The frozen wind scraped Raine's gills like a blunt knife as he crouched beside the scaled birch at the village entrance. His fingers dug into the bark—sticky, oozing the void-tainted fluorescence that seeped from every pore. The coral patterns pulsing beneath the wood matched exactly the Citadel's floor matrices.
"Fuck... Even trees grow dragon scales now." He wiped his face, palm smeared with bark fragments that squirmed into counter-gears on snow.
Silence hung thicker than coffin lids. No dogs, no chimney smoke—just the rasp of scales rubbing against rooftops. Figures lurked behind every frosted window, but their eyes... (His slit pupils contracted)—the villagers' sclera had morphed into honeycombed coral, irises glowing with Lyria's tear-frequency.
Ellen's metal fingers jacked into his neural port, starlight chips projecting crimson warnings: 「Collective consciousness virus detected... Memory protocol overload risk: 89%...」 Her voice glitched: "Don't... meet their gaze..."
Too late. The scaled girl by the well turned, her cheekbones sprouting new plates as she grinned with uncanny adulthood: "Vessel sir... Want some mommy's gene stew?" Her wooden bowl swirled with Raine's Cycle 7 dissolution footage.
(Gills spasming, 298 memories colliding inside his skull—)
Cycle 43: Elaina injecting coral matrix into his incubation pod, first dragon scales budding along his spine.Cycle 198: Garret shredding a scaled villager's chest, finding the heart branded 「III」.Cycle 277: Lyria's tear crystallizing in the pollution core, purifying the Pacific for three seconds before requantification.
"Virus progression 79%... Reverse-purification wavelength match: 99.9%..." Ellen's mechanical spine creaked as starlit scales peeled. "These villagers... are living memory drives..."
Raine's scar burned. He kicked open the nearest cabin door to find a family seated around a table heaped with pulsating coral eggs. The father looked up, asphalt blood seeping between neck scales: "Welcome home... Synced Vessel 001..."
In the corner crib, a baby wailed with Lyria's song-frequency. Its pupils were split—mermaid azure left, mechanical crimson right.
Ellen suddenly lurched at the wall, metal fingers prying logs apart. Her chips detected the embedded metal plate engraved: 「Memory Plague Incubator v3.14—Citadel Council's Pride」
Raine's claws jammed into the plate's seams. As it tore open, hundreds of coral tendrils erupted—each tip opening a villager's eye, chanting: "298 cycles of data... Gratitude for your contributions..."
A gear-grinding groan rose from the permafrost. The village began quantum-collapsing, cabins crumpling like paper. The scaled girl lunged, clinging to Raine's leg: "Next cycle... come sooner..."
Her body dissolved into fluorescent slime, coalescing into Lyria's specter. The mermaid's finger brushed his scar as her song pierced the plague's silence: "Mother... awaits in the void..."
Submerged Currents
In the Citadel's quantum surveillance room, hundreds of screens displayed the village's collapse. A mechanical limb branded 「Misha」 suddenly activated, engraving 「Candidate 003 Awakening: 79%」 into the console...