Zypher's head throbbed as he clambered to his feet, his pulse racing. The cold concrete of the rooftop bit into his palms as he steadied himself, and for a moment everything around him was a blur—a storm of noise, flashes, and the sting of reality setting back in. His fingers twitched instinctively, reaching for the blueprint he had clutched before the fall.
It was still there.
The parchment, or whatever weird material it was made of, felt like it was calling to him. Charred edges. It had been through a fiery furnace, a blazing radiance, and yet the symbols that lay across it—simultaneously impossible to decipher and yet sharper than a knife blade—steadfastly refused to fade. That's how they'd settled into his mind: the same way the symbols now stood on the page.
It can't be, Zypher thought. It simply can't be.
But it was. The blue-print wasn't some trick of the head or some bug in the programme. It was a map. A guide to something unimaginable.
Zypher inhaled the last bit of his breath in short gasps as he turned the page over. His hand lingered on the diagram. It was complex far beyond anything he'd ever seen during his years as an engineer, and yet somehow it was familiar. Shapes seemed to pulse with a living energy: interlocking circles, triangles, and symbols. Each line traced a path, a trail leading toward something… some thing far beyond technology.
Then there was the central image: a god's weapon. Sleek, metallic, with ancient runes wrapping around it like silver wires-its design was as lovely as it was deadly. A weapon of such potency that it could revive divine power, as if the blueprint whispered to reveal.
Whose power? And why now?
With gritted teeth, he felt the weight of it. He had to know. More than that, he had to make sense of why he should get involved. An engineer in a city of machines, holding the keys of gods long forgot?
Wind whipped at his hair as he glanced over his shoulder. Shadow was well and good, but that feeling of being watched lingered. He had been hunted. Not by people, per se, but by something far older. The map to the weapon wasn't simply about rebuilding the gods; it was about something much more insidiously harmful.
He had to move. Fast.
But first, he needed to know more.
Zypher stashed the blueprint into his jacket, took one last look about the rooftop. The strange figures who'd ambushed him were nowhere to be seen, but the city seemed different now-with a sinister tang, darker and heavier-as if it knew something he didn't.
He ran toward the nearest access door, feeling the weight of the blueprint against his chest and the coolness of the night pressing in around him. For him, his workshop was a haven from this unrest in the world of technology and circuitry. There he could sit and read the blueprint and try to make sense of it, decode its secrets. There has to be a pattern, a reason. Everything in his life had been about solving problems. This blueprint was just another puzzle to crack.
The stairs creaked beneath his boots as he descended rapidly down into the belly of the building. A short distance away was his workshop, dug deep into the underbelly of Neo-ilka. Above, the city was a glittering wonder-artificial, whereas down here, it was raw and real-cluttered with discarded tech, all the forgotten remnants of what once seemed like a pure world. It was where Zypher thrived. And where his mind can freely work, unshackled by the monopoly of the city's corporate overlords.
Zypher entered his workshop, a cramped, almost dimly lit room full of half-finished machines, blinking panels, and ancient gizmos. It was his sanctuary, but now it was too small-it was suffocating. He set the blueprint on his workbench and started plugging in into his terminals, pulling up everything he could from ancient texts, tech archives, and the forgotten history of the gods.
As the screen flickered to life, illuminating the room with the hum of the machine's power, Zypher's mind was nowhere near that minute. He danced fingers across the terminal, bringing up fragments of history, old myths, and forgotten lore. His eyes flicked to the screen as the data poured in.
The ancient gods of Olympus—Zeus, Poseidon, Hades—these were the names which had once ruled in the world of men. But now their legends were represented in mere dusty tomes, almost forgotten tales.
But the blueprint. The more he read, the more symbols on the paper seemed to align with lost accounts of divine power—the core of what gods are: energy to tap into with technology and a means to restore, even to amplify their strength in today's world.
Zypher froze. His eyes widened as a new connection sparked in his mind. The machine isn't just a weapon.
It was a key—a key to bring the gods back.
But nothing like the myths promised. No, not in a million years. This was something a hell of a lot more hazardous. The gods fell into a slumber, their powers dulled down through ages of neglect and the technological age. Still there, still alive—but weak and broken. The blueprint, when completed, would restore them to former heights. And that, Zypher realized, would either be the only thing to save the world—or shatter it completely.
His thoughts were interrupted by a soft chime on his terminal. There was an alert flashing on the screen: Incoming message.
Zypher's fingers trembled as he clicked the message open. It was short, direct, and to the point:
"You have what you need. We are coming for it."
He got a cold dread down his spine. The ones on the roof-the ones who had attacked him-the ones were coming. But why? Allies, or enemies? Servants of the gods, or something else entirely?
He slammed his fist on the desk in frustration. He couldn't do this alone. He needed help. He needed to understand what he had found—and more importantly, he needed to protect it.
But he couldn't ignore the truth anymore: The world was about to change. The gods were waking, and with them, the power of the old world —power that had been locked away for centuries.
Zypher's eyes narrowed into a determined glint.
He would complete the blueprint. And if he could, he would use it to prevent whatever was coming.
Or break the world apart in the process.
And he couldn't help but think that maybe it was too late to stop it.
The blueprint was no longer just a map. It was a ticking bomb.
And Zypher Nyx was its unwilling architect.