CHAPTER 14: THE SONS, THE ARCHITECT, AND THE MASK
...
The Garden of Broken Blades (Rei & Luther)
The garden was long since forgotten.
It lay at the very edge of Eden's inner circle... a field of shattered swords once wielded by the fallen, where the city buried its mistakes in silence.
The air here was quiet. Too quiet. Even the faint hum of Eden's barrier wall seemed not to reach this place.
Luther stood alone, surrounded by rusting hilts and the long echoes of grief. His coat was half-open, his breath uneven. His hands trembled... fingers curling and uncurling against his thighs... as if still shaking off some unseen nightmare.
The ground glittered faintly beneath him, black sand strewn with broken steel and burnt memories.
Then he heard footsteps.
But he didn't draw his weapon.
He already knew who it was.
"You again," Luther said, his voice flat, low.
Rei stepped forward, silent as a phantom, his black coat trailing in the wind. His eyes were unreadable... but sharper than knives in the half-light.
He didn't greet him.
Didn't warn him.
Didn't smile.
He only asked:
"Do you remember being born?"
Luther's head turned slightly, as if the question itself had struck him across the face.
"What kind of question is that?"
Rei tilted his head faintly. The faintest shadow of a smirk played at his lips.
"The kind only a lie would fear."
Luther's breath caught.
And then it came.
The vision.
The tank. The golden liquid. Mr. P's voice, murmuring commands in some language he didn't recognize. Naomi's scream. Her eyes wild. Her whisper: You weren't born… you were made.
His knees buckled.
"I wasn't… I wasn't born is what i can remember…"
Rei knelt beside him, his gaze cold and unwavering.
"It seems you were designed," Rei said. "Like me. Like all of us. Blueprints, pretending to bleed."
Luther's hands dug into the black soil beneath him like he could anchor himself there, stop himself from floating away.
"Then… what do you think am I then.?"
Rei's answer was soft. But sharp enough to cut.
"A key."
He stood without another word. His silhouette faded into the black leaves and steel thorns of the garden.
Luther didn't stop him.
Couldn't.
Not with the wind whispering the same question again and again:
"What am I? ."
...
Eden Depths: The Prototype Matrix (Mr. P's Descent)
Far below Eden... beyond even the lowest sanctum... stretched Sector Zero.
There were no elevators to this place.
No lights.
No doors.
Only a staircase carved into the obsidian bedrock of the city.
Mr. P walked it alone, whistling something that sounded like a nursery rhyme played backward. One hand in his pocket, the other toying idly with a screwdriver.
At the bottom lay the Cradle.
A massive glass chamber filled with golden liquid and divine circuitry, its heartbeat still faint but steady.
The place Luther had been born.
Or, more accurately, assembled.
Mr. P's sunglasses glimmered in the dark as he pressed his palm against the cold interface.
"Matrix One," he called. "Begin reverberation mapping."
The machine hummed. Its voice answered:
"Input incomplete. Host subject unknown."
He smiled faintly.
"Not anymore."
From his coat he withdrew a vial of blood... collected secretly after Luther's last breakdown. He pressed it into the slot.
The moment it touched the core, the room shivered.
Holograms bloomed around him.
Images of Elian.
DNA threads intertwined with corrupted angelic code.
A blueprint for a second prototype... stronger, faster, emotionally immune.
Mr. P dropped into a chair at the center of the room and lit a cigarette.
He exhaled smoke through clenched teeth, staring at the designs.
"We fail forward," he murmured. "Even if we kill the gods."
And then, almost absently, his console chimed.
A faint, flickering signal.
He froze.
The screen displayed a single line:
SIGNAL TRACE: SUBJECT 001
ELIAN: PULSE CONFIRMED
For the first time in years, Mr. P said nothing.
His fingers tightened against the console edge, his knuckles white.
Even with his clones bickering behind him in chaos... one accidentally spilling coffee on another... the room went silent in his mind.
His sunglasses slipped slightly down the bridge of his nose.
And then, softly... almost a whisper, but venom-sharp:
"…Hmm. Wow."
He clenched his fist and hissed through his teeth.
"You bastard, Zero."
The clones froze mid-argument, confused by the sudden stillness in his voice.
Mr. P only smiled faintly and stared at the screen.
And muttered again:
"You bastard."
...
The Observer's Spire: Lust's Move
Lust had always been the quietest.
Mirror-skinned. Expressionless. A living statue.
She rarely spoke, even in Council... and only when it mattered.
Tonight, she entered the Spire's Archive alone.
The automated guardian AI flickered to life as they approached.
"State request."
Lust's voice was soft. But unshakable.
"I want the secret logs."
"Specify designation."
"The ones Zero buried."
The lights dimmed. The screens flared.
And the footage played.
Zero, years ago, injecting himself with a forbidden serum before Luther's creation.
Zero and Mr. P, younger, shouting beside a glowing infant: Elian.
Naomi screaming at them: "This isn't ascension... it's slavery!"
Lust's mirrored face didn't so much as twitch.
"So," she murmured. "She also knew the truth."
She turned toward the mirrored walls of the Archive and spoke softly.
"Phase Three begins."
Sending a message to a specific group.
A leader...
Who from their coat, they withdrew a black sigil... the emblem of a faction long thought extinct.
"The Choir of Sins sends its regards."
...
Zero: Watching From the Throne of Foresight.
The threads shook again.
Zero stood in the middle of his glass chamber, his eyes on the shimmering lines of fate stretching endlessly before him.
Another thread snapped.
This one labeled: Lustborne...
He did not blink.
But his jaw tightened.
For the first time in decades, his mask cracked.
He muttered to himself, his voice quiet but cutting.
"Lust was never mine."
Slowly, he turned toward a sealed door at the far edge of the chamber... one even the other Observers didn't know existed.
Inside, a being stirred in the dark.
A divine prototype. Incomplete. Sleeping.
Zero pressed his palm to the door, and it hissed open a fraction.
He whispered into the silence:
"I move the Bishop."
...
Luther: Alone, Breaking
Back in the Garden of Broken Blades, Luther lay on his back beneath the stars.
The sky above Eden glowed faintly gold.
His hands rested over his chest, as if trying to feel something that wasn't there.
"I don't want to be a weapon," he whispered to himself.
But the ground pulsed faintly beneath him, like a heartbeat.
And above... in the black sky ,a shape appeared.
A cross of golden light.
And in it… a figure.
Elian.
Smiling.
But crying.
...
The shadow has moved.
The Architect has reawakened the Cradle.
The silent mask has spoken.
And now even Zero bleeds from the eye of prophecy.
...
END OF CHAPTER 14