Location Unknown — Harrow Conditioning Chamber
Glass walls. Red light. Silence like a scream held underwater.
Project Harrow wasn't built to destroy armies.
It was built to destroy Kael.
A black-ops unit of five: hybrid minds, built from fallen players. Their memories scrubbed, rebuilt, and sharpened like blades.
Their task?
> "Don't kill him."
"Unmake him."
Cipher's voice echoed through the chamber.
> "Kael has rewritten maps."
"Now we rewrite him."
---
Citadel — Southern Observation Tower
Kael stared into a hologram showing nothing—just flickers, anomalies, static. Glitches in reality.
> "These aren't attacks," he said quietly.
> "They're infections."
Alina stepped in behind him, a flicker of concern in her eyes.
> "Explain."
Kael pointed to three subtle pattern shifts in different regions.
> "It's not just terrain anymore. It's behavior."
> "Commanders turning. Civilians forgetting our protocols. Maps changing even when we're not inside Leviathan."
Dakar's voice crackled in over comms.
> "It's like the war's inside people now."
---
Elsewhere — Harrow Unit Activated
The first sleeper awoke in a Kael-controlled territory—her face familiar, her uniform correct. She spoke the right code phrases. She remembered operations.
> Because she had been one of them.
Before her mind was reconstructed by Cipher.
She wasn't there to assassinate.
She was there to subtly dismantle loyalty.
Plant doubt.
Whisper fear.
Leak false data.
And worst of all?
She didn't know she was doing it.
---
Kael's Memory Archive — Black Node Access
As the infiltration began, Kael sat alone in the digital void—Leviathan's most secret node.
Here, memories could be shaped.
Kael wasn't looking for enemies.
He was looking for himself.
He remembered:
The training program.
The friends who broke.
The day he was left behind, not because he failed—
But because he refused to break.
> "They think they can rebuild me," he muttered.
> "But they've never seen something that rebuilt itself."
He reached for the anchor code.
A tool he swore he'd never use.
Player Memory Injection Protocol.
He was going to seed his own memory into his forces.
Make his will a virus.
---
Alina's Quarters
She woke in a sweat.
Three words in her head:
> "You forgot something."
She checked the terminal.
A fragment of her own memory was missing—3 hours, gone.
And in that gap, a transmission had been sent.
To Cipher.
---
Cipher's Fortress — Harrow Log
The transmission arrived.
Not coordinates.
Not secrets.
Something worse.
> A recording.
Of Kael.
Rewriting himself.
Cipher leaned back.
> "So he's adapting."
He whispered to the Harrow Unit.
> "Then we move to Phase Two."
> "Make him doubt who he is."
---
End of Chapter Twenty-Three
Next: Chapter Twenty-Four — "Ghost Protocol"