrap and bone.
She sat cross-legged in mid-air, her white dreadlocks floating like kelp in water, her face lined with circuit-scars.
"You bring echoes of old fate," she said without opening her eyes.
"Good to see you too," Kael muttered.
The Cipher Witch floated gently to the ground. "You found it, didn't you?"
Syra pulled the Source Key from Jax's hands and held it up. It pulsed faintly.
The Cipher Witch reached for it—then stopped.
"You touched it?" she asked Jax.
He nodded. "It showed me things. Future things."
"Then it has marked you," she said softly. "Your dreams are no longer yours."
Kael frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means the Wire will come for him in his sleep," she said. "And if it breaks him there, we lose him here."
"Then we protect him," Syra said.
The Cipher Witch turned to her. "You'll do more than that. You will follow him in."
Syra stiffened. "No. I don't link into minds."
"You will now."
Jax spoke up, voice trembling. "If this is how they're coming for me… I won't fight them alone."
Kael looked at Syra. "We need him. We don't have a choice."
Syra clenched her jaw.
"…Fine."
---
That night, the ritual began.
The Cipher Witch drew symbols of encoded glyphs across the sanctum floor using salt mixed with nanodust. Jax lay in the center, the Source Key resting on his chest. Syra sat cross-legged beside him, wires trailing from her skulljack into the dream terminal.
The Witch whispered ancient code in a forgotten tongue. The walls flickered. The servers screamed.
Then darkness.
---
Syra opened her eyes into a different world.
There was no ground.
Only floating platforms of fractured memory. Buildings upside down. Skies that bent sideways. Streets that flowed like rivers, ink-black and endless.
She stood in a version of Nytherion—not real, not fake. A ghost simulation made of memory and fear.
Jax stood nearby, trembling. "I… I know this place."
"What is it?" she asked.
"My childhood. The day my parents were taken by the Wire."
Suddenly, the scene snapped into place.
Bright daylight. Laughter. A boy—Jax, age seven—running through a playground. Then, the sirens. The drones. The cold voice: "Fate Violation Detected."
Jax dropped to his knees. "I can't… watch this again—"
"Don't," Syra said, drawing a dagger from her codebelt. "We're not here to relive. We're here to fight."
But then they came.
From the sky, they descended—faceless drones of white porcelain masks, stitched smiles, eyes like black holes. Dream-Reapers. Creatures of the Wire's subconscious sent to rewrite dreams… and crush rebellion.
Jax froze.
Syra didn't.
She leapt forward, blade glowing with neural flame. Her strike cleaved through the first Reaper—but it reformed in seconds, its shape shifting like clay.
"Memory constructs," she cursed. "They can't be killed. Only rewritten."
She turned to Jax. "You have to remember something else. Anything. A good memory."
Jax clutched his head. "I don't have any—"
"Then make one!"
The world trembled. The playground cracked and warped—turning into a hallway of red glass and static thunder.
Syra screamed as her blade shattered.
She fell through a hole in the dream—
And landed somewhere else.
---
She was in a garden.
Bright. Green. Peaceful.
Kael stood there.
But not the real Kael. This one smiled. Wore white robes. Reached out to her.
"I'm not real," he said. "But I could be."
She backed away. "You're not part of this memory."
"No," he said, stepping closer. "I'm what you wish was real."
He leaned in. "You wish he could care for you the way you care for him. But he won't. He can't. You know that."
"Shut up," she whispered.
"You hide it under snide remarks. Cold logic. But you feel it, Syra. You've always felt it—"
She stabbed him through the chest.
The dream shattered.
She was falling again—
This time into darkness.
---
Jax screamed beside her.
They were back in the playground—now twisted, ruined, filled with Reapers. He was curled in on himself.
"They're breaking through!" he yelled.
Syra reached for the Source Key still pulsing in his chest. Her hand touched it—and everything stopped.
A massive symbol burned into the sky above them.
It looked like an eye.
Then a voice spoke—not with sound, but with code.
> "THE UNWRITTEN HAVE AWAKENED.
THE WIRED FATE WILL BREAK.
AND THE EYE WILL OPEN."
And suddenly—
They were awake.
---
The Cipher Witch stared at them both.
"You triggered it," she said. "The Eye."
"What the hell is that?" Kael demanded.
She looked terrified. "It's not part of the Wire. It predates it."
Syra sat up, chest heaving. "Then what is it?"
The Cipher Witch whispered:
> "It is the first code. Before algorithms. Before fate.
It's the only thing the Wire cannot predict.
And now… it has seen you."