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The sky was cracked.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Overhead, a massive rupture hung like a celestial scar—an endless fissure of white noise and static bleeding across the stratosphere. Broken pieces of reality drifted through it like data blocks, flickering in and out of coherence. Below, the world was no better. What once might've been a city now looked like an autopsy of civilization—concrete veins, rusted metal bones, and neon blood smeared across everything.
And in the center of it all stood a boy.
His charcoal-black skin shimmered under a soft, glitching light. Thin veins of white energy pulsed beneath the surface like circuitry, crawling up his arms, neck, and face. His long coat—stitched from obsidian cloth and shadow—flapped in the windless air.
He wasn't breathing.
He hadn't realized that yet.
The moment he did, his eyes snapped open.
Violet and white rings spun within his irises like fractals. A HUD-like overlay bloomed across his vision. Symbols. Codes. Data fragments. And a name:
> [Subject: NYX VAELTHORN]
[Status: Rebooting… Complete]
[Cipher Activation: 3%]
Then the voice came.
A distortion.
A whisper.
A scream and a song at the same time.
> VEX: "Wake up, Cipher. We're not alone."
He staggered, gripping his forehead as static surged through his skull.
"Wh-what… what the hell are you?" he growled.
> VEX: "What am I? What are you? That's the better question, Nyx."
He looked around. Half-melted buildings. Floating shards of glass. Drones buzzing in the distant air.
Then—click.
A targeting reticle.
> [HOSTILE LOCKED: SENTINEL CLASS - REAPER FRAME]
A mechanical growl echoed. From the smoke, a four-legged Sentinel emerged—its core glowing red, long plasma scythe arms twitching.
"Great," Nyx muttered. "Already being hunted and I don't even know what I am."
> VEX: "You're the thing they failed to kill."
The Sentinel lunged. Fast. Too fast. But Nyx's body moved before he could think.
Flicker.
He vanished.
The machine crashed through the wall behind him.
Nyx reappeared on its back, his hand glowing. The veins of code in his arm brightened, forming glyphs that pulsed with dangerous heat. With a shout, he drove his fist down.
Reality cracked.
His punch didn't just crush metal—it rewrote it. The Sentinel exploded in a spiral of light and broken programming, scattering like pixels caught in wind.
He dropped to his knees, panting.
"What… was that?"
> VEX: "Cipher Eyes. Reality doesn't obey you… it negotiates with you."
"I didn't ask for any of this…"
> VEX: "And yet here we are."
Nyx stood slowly, clutching his side. His skin was glitching—his arm flickered in and out of visual sync. Like he wasn't entirely real.
He walked through the wreckage, deeper into the city's hushed ruins. Graffiti on a wall caught his eye. A symbol: a halo, shattered in four places. Under it, in red ink:
"OBSIDIAN PROTOCOL FAILED. DO NOT REACTIVATE."
"Obsidian Protocol," Nyx whispered. "What is it?"
> VEX: "Your birthright. Your curse. Your reason for existing."
More images flashed in his head. A girl with silver eyes. A broken tower. Screams.
"Lyra," he breathed. "My sister."
His legs gave out. He collapsed near the edge of a half-destroyed skyscraper. Far below, the world shimmered with glitches and digital storms.
He didn't know who he was.
Didn't know what he was.
But something inside him whispered:
She's out there. And you're running out of time.
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