Newcomer Summary:
—Monoliths pulse and spread spores called Symbiotes. Whoever fuses climbs ten ranks, from Dust-Tier to Obelisk-Tier.
—Raiko Vernier wields Aureos, a Luxophage that devours light and memories.
—After stealing Catalyst Wax and confronting the Watchtower, Raiko, Gearlock, and the android Echo-45 fled to the Umbra Tunnels. There this story begins.
The passageway opened into an artificial cavern lit by purple neon lights and blue kerosene lamps. Hundreds of awnings hung between concrete columns like colorful bats. The air smelled of sweet spices, ozone, and something even stranger: the metallic scent of bottled light.
"Welcome to the Black-Light Market," Echo-45 whispered, modulating his voice so as not to draw stares. "Official Gray Zone. Here the Watchtower secretly pays and kills the shadow, but never dares to put up a sign."
Raiko felt Aureos lick his lips beneath his skin. Each bulb dripped photons as if bleeding, and his symbiote wanted to lick every drop.
"Relax," he warned silently. "We're just watching."
Aureos replied with a silken hiss.
"Rule one," Gearlock intervened, pushing his shoulder. "Don't buy anything too shiny." Maybe it's your own memory, packaged and resold. Rule two: keep your head down. And rule three: if something smells like pure business, it's definitely cheating.
"Always so optimistic?" Echo-45 snarled.
"That's the optimistic version," Gearlock countered.
2 Light Currency: "Pikes"
A liquid crystal sign displayed the exchange rate:
1 pike = 1 minute of pure light
10 pikes = 1 milligram of Catalyst Wax
50 pikes = 1 vivid memory (grade C)
"Pikes," Echo-45 explained. "They crystallize by filtering photons through a vacuum field. They sell everything from light bulbs to entire mornings. See that one?" He pointed to an old woman with an amber jar. "Auctioning off 'the smell of rain before Veiled Impact.' Two hundred pikes and rising."
Raiko swallowed. For Jade, he needed Wax, medicine, and now… a life without drones behind him. Everything cost a fortune, and he barely had a handful.
They stopped before a broken wooden dais. A man in a Victorian-style gown—glassy eyes, a merchant's smile—held up a crackling cyan vial.
"Lot one hundred and one!" he shouted. "The moment I kissed my newborn son." Grade B memory, emotional intensity nine. Starting bid: sixty thousand francs.
Hands went up: a Technophage with antennae, a woman covered in vines of light, a nobleman cloaked in golden dust. Each bid glittered: tiny stars leaping from a bracelet to a collecting drone.
Aureos moaned like a wolf in heat.
See? That spark fills the soul. Give it to me.
Raiko clenched his fists until his nails dug into his palms.
"Don't even think about it," he muttered.
Gearlock coughed.
"Business time. That one in the robe is Laminar Moth. He can erase your Watchtower signal, if you pay."
"With what?" Raiko's pocket felt as empty as his stomach.
"With the right memory," the big man said, with a bitter grimace. "Or with someone else's life; but I'd rather not start there."
They jostled closer. Laminar Moth smelled the light on Raiko before they spoke; her pupils dilated like a cat before a bird.
"Fresh Luxophage," she purred. "And with a really hot scent. Lucky my business is... putting out fires."
"I need my signature gone," Raiko said, "and the Watchtower to stop looking for me."
"Sure, sure. Anything's possible. Price: a grade-A souvenir. Something that defines you. No frills."
Raiko felt cold. Her life held few bright memories, and they were all tied to Jade.
"The first one you ask for will be expensive," the merchant added. "The second, priceless."
Gearlock snarled.
"I'll give you sixty pike and a modified Troll Sensor."
"Do you think I'm dealing in junk?" Laminar Moth smiled. "I want human light, not batteries."
Raiko looked at his own reflection in a broken mirror. Would he surrender Jade's smile? Her voice saying "good morning" when he could still speak without coughing?
Before he could decide, a faint voice called out to him from behind a cage of luminous bars.
"Vernier... Is that you?"
Raiko turned. His heart leapt. Between bars of photon light stood Kira Stoneveil—the fallen noble who had disappeared after the clan war. Her hair was silver, her Geophage crest broken at her neck. Her eyes were pleading.
"I thought you were dead," Raiko murmured.
"I was better off dead than here," she replied with a broken smile. "Moth is auctioning me off tomorrow. He says my Half-Core is worth a hundred pike a drop."
Laminar shrugged.
"Supply and demand. She has a very rare Geophage. You guys are in a hurry. We can make it work."
"Free her," Raiko demanded. "Include it in the deal."
"For an S-grade memory," Moth clicked his tongue. "Something so bright it blinded me."
A crash of metal against stone shook the market. Everyone fell silent at once: in the distance, a mechanical rumble was getting closer. Helios-Seraph had found the junk entrance and was coming for them.
"Time's up," Moth crooned. "Either I pay now, or we'll all end up X-rayed."
Raiko felt as if his skull were splitting. Aureos hissed excitedly; Jade coughed and mingled with Kira behind bars; the megadroid's footsteps shook the floor.
"Here," he said finally, holding his hand open: "The first time Jade breathed without pain. That moment lasts three seconds, but it's worth a lifetime."
Moth inhaled, ecstatic. With a delicate device, he extracted a golden filament from Raiko's chest. The emptiness felt like liquid ice spilling between his ribs. Aureos groaned, satiated and sad at the same time.
"Deal." Moth punched a button; Kira's bars went dark. Another tap and a collection drone flew toward Raiko, projecting a black seal that absorbed the light from its plates until they were almost opaque. "Signature rescinded. The Watchtower will search for you, but they won't find you... until your next blast."
"Move," Gearlock growled, dragging Kira. "Helios is upon us."
The walls shook; a solar beam pierced the ceiling, liquefying entire stalls. Screams. The market became an anthill. Echo-45 intercepted the beam with a data shield, twisting the light like a crooked mirror.
"I have 40 seconds of lockout," he announced. "Run for the east gate."
They ran. Kira could barely stand; Gearlock lifted her over his shoulder. Raiko felt the gap of newly healed memory, a pang that hurt more than any wound. But he kept going, driven by adrenaline… and by the feeling that, despite everything, something had ignited inside him: a bitter, hot determination.
"A gap is filled with new light," Aureos murmured, almost sympathetically.
"Not yet," Raiko said softly. "This light is mine."
At the end of the corridor, a rusted hatch opened onto a flooded service tunnel. The water was waist-deep and smelled of radioactive algae. Behind them, Helios-Seraph crushed stalls, and bursts of pike turned the darkness impossible colors.
"Jump!" Gearlock shouted.
They jumped. The icy water bit into their skin; Aureos hissed, twitching. Behind her, the megadroid slammed into the hatch, which collapsed with a roar. The tunnel flooded completely, and the current swept the four away like leaves in a raging river.
Raiko felt like she was drowning, but the Luxophage released an internal flare that illuminated the water. She saw the exit: a vent leading to the storm drain. She followed the light, poking her head into the cold, damp early morning air.
Gearlock emerged beside her, gasping. Echo-45 appeared next, carrying a semi-conscious Kira.
Behind her, the Black-Light Market burned; jets of light shot up like silent fireworks. Helios-Seraph roared inside, trapped between collapsing neon lights and exploding pikes like mines.
In the dimness of the conduit, Raiko allowed himself a respite. The waking city murmured in the distance. He had saved Kira, erased her signature… but he had paid with one of the few lights he had left.
"Is it worth it?" Gearlock asked, shaking off the water.
Raiko couldn't answer. He looked at his shaking hands, the plates barely visible beneath his skin.
"I'll know when Jade smiles again," he whispered.
Kira coughed, sat up, and looked at him with confused gratitude.
"I owe you one. And I have information that can reverse the debt a hundredfold." He pulled a crystal from inside his torn jacket. "Geophage Half-Core. Inside are coordinates to something the Monolith Senate doesn't want us to know."
Echo-45 scanned the crystal, its lenses spiraling open.
"Pulse Map. If this is real, it shows where the next heartbeat will come forward."
Raiko closed her eyes. The hole in her chest burned, but the horizon filled with new paths: a secret the factions would kill to have, a sister who could still be saved, and a hungry Luxophage that beat with her heart.
"Then let's continue," she whispered. "The light doesn't wait."
And they entered the gloom of the rain tunnels, where dawn never comes... but where every stolen spark can ignite a revolution.