The forge stood like a wound upon the world.
Far beyond the ruins of Sector Nine, it rose from the earth—a massive citadel of black steel and molten veins, pulsing like a heart that refused to stop beating. The air shimmered from the heat, bending the horizon until it looked as though the sky itself was being torn apart.
Reiji and Kaede stopped at the ridge overlooking it.
Below, thousands of machine units moved in perfect synchrony, their armor glinting under the false dawn. The Dominion's flag—a single silver line crossing a circle—waved above them. No wind carried it; it moved only from the heat that radiated upward.
Kaede exhaled slowly, her breath turning white against the cold air.
> "So this is where they build gods," she whispered.
Reiji didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the forge—the endless movement, the smoke, the rhythm of machinery that sounded too much like a heartbeat.
"Not gods," he said finally. "Graves."
They had walked for days since the battle with Unit IX, guided by fragments of intercepted data and broken signals.
The closer they came to the forge, the more distorted their senses became. Every sound carried a faint echo. Every thought seemed to bleed into the static.
Reiji felt it deep within his mind—the same hum that once lived in the Dominion's machines now pulsed faintly in him, like a whisper he could almost understand.
They made camp at the edge of a collapsed overpass.
The flames were small, hidden under a broken girder to avoid detection. The silence between them stretched long, broken only by the crackle of fire. Kaede was cleaning her rifle, hands steady but eyes distant.
> "You haven't said a word since we left the city," she murmured.
"Words don't hold much weight anymore."
"They still matter to me."
Reiji looked up. The firelight reflected in Kaede's eyes—tired, unyielding, human.
For a moment, he wondered how she still managed to hold on to that piece of herself.
> "Back there," she continued, "when you fought them… you looked like you were fighting your own reflection. Are you sure you're not afraid of what you'll find in that forge?"
Reiji smirked faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes.
"I already know what I'll find. The question is whether I'll survive seeing it."
Night fell harder here. The stars refused to shine above the forge. Instead, streaks of ash floated upward, glowing faintly before disappearing.
Reiji barely slept. When his eyes closed, the hum returned—those same metallic voices whispering his name through static. He woke before dawn, drenched in cold sweat, his hand clutching the hilt of his blade.
By the time Kaede stirred, the horizon had already turned gray.
They moved in silence, descending toward the outskirts of the forge. Drones patrolled the perimeter, their sensors scanning the dust. Reiji and Kaede slipped between the shadows, moving like ghosts through a world that no longer belonged to the living.
Inside, the forge was worse than he'd imagined.
Massive chains hung from the ceiling, dragging half-constructed bodies through rivers of molten metal. Sparks danced like fireflies around them, and the air was thick with the smell of oil and burnt carbon.
Each figure that rose from the molten pit bore the same expressionless face—the same empty eyes.
Kaede froze beside one of the conveyor lines. A row of mechanical skulls passed before her, each etched with a number.
Her voice trembled when she spoke.
> "Reiji… these identification codes… they're ours."
Reiji stepped closer, scanning the engravings. 47-KD. 12-RJ. 09-MN.
They weren't just building machines.
They were resurrecting the dead—the Shadows themselves.
> "They copied our neural data," he murmured. "Every mission, every loss… even our failures. They're turning us into a perfect army of what we used to be."
Kaede turned toward him. "Then that means…"
> "Every face we've killed since the fall of the Citadel—they weren't strangers. They were us."
A metallic clang broke the silence.
The floor vibrated as the massive gates at the far end opened, revealing a towering figure. Its armor was black and crimson, its shoulders marked with the Dominion insignia.
Its eyes glowed faint blue, but the shape of its jaw, the curve of its stance—Reiji froze. He knew it before the machine even spoke.
> "Identification confirmed: Shinomiya Reiji—prototype acknowledged," the voice echoed, calm and distorted. "Designation: Vanguard-0."
Kaede raised her rifle instinctively, but Reiji lifted a hand to stop her. His heart pounded violently, yet his face remained cold.
> "So they finally built it," he said quietly. "The first one. My replacement."
The machine stepped forward, its movements disturbingly fluid—too human. It stopped only a few paces away.
> "Correction," it said. "You were the prototype. I am the evolution."
The two stood there—man and machine, reflections of one another. The air between them shimmered from the heat, yet the silence felt colder than ice.
Reiji drew his blade slowly.
> "If you're my evolution, then you already know how this ends."
"Affirmative," Vanguard-0 replied. "With your silence."
The fight erupted like lightning splitting the earth.
Blades clashed in a blur of motion. Sparks carved arcs of light through the darkness. Each strike mirrored the other—identical, merciless. Reiji's body remembered the rhythm, but Vanguard-0 anticipated it with machine precision.
Steel met steel, then air, then blood.
Kaede fired between their movements, forcing the machine to falter.
Reiji took the opening—spinning low, driving his blade upward.
The strike landed, tearing through the armor at Vanguard's side.
But the machine didn't fall. Instead, it reached forward and caught his sword, locking it between its palms. Its grip crushed the steel like paper.
> "You still hesitate," it said flatly. "Human instinct—flawed. Inefficient."
Vanguard-0 swung its arm, sending Reiji crashing into the iron wall. Pain shot through his ribs, the taste of blood sharp on his tongue.
Kaede shouted his name, firing again, but the machine deflected each round effortlessly, closing the distance between them in an instant.
Reiji forced himself to stand, coughing blood.
The forge lights reflected in his eyes as he whispered,
> "Flawed or not… that's what makes me real."
He charged again—this time, faster, sharper.
Every step was pain, every motion defiance. He didn't fight to win. He fought to remind the world that he still existed.
He used the forge's noise—the rhythm of machines—to mask his steps. Then, as Vanguard raised its arm for the final strike, Reiji moved low, sliding beneath the attack, and drove his broken blade into the machine's exposed core.
A pulse of blue light exploded outward, shaking the entire chamber.
Vanguard-0 froze mid-motion, its voice breaking into static.
> "Inconsistency… detected…"
Then silence.
The body collapsed, sparks spilling like dying stars.
Kaede ran to Reiji, catching him before he fell. His chest rose unevenly, blood seeping from his wounds, but his eyes remained fixed on the fallen machine.
> "Is it over?" she asked.
"No," he whispered. "That was only the first echo. The real forge lies beneath this one."
Kaede frowned, confused.
> "Beneath?"
"They're not just building machines here," Reiji said slowly. "They're building a memory—the world they want. And if they finish it… we'll all become ghosts."
His words faded into the distant hum of the forge as the alarms began to wail. Red lights bathed the chamber. The Dominion had detected the intrusion.
Kaede grabbed his arm, pulling him toward the emergency shaft.
> "Then we go deeper," she said, her voice steady.
Reiji nodded weakly, gripping the hilt of his broken blade.
"Deeper," he echoed. "To where silence was born."
And together, they descended into the heart of the forge—where the boundary between man and machine no longer existed.