When Misha's mechanical arm plunged into the glacier fissure, Raine's scar burned—the 「III」 brand on her metal knuckles oozing the same black slime as Garret's claws.
"Vessel sir, long time no see." Her voice was both gear-crushed mechanical and girlishly sweet. "These toys... were thawed just for you."
(Deep ice groaned. Hundreds of cryo-pods surfaced in the fissure, each containing humanoid beasts—dragon pupils, Inquisitor spines, slime-core pulsing.)
Ellen's starlight chips flashed warnings: 「Genetic match 99.9%... First Inquisitor clones...」 Her metal fingers dug into Raine's shoulder: "Run... These are living time anchors..."
Serena's asphalt wings flared, claws shredding the nearest pod. The beast inside twitched, its forehead 「III」 brand syncing with Misha's arm.
"Fuck... The Citadel's taste keeps getting worse." Serena's fangs sank into the beast's neck, only for her own blood to reverse-flow into the wound. "It drinks me?!"
Misha laughed, flicking a void-crystal into the fissure. As it fell, all beasts awoke—their triple-layered pupils: Garret's ice-blue outermost, Inquisitor's mechanical red mid-layer, Lyria's teardrop azure at the core.
(Gills spasming, Cycle 198's memory shards stabbed Raine's mind—)
Child Misha strapped in a Citadel pod labeled 「Synced Vessel 003」, Elaina injecting dragon genes into her spine.Garret's claw smashing the pod glass, slime splashing Misha's face as he cursed: "Another unlucky bastard..."Serena's wings cocooning dying Misha, fangs piercing her 「III」 brand: "Live... You're worth more than them..."
"Done reminiscing?" Misha's arm quantum-reconfigured into a bladed whip. Where it lashed, holograms of 299 parallel Misha's executions surfaced: hanging, dissolving, headshots...
The beasts' slime-cores.They tore from pods, claws secreting acid that melted Ellen's scales.
"Alert... core meltdown..." Ellen's optics glitched into Elaina's weeping mode: "I failed her..."
Serena's tail crushed three beasts, but her asphalt blood crystallized on contact with their brands. Her voice glitched: "Misha... your genes... are me and Lyria's mashup?!"
(More pods rose from trembling ice. Pod lids engraved with 「Raine+Lyria+Garret」 codes.)
Misha's arm jammed into her own temple, yanking out a pulsating void-nerve strand: "Surprise? I'm your failed prototype... Cycle 298.5's scrap." The strand unfolded into a quantum gate—inside floated hundreds of Lyria-Serena hybrid embryos.
Raine's claws struck Misha, only for the 「III」 Slime crawled up his arm, spelling 「Vessel Reclamation: 79%」 on his scar.
"Next cycle..." Misha's exposed mechanical heart whirred through blood-ice, "...find me sooner."
Submerged Currents
In the Citadel ruins, the First Inquisitor's mask activated. Its inner codes read 「Candidate 003 Awakening Complete」—as live feeds showed Garret's claw debris reassembling inside Misha's quantum gate...