The first scream didn't come from Elian.
It came from the system.
An alarm pulsed through Sector F7-12 — sharp, metallic, and sterile. Emergency glyphs flared red across the walls. Lights flickered into combat mode, casting the corridor in flashes of white and crimson.
Too late.
Elian had already opened the door.
And the world was already bleeding.
Six Purifiers stormed the lower corridor.
Threadsteel armor gleaming.
Pikes ignited in hand — buzzing with pale-white energy, pure and surgical.
Their formation was perfect. Measured. Fearless.
They rounded the corner—
And froze.
Elian stood alone at the center of the hallway.
His coat hung still.
The Seed hovered beside his shoulder, pulsing faintly in time with his breath.
Rotlight curled across the floor like smoke that had forgotten how to rise.
"Target confirmed!" the squad lead shouted.
"Unclassified rot anomaly. Engage!"
They raised their pikes—
Elian raised his hand.
[Signal Detected: Crownless]
[Corruption Threat: Unmapped | Tier Classification: Incomplete]
[System Directive: Eliminate On Contact]
Threadlight flared.
One Purifier fired first — a clean bolt of condensed code.
It tore through the air—
—and vanished.
Because the air in front of Elian wasn't empty anymore.
The rotborne woman had stepped through.
Her transformation wasn't subtle.
Her right arm had become a jagged, obsidian blade — fused with living bone and echo-thread. Her skin shimmered with veins of pulsing corruption. No armor. No shield.
Only vengeance.
She moved like a thought too sharp to forget.
Her blade punched into the Purifier's neck and through the other side.
Rotlight burst from the wound like spores from a split fruit.
The man collapsed without sound.
"Second breach!" another shouted.
They turned.
Too slow.
The Rotkin Alpha dropped from the ceiling like a predator falling out of thought. It crashed into one of the rear guards, slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack stone and spine alike.
It didn't kill with elegance.
It ripped.
Another Purifier tried to retreat, activating a short-range blink glyph.
He vanished—
—and reappeared impaled on the wall behind Elian, where a second Rotkin was already waiting.
Blood sprayed across white walls.
Steam hissed from the floor where rotlight met sterilization protocols.
The Purifiers hadn't been ambushed.
They'd been invited.
And now?
They understood too late.
The girl behind Elian exhaled slowly.
"Is this revenge?"
Elian didn't turn.
"No."
"This is a lesson."
One of the Purifiers panicked.
Dropped his pike.
Turned to run.
Elian watched him go.
Then flicked his fingers.
The man staggered mid-step.
Then fell forward.
His limbs twitched like a puppet with tangled strings.
Then—
Nothing.
[Thread Severed – System Control Link Interruption]
[Subject: Deceased – Neural Burn Confirmed]
Blood spread across the floor in soft, perfect symmetry.
It flowed around Elian's boots like it respected him.
The last two Purifiers backed against the corridor wall, pikes shaking.
One snapped, screaming at the girl:
"You're Seedborne! They locked you up for a reason!"
She stepped forward, rotbone blade humming like a memory reborn.
Her eyes were dead.
But her voice was clear.
"And you followed their orders…"
"For the same reason I obeyed their silence."
She lunged.
Her blade arced through the first Purifier's leg.
He dropped screaming.
She pinned him to the floor.
"They didn't lock me away because I was dangerous," she whispered.
"They locked me away because I knew what they were."
Then she ended him.
The final Purifier dropped to his knees.
"Mercy—!"
Elian stepped forward.
The man froze.
His hand went to a glyph.
Elian raised one finger.
The glyph cracked in his palm like fragile glass.
"You're not worth a death," Elian said.
"But you are worth a story."
He turned to the rotborne woman.
"Let him live."
"Let him talk."
She hesitated—
Then lowered her blade.
The man crawled backward, gasping, trailing blood and thread fragments behind him.
[System Alert: Mission Failure – Hostile Entities Exceeded Tier Parameters]
[Directive Updated: Seek Reinforcement – Transmit Encounter Data]
The hallway fell quiet again.
Only four figures stood beneath the emergency lights.
One man.
One girl.
One rotborne weapon.
One beast with memory for blood.
Elian turned to the woman.
"How do you feel?"
She looked at her hands.
At the red.
At the rot.
Then up at him.
"Like I'm not done yet."
Elian nodded once.
"Good.
He turned toward the far end of the corridor.
Where the door to Sector F7's core systems stood sealed.
And pulsing.
"Then let's break their silence completely."