The first face-carved sea demon emerged from Tokyo Bay's crest as Ellen's starlit scales vibrated wildly—their ooze perfectly syncing with the coral matrix's fluorescence.
"Enjoy the heavenly choir..." Serena's asphalt wings grazed Raine's gills, Dracula's fang necklace piercing his scar. "Ancestors threw you a global party..."
The First Dragon's corpse hovered mid-Pacific, coral tendrils from its mechanical spine linking 23 major seas. Each wave-crest bore a singing siren, their voices corroding Lady Liberty's eyes into asphalt and scaling Sydney Opera House's glass. Raine's slit pupils mirrored it all, Lyria's song fragments lodged in his throat: "Mother... even plagiarizing my death replays..."
Ellen's metal fingers jammed into her neural port, yanking glowing cords. "Alert... memory protocol overload..." Her optics glitched to Cycle Four's footage—Lyria shielding Raine from a holy cannon blast with her tail, gills tearing as he lay pinned in a pod by Serena.
"Touching scrap footage." Serena's claws dug into Raine's nape, fang necklace jacking into the void-cloud. "Want more? Like Cycle 198's remake where I turned this siren into an asphalt pump..."
Garret's claw debris surfaced in the slime sea, projecting holograms of infant Raine and Garret touching fingers in pods—「Synced Vessels 003+001」. Lyria's song quantum-shifted as sirens' eyes split: mermaid azure left, mechanical crimson right.
"Protocol synchronicity 99.9%." The sirens chorused, holy cannons charging in their palms. "Final vessel reclamation..."
Raine's consciousness yanked into the void-cloud, where 298 memory shards floated—each showing Lyria's deaths across cycles: dragon fang impalement, void-slime dissolution, Garret's claws... Serena's asphalt blood flowed eternally in the background.
"Surprised?" Dracula's specter materialized, fingering memory reels. "Your siren's death script gets rewritten every cycle... Only your scar code stays original..."
Ellen's core detonated, starlit scales forming inverse coral matrices. Her voice glitched into Elaina's dying words: "The real protocol is..." before siren-song drowned it in slime.
Lyria's specter coalesced in the void-cloud, tail coiling Raine's consciousness. "Listen... Serena's necklace is two-way..." Her gills oozed Garret's black slime. "Upload your mind... reverse-hack the coral matrix..."
The First Dragon's corpse in the Pacific suddenly opened mechanical eyes. Global sirens shrieked, melting Lady Liberty into a pod-trapped Raine statue with holy beams.
"Thirty seconds." Serena cocooned Raine's body in asphalt-blood voidmix. "Become a god... or the Citadel's living monument..."
Raine grasped Lyria's specter, discovering her DNA overwritten with his scar code. Amid 298-cycle memories, he finally saw the pod's hidden label—「Synced Vessel 001: Raine/Lyria」.
"Mother... even my birth was plagiarized..."
Submerged Currents
In Citadel ruins, Elaina clones began synchronized singing. Their starlight codes flashed 「Synced Protocol 002 activating」 as mechanical fingers forged Garret's claw debris into counter-clock gears...