9:08 PM – Ghostline Southern Ridge Safehouse
For one breath, the mountain held its silence.
The echoes of the last assault still shimmered in the concrete bones of the bunker, but inside, it was still. Warm. Almost human.
Aiko sat against the reinforced wall, legs tucked up, blood crusted under her fingernails. Her Seal had dimmed to a dull violet, pulsing like a wounded nerve. She stared down at it—this thing branded into her from birth, this thing that turned her into a signal. A war cry.
Ryoji knelt beside her, one hand still wrapped around a blood-streaked combat blade. He didn't speak. He just sat there, letting the silence settle like snow between them.
Finally, Aiko broke it. Her voice small, like she was afraid it would shatter.
"They don't see me. None of them do. Just the Seal. Just the pattern. I don't even think I know who I am without it anymore."
Ryoji turned, slowly. His voice was sandpaper.
"You're not the Seal."
"Then what am I?"
"You're the one still breathing. Still standing. After all of it."
She looked up at him. Her eyes had changed. Not just color, not just intensity—depth. Like the Seal wasn't just inside her anymore, but somehow below her.
"They keep calling me a bloom," she said. "But flowers die when they open."
Ryoji reached out. Placed his bloodied hand gently over hers.
"Not this one."
The lights flickered.
Aiko's Seal throbbed once, violently. Her eyes flared wide.
"They're inside the tunnels."
9:10 PM – Ridge Sublevel 4 Tunnel System
Sirens wailed through stone.
The metal blast doors ruptured inward with a shriek. A blur of surgical light and screaming steel tore through the shadows. The Serrated Sisterhood had arrived.
Six of them. Pale. Smiling. Their armor cobbled together from surgical gear, blood bags, and carbon-fiber restraints. Each wielded something handcrafted and horrible—a vibro-chainsaw, a bone-drill, a spine-lifter. The hall became a dissection table.
One of them whispered, spinning a scalpel like a coin:
"We only want a piece of her. Maybe two. Maybe the ones that dream."
Miura fired the first shot—headshot clean—but the Sister rose again with a split skull and kept laughing.
"They reengineered pain," Ryoji growled, raising his rotary cannon.
"So we'll reengineer hell."
9:12 PM – Internal Corridor Collapse
The Sisterhood carved through the tunnels like parasites. Every door they passed became opened veins. They weren't just trying to reach Aiko—they were clearing her from the bone.
Ryoji took two down at point-blank range, shredding armor and tissue alike, but another one leapt from the ceiling vents with surgical hooks, slicing through his jacket. Blood flew.
Aiko screamed—not out of fear, but something deeper.
9:13 PM – Neural Feedback Surge
The Seal responded to her terror.
A pulse erupted from her palm—like sonar, like memory. And the Sister who reached her froze mid-air, eyes melting into white as her nervous system lit up in seizure.
"You see me now," Aiko whispered. "Not the Seal. Me."
Ryoji grabbed her, spun her behind the blast door as Miura launched a proximity charge.
Detonation. Screaming. Silence.
9:15 PM – Interior Debrief
Three dead. Two vanished. One pinned beneath collapsed steel, whispering about "beauty" and "extraction protocols."
Ryoji leaned against the wall, bleeding from the shoulder.
Aiko stood over what was left of the one who called her perfect.
She wasn't shaking anymore.
To be continued in Chapter 63....