The operative whimpered, a thin rasp against the vent's updraft. His gaze flicked between the roaring drop and Nithos's calm face. “I didn’t know! Morvan said it was a sanitation sweep! That’s all!” “Sanitation for *me*.” Nithos tightened his grip. Bone grated in the shattered wrist, and the man choked on a scream. “You saw what tore through your squad. You're Morvan’s lapdog, but you are also a witness.” He hauled the operative back from the drop, slamming him into the jagged rebar of a collapsed gantry. Air blasted from the soldier's lungs. Nithos leaned down, speaking low. “You will tell Morvan this: the scav-beasts were an anomaly. A rogue pack. Your squad was overwhelmed, and you barely crawled out. I hid behind the scrap-bins until the pack moved on. Clear?” The man coughed, spraying crimson onto the rusted deck. “He won’t buy it. He tracked the core's ping...” Nithos pinned the man's throat to the girder. A silver ring pulsed beneath Nithos's left temple—the digested gift of a cerebral-scuttler taken down in the sump pipes three nights ago. “He will believe it,” Nithos said, his pitch sliding into a rhythmic drone. “Because it is the only memory your ruined head will carry.” He drove a thumb behind the man's ear, a combat-suppression lock Varek had perfected during the Siege of Red Sands. The soldier's pupils dilated to black pinpricks. Into the gap, Nithos hammered the revised account: chittering mandibles in the dark, severed limbs tumbling into sludge, a terrified book-keeper wedged behind a bulkhead, the prize core tumbling down an intake pipe. [PSYCHIC LURE: Memory Implantation – Success] Nithos let go. The enforcer blinked, pupils shrinking back to uneven specks, and scrambled backward over the rust-eaten floorplates. “The pack... clawed through the plating! Squad wiped out... the bookkeeper hid in the ductwork...” His teeth clacked together as he muttered, terror smoothed out into a dull, repetitive twitch. “Run,” Nithos said. “Deliver your report to Morvan.” The man lurched into the gloom, clutching his mangled wrist and muttering to the walls. Rix scampered from the shadow of an exhaust pipe, brass gears whirring inside its ribcage, and rolled the glowing Veridian Core against Nithos's boot. “Too early for that, Rix,” Nithos muttered, picking up the shimmering core. “Morvan’s attention is a beacon. We need more layers before we invite the full light.” He returned to his hovel, the metallic tang of burnt oil and fear clinging to his clothes. Mildew and rotting vellum ruled the small room. Syris sat perched on the corner of his pine desk, her matte-black Enforcer coat dark against the peeling yellow walls. Her arms stayed crossed, her posture rigid, studying him through narrowed lids. “Jarkas just dragged himself through the sector gate,” she said without greeting him. “Mangled wrist, muttering about swarms. The Syndicate doesn't run from lower-tier vermin. What happened out there?” Nithos rolled the Veridian Core across the scarred wood. Green phosphorescence flared over mounds of unbound folios. “Razor-beasts,” he said, slumping onto an iron stool. “A hive ruptured through an intake tunnel. Jarkas was slow, but he ran faster than his squadmates.” Syris tapped a knuckle against the glowing crystal. “They are trained vanguard. They do not get overrun by routine vermin. And the perimeter scans reported no structural faults.” She leaned forward. “Varek always told the recruits: ‘Perimeter scans only record what already passed through, not the teeth behind the wall.’” Nithos's fingers froze on the rim of his desk. He reached for a tattered manual on hydraulic seals, turning its brittle pages to mask his hands. “Varek. The fallen champion. Dead and buried, and good riddance. A stubborn brute who mistook suicide runs for valor.” Her mouth tightened. “You understand nothing about him.” Her tone went low and hard, carrying the stubborn bite Nithos remembered from the frontline barracks. “He stood between the lower vents and the breach when the Syndicate fled. He was dedicated to this city.” “He died for a corrupt guild that measures human worth in combat logarithms,” Nithos sneered, dropping the manual onto a pile of ledgers. Dust puffed across the desk. “That is not dedication. That is gullibility. And it earned him a ditch.” He glared across the room. “You preserve his memory like a sacred icon, yet you cash rations from the men who signed his death warrant. Pitiful.” Her nostrils flared; her lips thinned into a pale line, shutting down into granite discipline. It suited him. Sympathy was an operational risk, and he could not afford an inquisitive Enforcer poking around his shelves while his stats climbed toward baseline. Before Syris could respond, a blaring, resonant chime echoed through the hovel, shaking the dust from the ceiling. A chill, holographic text overlay shimmered into existence before them, cutting through the tense silence. [GENESIS SYSTEM ALERT: Kryk Hollows S-RANK DUNGEON – ABNORMAL OPENING DETECTED. PREMATURE RUPTURE. EXPEDITION PROTOCOL INITIATED. ALL AVAILABLE COMBAT CLASSES – REPORT FOR DEPLOYMENT.] [WARNING: UNSTABLE ENVIRONMENTAL READINGS. HIGH RISK OF CATASTROPHIC COLLAPSE. IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION RECOMMENDED.] Syris straightened, staring through the blue text. “Kryk Hollows? The seal held eighty percent integrity yesterday. If an S-rank rift opens in the lower quadrant, the shockwave will breach tiers four through seven.” Cold calculation displaced Nithos's annoyance. Kryk Hollows was an abattoir, lethal even to armored shock troops. In this brittle body, his devoured enhancements were still modest. He glanced at the core on the table, calculating the caloric threshold needed to convert its essence before mobilization. Before either of them could process the implications, a new hum filled the air. A pristine Academy herald drone, sleek and silent, drifted through the open doorway of the hovel. It paused mid-air, its optical lens fixing on Nithos, then projected a shimmering, full-color hologram. Morvan, Guildmaster of the Oravan Syndicate, stood before them, his sneering face unnervingly clear in the cramped space. “Rejoice, archivist,” Morvan said through the speaker grid, lips curving in a slow, patronizing grin. “Your guild fees are forgiven. You have been selected for front-line field collation at the rift site.”

Echoes of the Vanguard