The first stone hound hit Eloy’s blade before the timer ticked to eighty-six.

Caldera’s Edge sang against his palm, a humming frequency that resonated through his wrist and into the restructured mana pathways still sitting at twenty-four percent integration. The hound’s momentum carried it past him, stone claws skidding across the chamber floor, and Eloy pivoted, letting the blade carry him through the turn.

Don’t overcommit. Learn the swing.

He didn’t know the attack cadence. Every weapon in the original game had a rhythm. A hidden frame data. Light attack, light attack, heavy. The gap between input and animation. This blade was Anomaly-compatible. That meant the cadence might not follow standard parameters.

[ SIPHON TIMER: 83 SECONDS ]

Three hounds stacked left. His HUD painted them in wireframe amber, hitboxes overlapping, movement vectors fanning. He sidestepped the first, let the second overshoot, and brought the blade down through the third’s shoulder joint. Stone split. The hound’s foreleg detached and hit the floor in two pieces.

Chat scrolled.

[speedGoblin_]: that split the hitbox clean. blade’s got armor pen.

[coldfront44]: looks like pre-war alloy damage. constructs have standard stone resistance but the edge is ignoring it.

[LMAO_cat]: STONE PUPPY GO BYEBYE

Two more hounds adjusted their angle. Flanking. Eloy’s eyes couldn’t track both.

[IsoldeSimp47]: LEFT LEFT LEFT

[xX_Blademaster_Xx]: RIGHT SIDE TOO BRO

[QuietLurker01]: left one’s feinting. right is committing.

Eloy planted his back foot. The left hound lunged, pulled its weight at the last frame. Feint. The right one committed, jaws opening on a hinge of compressed stone, and Eloy drove Caldera’s Edge through the open mouth. The blade punched out the back of its skull.

Fourteen thousand eyes.

He couldn’t see everything. Chat could.

Purple light washed the chamber. Isolde’s lightning arced across the arena in two surgical bursts, each strike hitting the keystone above the nearest alcove. Stone shattered. The alcove’s left support column crumbled, dragging half the opening down into rubble, sealing the spawn point. One less entry vector.

She didn’t speak. Her hands moved in short, precise gestures, threading the next bolt between her fingers before the first had finished arcing. Controlled. No wasted mana.

[404ManaNotFound]: she’s conserving. smart. we can’t waste the mana potions

Maya’s wind walls compressed the air on Eloy’s right flank.

Three hounds collided with the barrier and reeled, their charge broken against invisible pressure. She stood with her feet set wide, one hand pressing the ledger satchel against her hip, the other directing wind threads with small finger movements. Knuckles white on the strap.

[crispyfry99]: maya fighting one-handed while holding everything is insane

[dudefromfloripa]: she’s literally not letting go of those ledgers

The amber glyphs on the walls flickered. Just a stutter. A half-beat of instability that Eloy’s peripheral vision caught before the chat could flag it.

Above them, the arena seal cracked.

A spiderweb of amber light spreading from the center of the slab, the sound a high-frequency shriek that cut through the hound impacts. The ten constructs had reached the seal. Their gauntlets were hammering the stone from above.

[ SIPHON TIMER: 71 SECONDS ]

Eloy cut through another hound. The blade took less resistance now. He was learning the weight. The cadence was starting to feel less like discovery and more like memory.

The seal fractured.

A spray of amber light. Stone fragments rained down. The first construct’s gauntlet punched through.

Isolde’s voice cut across the chamber. "They’re through."

The ten constructs dropped with none of the hounds’ brute falling. Those had hit the floor like thrown stones, heavy and predictable. But the constructs descended in coordinated pairs, their bodies absorbing the thirty-meter drop with no visible impact, no recovery frames. They landed already moving. Already spreading.

Eloy’s HUD painted them in red wireframe. Different hitbox profile. Taller. Humanoid. Joints that articulated with pre-war precision instead of the hounds’ crude hinge mechanics.

[ HOSTILES: 10 CONSTRUCTS — PRE-WAR AUTONOMOUS ]

[ COMBAT PATTERN: PAIRED FLANKING — COORDINATED ]

Two broke left toward Isolde. Two broke right toward Maya. Six fanned across the center.

"Three zones." Eloy’s voice came out flat. "They’re splitting us."

Isolde answered without looking. Her lightning was already arcing toward the nearest pair, a controlled burst that forced them to separate, buying her a meter of space. "We need to hold our zones."

Maya’s wind walls shifted, compressing tighter, a narrower barrier that funneled the constructs approaching her into a single-file corridor. Her fan clicked open in her free hand. "They learn faster than the hounds. Adjust your timing after the first engagement."

Eloy’s zone was the widest. Six constructs advancing in a staggered line, their pace synchronized. He shifted his grip on Caldera’s Edge. The blade’s resonance spiked as the nearest construct entered his range.

Stutter.

The ANOMALY integration readout flickered. Twenty-four percent. Holding. But the number pulsed, vibrating against his peripheral vision like a frame drop.

The constructs were resonating with something. The same network frequency. The same architecture.

He swung.

The blade sheared through the first construct’s forearm. Pre-war alloy parted. Where the hounds crumbled, this one did not. Its severed limb hit the floor and the rest of it kept coming, adjusting its stance, compensating for the missing mass with a fluidity that should not exist in stone.

Okay. That’s a new problem.

[coldfront44]: they don’t stagger. no hitstun animation.

[noob_slayer88]: bro how do you stagger something that doesn’t care about losing limbs

Eloy backed up two steps. His ankle throbbed once more. The old injury, still functional, still reminding him every time he planted weight. It was already starting to piss him off badly.

The constructs didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Their remaining arms were already swinging. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

He ducked. Dove left. The blade carved through a knee joint on the way past, and that construct finally dropped, its leg no longer capable of supporting the torso. Two down. Four still advancing.

The chamber’s amber light had shifted. Flickering. Unstable. The glyphs on the walls couldn’t hold their color.

[QuietLurker01]: southeast wall. the maintenance alcove where the constructs spawned from. it’s clear now.

[LMAO_cat]: THE BACK DOOR WAS OPEN THE WHOLE TIME

[coldfront44]: all the alcoves are collapsed except that one. is it structural or a real exit?

[ POLL: SOUTHEAST ALCOVE — ROUTE? ]

[ A) Converge and push through. Likely maintenance corridor. ]

[ B) Hold position. Unknown exit risk. ]

[ TIMER: 5 SECONDS ]

The poll window materialized in Eloy’s vision while he was parrying a construct’s fist with the flat of his blade. The impact jarred up his arm.

"Five seconds," he muttered.

[IsoldeSimp47]: chat is literally doing tactical analysis mid-combat now

[xX_Blademaster_Xx]: EVRYONE VOTE A VOTE A VOTE A

The timer hit zero. Results spilled across the HUD. 82% for A.

"Converge on the southeast alcove. Now." Eloy didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Isolde’s lightning shifted instantly, a sustained arc that pushed her pair of constructs back three meters, buying her the gap to sprint. Maya’s wind threads snapped from barrier to propulsion, launching her across the debris-strewn floor in a controlled slide, the ledger satchel pressed flat against her side.

Eloy cut through the last hound between him and the corridor entrance.

The stone hound’s head hit the floor and didn’t move.

Silence. One heartbeat. Two.

Isolde reached the alcove mouth. Maya landed beside her. Eloy’s shoulders dropped half an inch. Breath returned to his lungs.

Then every glyph in the hall snapped from flicker-amber to solid red.

The light shifted so fast it hurt. A wave of crimson washed across the walls, the ceiling, the floor, consuming every surface. The heat that followed hit Eloy’s face like an open oven. Below his feet, deep in the Resonance Core, something ancient finished its boot cycle.

[ PROTOCOL: CONTAINMENT — FULL LOCKDOWN ACTIVE ]

Floor rumbled. The siphon reversed polarity.

The spiral corridor was pre-war architecture. Smooth machined stone. Half-worn glyphs that matched the way station sublevel. Eloy’s boots hammered the incline.

Behind them, a blast door slammed. First seal. Thirty-second interval.

[ SIPHON TIMER: 41 SECONDS ]

"Next seal in twenty-eight seconds." Eloy called it without looking. Deviation Sense was reading the corridor’s architecture, the seal patterns, the timing between each lockdown slab. The pre-war network was talking to itself, and his restructured mana pathways were intercepting the conversation.

[ NETWORK RESONANCE: 24% — STABLE ]

Isolde ran two strides behind him. Her breathing was controlled, each exhale timed to her footfalls. Lightning arced from her knuckles but she wasn’t releasing it. Holding the charge. Waiting.

Maya’s wind threads stretched behind them, a sensory net that mapped the constructs’ pursuit speed. "Three seconds faster than the seal rate. They’ll reach the final door before it closes."

Math problem. No clean solution.

Eloy’s ankle screamed on the incline. He ignored it. His HUD painted the corridor ahead in wireframe: spiral ascending, surface iris contracting, dawn light bleeding through the closing gap.

[ EXIT IRIS: 3.8 METERS — CONTRACTING ]

Second blast door slammed. Fourteen seconds ahead of schedule. The protocol was accelerating.

Third blast door. The interval was shrinking. Twelve seconds now.

Dawn light grew brighter as they climbed. The iris was visible. A shrinking circle of pale gray sky, contracting at a steady rate. Maya’s wind threads recalculated. "Iris closure in forty seconds. Construct pursuit in thirty-seven. We have a three-second window."

"No margin for stumble." Eloy’s knuckles whitened on the blade. "Nobody trips."

Isolde said nothing. Her silence was heavier than any answer.

The corridor’s final stretch flattened into a straight approach. Dawn light cut through the iris. Cold air. Fresh. The outside world. Two meters of opening remained. Then one-point-eight. One-point-six.

Construct boots hammered the stone behind them. Three seconds. Two.

The iris shrank to a two-meter circle. Dawn light sliced through the gap. Behind them, construct boots hammered stone at three seconds and closing.

And the timer read fourteen.