The lead-lined box felt like a block of ice in Michael's hands.
A cold that had nothing to do with temperature.
"Okay, pretty boy," Nyx purred, leaning back in her booth and taking a long, slow drag from her vaporizer.
"The deal is simple."
"You go in, kill the ghost that's screaming in my head, and I make you very, very rich."
"And if you don't come back out," she added with a wicked, cat-like grin, "I keep the box."
"Win-win for me, really."
Michael didn't grace that with a witty retort.
The psychic scream from the box, even muffled by the lead, was a low, constant thrum of agony at the edge of his senses.
"Let's do this," he muttered, more to himself than to her.
Chloe's voice was a sharp, clean line in his ear. "Rooftop. Now."
He gave Nyx a curt nod and walked out of the noodle bar, leaving her shrouded in her cloud of purple smoke.
Jinx was waiting for him on a nearby rooftop, a dark shape against the neon-and-grime-smeared sky.
She had her rifle slung over her back and a look on her face that was equal parts boredom and intense paranoia.
"So, did you get the evil lunchbox?" she asked, her voice a low growl.
Michael held up the box. "Got the evil lunchbox."
"And our new boss, the ghost on the radio, has a plan, I assume?"
"Always," Chloe's voice cut in, crisp and unwelcome. "The Gate Key is unstable. Activating it here would cause a significant, untraceable energy event. We need a clean room."
Her directions led them to an abandoned, soundproofed recording studio two levels down in the Undercroft.
It was perfect.
Isolated. Secure. And probably haunted by the ghosts of a thousand failed rock bands.
Michael placed the box on the dusty floor.
"Alright," he said, taking a deep breath. "So, what's the plan? Do I just… open it?"
"Negative," Chloe said. "The moment you open that box, the Gate Key will activate. It will create a temporary, unstable pocket dimension. An Echo Chamber."
"The entity you need to 'cleanse' is trapped inside."
"You and Jinx will enter the chamber," she continued, her voice all business. "I will monitor from here. My scanners can analyze the chamber's energy fluctuations, but my connection will be tenuous. I will be your eye in the sky."
"Great," Jinx grunted, checking the load on her rifle. "So we're the boots on the ground, and you're the angel on our shoulder."
"A very condescending, very bossy angel," she muttered under her breath.
Michael heard her and fought back a smirk.
"Ready, kid?" Jinx asked, her tone shifting. She was no longer the wary survivor. She was the professional.
"Just another Tuesday," Michael lied.
He undid the latches on the box.
He lifted the lid.
The psychic scream wasn't a whisper anymore. It was a physical assault. A wall of pure, undiluted agony that slammed into him, making him stagger back.
Inside the box, resting on a bed of black foam, was a small, simple iron key.
It was rusted, unremarkable. F-Rank.
But it was leaking a thick, oily, black energy that writhed and coiled in the air like a dying snake.
The key pulsed once, a single, violent throb.
The air in the room warped.
The solid wall in front of them dissolved, not into a Gate, but into a shimmering, glitching tear in reality.
It looked like a corrupted video file.
"Well," Michael's inner monologue drawled, "The server is officially lagging."
"Here we go," Jinx said, and she stepped through the tear without a moment's hesitation.
Michael followed, the world dissolving into a nauseating smear of static.
He landed on cold, sterile tile.
They were in a lab.
Or a memory of one.
The walls flickered, shifting between clean, white tile and rusted, blood-stained metal.
Broken medical equipment lay scattered across the floor, its form unstable, glitching in and out of focus.
A single, repeating sound echoed through the chamber: the soft, rhythmic beep of a heart monitor that wasn't there.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Okay, this is officially the creepiest thing I've ever seen," Jinx whispered, her rifle up, her eyes scanning the shifting, unstable room. "And I once saw a guy in the Undercroft try to trade his own spleen for a half-eaten sandwich."
"Let's just find the ghost, kill it, and get out," Michael said, his own hand resting on the hilt of his Reaper's Fang.
Chloe's voice crackled in his ear, full of static. "The—gy signature is—able. It's bouncing off—alls. I can't get a lock."
The ghost on the radio was having connection issues.
Perfect.
Suddenly, the beeping stopped.
The silence that followed was worse.
From the far end of the lab, a shape began to coalesce out of the glitching shadows.
It was tall, vaguely humanoid, but its body was a grotesque fusion of twisted metal, exposed wiring, and pale, scarred flesh. Its arms ended not in hands, but in long, wicked blades that looked like surgical tools.
It had no face. Just a smooth plate of metal where its features should be, marred by a single, glowing, angry red optic.
[SPECTRAL CHIMERA (Lv. 12) IDENTIFIED.]
"Found it," Jinx growled.
The Chimera let out a sound that wasn't a roar.
It was a burst of pure, digital static, a shriek of corrupted data that grated on their very souls.
It charged.
"It's spawning defenses!" Chloe's voice yelled, the connection clearing for a moment. "Energy patterns are replicating! Look out!"
As the Chimera rushed forward, the broken equipment on the floor began to glow.
Three smaller, spectral entities—like robotic guard dogs made of red light—flickered into existence and shot towards them.
"I'll take the little ones!" Jinx yelled, her rifle barking.
BANG! BANG!
She was a whirlwind of practiced, deadly motion. She fired, dodged, and fired again, her movements economical and precise.
That left Michael with the main event.
The Chimera was on him, its surgical blades a blur of silver.
SLASH!
Michael used Shadow Step, appearing behind the beast.
He drove his dagger forward, aiming for its back.
[VOID SLASH!]
His blade met only air.
The Chimera's form dissolved into static for a split second, then reformed a few feet away.
It had a phasing ability. Just like the Ghosts. Just like the Hound.
It was a classic Project Chimera design.
The Chimera turned, its single red eye locking onto him.
And then, it attacked.
Not with its blades.
With its mind.
A wave of pure psychic force slammed into Michael.
It wasn't just pain. It was a flood of raw, unfiltered emotion.
Rage. Terror. Agony. Confusion.
His mind was a chew toy for a psychic Rottweiler.
He screamed, clutching his head, dropping to one knee.
The whispers in his own soul roared to life, agitated by the psychic assault.
The cold logic of the hounds. The primal hunger of the skitterers.
They were fighting back, trying to protect their new host.
His head was a battlefield.
"Michael!" Jinx's voice was a distant, panicked shout. She had finished off the spectral dogs and was now firing at the Chimera, but her rounds were just passing through its glitching form.
"Get up!"
"It's channeling a psychic blast!" Chloe's voice screamed in his ear, her professional calm completely gone. "Break line of sight, now! Michael! Report! Abort the mission, that's an order!"
Her voice was raw. Panicked.
It was the voice of someone watching a person, not an asset, get torn apart.
Michael heard her.
But he wasn't listening.
He was filled with a white-hot, furious rage.
This thing. This monster. It was a victim of the same people who had taken his mother.
It was a prisoner in its own personal hell.
And it was trying to drag him down with it.
He pushed himself to his feet, his eyes burning with a dark, purple light.
"No," he snarled, not at the Chimera, but at the voices in his own head, at Chloe, at the entire, messed-up world.
"This is my fight."
He focused, pushing past the pain, past the fear.
He reached for the coldest, hungriest part of his soul.
He reached for the Void.
He didn't want to just kill the Chimera.
He wanted to grant it peace.
The only way he knew how.
[SOUL DEVOUR (LV. 1) ACTIVATED.]
The vortex erupted from his hand, a silent, ravenous black hole.
It latched onto the Chimera's spectral form.
The creature's psychic scream intensified a thousandfold, a direct, pure feed of its agony pouring into Michael's mind.
But this time, he was ready for it.
He held on, gritting his teeth, his entire body trembling with the strain.
He was not just a consumer.
He was a filter.
He was a reaper.
He pulled.
The Chimera's form wavered, then imploded, dissolving into a stream of twilight-colored light that flowed into the vortex.
The Echo Chamber around them began to collapse, the glitching walls dissolving into pure white static.
They were out of time.
Jinx grabbed his arm, hauling him towards the tear in reality they had come through.
They stumbled out and back into the recording studio just as the portal snapped shut behind them, leaving only the faint smell of ozone and a deep, profound silence.
Michael collapsed to his knees, panting, the psychic echo of the Chimera a new, sad ghost in the choir of his mind.
But he had won.
A new notification pinged on his HUD, quiet and simple.
[SOUL CORRUPTION: 2.8%]
It was the price. It was always the price.
Then came another.
One he hadn't been expecting.
It wasn't a warning. It wasn't a debuff.
It was a reward.