The elevator descended in silence, save for the soft hum of the machinery. The shattered lights above flickered intermittently, casting Lyra and Xander in a rhythm of shadow and glow. Raid's jade eyes watched the shaft walls blur past like a silent sentinel, his sleek black form curled at Xander's feet. Lyra kept her hand close to the hilt of her dagger—old instinct, not nerves.
"Something's wrong down there," she murmured.
Xander didn't reply immediately. His heart still thundered from the images left behind in the lab—those haunting, desiccated shells that were once people. Whoever—or whatever—did that wasn't just experimenting. They were harvesting.
"How deep does this place even go?" he asked, more to himself.
Lyra leaned her head back against the cool steel wall. "Longer than the schematics showed. We should've hit sub-level five already."
The elevator suddenly jerked. Lights snapped off. Then on again.
"Raid?" Xander said, eyeing the beast.
Raid growled low, his fur bristling, muscles coiled. The tattoos on his shoulders began to faintly glow with green fire.
Then, a voice crackled through the elevator speaker—distorted, robotic, yet unmistakably human.
> "They hear you now. Veins open. Echoes bleed."
The voice died. The elevator shuddered violently.
Lyra lunged forward, slamming the emergency panel open. Sparks exploded from the wires—already cut.
"We're not stopping," she hissed.
Xander tightened his grip on the Spellcode Interface crystal embedded in his left wrist. "We override it. I can patch into the system."
"You sure?" she asked.
"No."
He knelt and fed a thread of code from the crystal into the wall's access port. His blood burned with the sudden flood of information. This time, it wasn't just data. Something old. Alien. Whispered back.
> "He sees you now."
For a moment, Xander saw a flash—someone else's eyes. Watching him through a veil of static. They glowed red.
Then—
CRASH.
The elevator stopped dead.
Before either of them could react, the floor groaned, then burst downward. They fell.
Raid leapt, grabbing both with his paws. His tattoos erupted into bright green patterns, slowing their descent in bursts. They crashed into a black hallway, dust and debris raining around them.
Xander coughed, pushing himself up. His ears rang.
Lyra was beside him, shaken but alive. "You good?"
"I've been worse."
Raid released a low growl and stalked forward, sniffing the air.
The hallway wasn't like the lab above. It was ancient—pre-tech. Walls were lined with glowing glyphs, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat. And ahead, a sealed door with no handle, no terminal.
A low chant buzzed through the air.
"…Echoforge… awaken…"
Lyra stepped closer to Xander. Her voice was barely audible. "Do you feel that?"
"I think it's… calling me."
His veins itched. Something in his blood was resonating.
He stepped toward the door. The glyphs reacted—flaring in spirals.
Then the door opened on its own, revealing a massive chamber.
It was cathedral-like. Dark spires stretched into a ceiling obscured by mist. Strange machines merged with bone-white structures—half laboratory, half tomb. The air was electric.
In the center floated a coffin made of glass and black stone, suspended in a web of crimson wiring.
Inside it: a girl.
No older than Xander. Wires in her arms. Her chest barely rose and fell. A glowing sigil pulsed beneath her heart.
Lyra inhaled sharply. "Is she—?"
"She's alive," Xander said, approaching slowly.
A nearby terminal flickered to life, unprompted. Text streamed across the screen in corrupted lines:
> SUBJECT: V-0
STATUS: STASIS
CODE INFECTION: CONTAINED
DNA MATCH: 86% – CROFT BLOODLINE
INITIATING UNSEAL SEQUENCE…
Lyra stared. "What the hell does that mean?"
Before he could answer, red klaxons spun. Lights dimmed. And the room began to breathe.
Something was waking up.
Raid positioned himself defensively in front of them, teeth bared.
And then—a voice deeper than anything they'd heard before reverberated through the entire chamber:
> "So the blood returns. Echo-born. Forgotten. And curious."
A shadow peeled itself from one of the walls. It wore a torn white lab coat and no skin. Wires and cables spiraled through where its veins should've been. Its face was a mask of stretched metal, twisted into an eternal grin.
> "The Reclamation begins, child."
Xander didn't have time to think. The figure launched forward.
He raised his arm, instinctively activating Ghostweaving. The air rippled. A translucent barrier of woven spirit threads flared up—just in time to absorb the blow. The attacker snarled as its hand sizzled against the barrier.
But the impact hurled Xander back.
Lyra caught him before he hit the wall. "You're bleeding."
"It's fine."
"You're not fine."
He looked up at her, breath ragged. "I'm not letting this thing take her."
Lyra's eyes flickered between him and the floating coffin. She made a split-second decision.
"I'll distract it. You get her out."
"Lyra—"
"Trust me, Croft."
It wasn't the first time she'd said that. But this time, something was different in her voice. He nodded.
She darted left, daggers drawn, yelling loud enough to draw the monster's attention.
Xander sprinted for the coffin. He pressed his hand against the sigil on its surface.
Nothing.
Until—
A flash of green lightning erupted from his palm. The sigil responded. The glass cracked, then retracted like liquid. The girl inside stirred.
She opened her eyes—pure white.
Then whispered:
> "Don't let it win…"
The monster roared and lunged toward them. Lyra wasn't fast enough this time.
But Raid was.
The jaguar leapt, growing midair. His form expanded into his towering battle form, tattoos pulsing wildly. He slammed into the creature, sending it flying across the chamber.
Xander pulled the girl free. She was weak, but breathing.
Lyra returned, panting, blade stained black. "We need out."
Xander turned to the chamber entrance. The glyphs had changed.
Now they formed a path.
And at the end of the path was a stairwell—spiraling downward, not upward.
"Another level?" Lyra asked.
"No… another world," Xander whispered.
Behind them, the monster screamed—and cracked its own neck as if preparing for round two.
Xander carried the girl, Lyra beside him, and Raid rear-guarding, as they disappeared down the staircase of living glyphs.
The chamber faded into darkness.
And far, far above them, in a different part of the hidden city, Ralph Thorne stood on a balcony of rusted steel, watching the city's neon heart pulse like a dying star.
He smiled, sipping from a glass etched with ancient runes.
> "So... the boy did wake her."
He turned to the shadows behind him, where other figures stood, veiled and silent.
> "Begin the harvest."