The floor shook hard as alarms echoed through the core
Lights overhead turned blood red
The tower's walls began to move gears sliding runes pulsing ancient code pouring through each seam
Structure evolving
Reiss stepped back and whistled
Now that's bad news
Aya checked the shard interface
Link in progress
Time until full overwrite
Nine minutes
They ran
Corridors shifted while they moved stairs inverted then reversed gravity halfway through
Aya leapt through mid-flip stabbing her blade into the wall to hold position
Reiss slid sideways along a moving platform launching his hook into the next floor
The tower wasn't just rising it was building weapons
Sentinel drones poured from the ceiling low defense code but numbers made up for it
Aya slashed through three midair Rewrite Edge absorbing their fragments
Reiss laughed as he swung and kicked one straight into a turbine
Keep up
Aya didn't respond just sprinted ahead jumping gaps as the ground crumbled
A large hall unfolded next layer not yet finished
Code walls still forming flickering between solid and void
A portal node floated in the center
The key
They had to reach it before the tower completed the override
But then the guardian of the node emerged
Towerborn
A massive construct stitched from failed evolution data unfinished incomplete but deadly
One eye locked on Aya
The other tracked Reiss
Target error
Permission mismatch
Execute anyway
The thing lunged
Aya dodged to the left Reiss flanked right
They struck together
But the Towerborn adapted mid-hit changing code form to absorb the impact
Reiss growled
It's learning faster than the last ones
Aya's eyes narrowed
Then we rewrite faster
She dove forward blade glowing bright
Reiss followed up with rollback spikes hammering it from behind
It cracked
They both struck the core in unison
It exploded in silence
The portal node dropped
Seven minutes left
Aya touched it
Teleport initialized
They vanished as the floor collapsed into void