Chapter 6: Tower of Lies

The Syndicate Tower loomed over the city like a blade plunged into the earth.

Polished obsidian panels reflected the lightning-choked skies above, but what lay inside was far darker than any storm. It was here, at the center of Sector Zero, that Kael Draven had been broken. Shaped. Reforged.

And it was here he would return—not as an experiment, but as a reckoning.

Kael crouched atop a derelict skimmer drone on the edge of the city’s no-fly perimeter. The sigil on his forearm pulsed gently, synchronized with the leyline tremors humming beneath the tower's foundations. Every ward, every shield, every surveillance eye—it all pulsed to a frequency he could now feel.

The Rift had once been his prison.

Now it was his weapon.

“You’re right beneath the security net,” Vex’s voice buzzed in his ear. “They’ll detect your heat sig within ten seconds.”

“I won’t be here that long,” Kael muttered.

He leapt.

Freefalling between buildings, he focused. Air rippled around him. Just before he hit the ground, he blink-shifted—disappearing mid-drop and reappearing at the base of the tower’s north wall. His feet barely touched the metal before he was moving again, racing up the vertical surface like a shadow made of fire and memory.

Inside, alarms blared.

The Syndicate had seen him.

They would never understand that it was already too late.

---

Level 113 – Syndicate Observation Wing

Sterile white corridors shimmered under artificial lighting. Technomancers in coats of woven nano-silk scrambled for weapons and containment wands. But when Kael burst through the reinforced bulkhead, they froze.

He didn’t speak.

He raised one hand, and the floor beneath them cracked—fractal runes erupting from his presence alone.

“Draven has breached the core levels!” one of them shouted into a comm implant.

Kael swept his arm sideways.

The hallway folded, bending like paper as a Rift surge collapsed space momentarily. Screaming, the guards and scientists were tossed into walls or blinked out of view entirely, displaced into a half-world between dimensions. They wouldn’t die… but they wouldn’t return whole either.

Kael pressed forward, deeper into the facility.

A memory clawed its way from the depths of his mind—a flash of this corridor, of being dragged down it, bloody and screaming, as Syndicate operatives discussed his ‘compatibility’ like he was a lab sample.

He clenched his fists.

And moved faster.

---

Level 140 – Memory Vaults

Doors lined this corridor—massive slabs of obsidian etched with soul-locks and temporal encryption. Each vault held a piece of someone’s life—stolen thoughts, harvested dreams, and fragmented consciousnesses used in crafting the Protocol.

Kael stopped at the vault marked “DRAVEN-PRIME.”

The sigil on his forearm shifted, aligning with the glyphs on the door.

[ACCESS RECOGNIZED – TEMPORAL KEY UNLOCKED]

The vault opened with a low hum.

Inside was a singular chair facing a sphere of floating data—Kael’s original neural print, extracted during his final days in containment. This was what they used to train the Omega Wraith. What they believed gave them control over Rift energies.

Kael approached it slowly. The sphere flickered, recognizing its source.

“Hello, Kael,” it said in his own voice.

He frowned. “You remember?”

“I am what you left behind. Fear. Pain. Rage.”

Kael reached toward the sphere.

“Not anymore,” he whispered.

His hand passed through it—and the data destabilized. Instead of claiming it, he released it. Shattered it into a thousand glowing shards that dispersed like fireflies into the air.

The chair behind the sphere melted into nothing.

With it, a part of Kael’s past dissolved—one more shackle broken.

But peace did not follow.

The walls trembled.

The lights dimmed.

From above, a voice Kael had not heard in years echoed through the chamber.

“Impressive, Kael. You’ve finally come home.”

He turned slowly.

A tall figure stepped from the shadows beyond the vault—dressed in a long coat of living circuitry, his eyes replaced with glowing data lenses.

Director Malric Vale.

Architect of the Arcane Protocol.

Kael’s creator.

“I wondered how long it would take before you returned,” Vale said calmly, stepping closer. “Tell me, do you feel powerful? Or just broken in a different shape?”

Kael didn’t answer.

Vale continued, voice smooth as ice. “We gave you purpose. Gave your suffering a design. You’re not a victim, Kael—you’re the prototype for the next era of humanity.”

“No,” Kael said coldly. “I was your test subject. And I remember now what you did to me.”

Vale smiled.

“Good. Then you remember why I must stop you.”

He raised one hand—and the air split.

A Rift opened behind him, vast and unnatural, held in place by technology that should never have existed. From its depths, creatures of shadow and starlight slithered, snarling and shrieking. Controlled Riftspawn. Refined.

“Behold,” Vale whispered, “the perfected Protocol. Not one Riftwalker… but a legion.”

Kael’s blade snapped into his hand. The sigil on his arm flared.

“So be it.”

He launched forward, tearing through the first beast in a spiral of fire and fractured gravity. The Vault shook with the force of their clash—Kael versus the creatures born from his own legacy.

Vale watched with cold fascination.

But behind that stare was something else.

Fear.

Because for the first time, the Syndicate’s god-machine was out of control.

And Kael Draven was not coming to reclaim his past.

He was here to end it.

End of Chapter 6