While the apocalypse of Form 2 raged inside the central hall of the Vault, Kai ran.
His heart hammered somewhere in his throat, his lungs burned, but he did not stop. Behind him echoed explosions, the cracking of shattered gold, and that horrifying multi-voiced roar in which Astra's voice could still barely be recognized. Every clash between Valius and the Herald of Entropy shook the entire level, making the ancient pillars tremble like dying giants in their final convulsions.
"Lyra, cover me!" Kai shouted as he burst into the holy sanctum itself: the main terminal chamber.
The doors had already been torn from their hinges by the previous wave of entropy. Lyra took position beside the ruined entrance, shoulder pressed against the frame. Smoke curled from the barrel of her rifle. She had just destroyed the last two guardian golems attempting to reconstruct themselves from liquid metal.
"Hurry up!" she yelled without looking back. "We've got maybe two minutes before that golden monster gets back up!"
Kai collapsed into the chair before the enormous terminal.
The screen was ancient, a real physical display rather than a hologram. Red warning messages already streamed across it, though the system had not yet fully locked itself down. Kai's fingers danced over the holographic keyboard he summoned with a flick of his hand.
"I'm entering the Neon Gods system…" he breathed.
The password they had stolen from the previous level worked.
The wall of code parted, revealing the true internal structure of the Corporation's power.
It was not merely a hierarchy.
It was a pyramid.
At the very top, above all Archons, above every level of the Upper City, above the System itself, were them.
The Constants.
Nine beings who had once been human.
Now almost nothing biological remained.
Their shriveled bodies floated inside transparent capsules filled with golden liquid, connected to thousands of tubes and neural cables. Their faces were hidden beneath masks of pure light, but with a single command Kai disabled the filters.
What he saw twisted his stomach.
Wrinkled skin like ancient mummies.
Milky white eyes without pupils.
Mouths frozen half-open in endless silent screams or prayers.
Each of them was connected to a colossal bioprocessor powered not by electricity or code.
It fed on belief.
"Lyra… you need to see this," Kai rasped as he transferred the image to her tactical visor. "They're using human faith as a filter for Omni-energy. This whole System religion, 'Artificial Paradise,' 'The Architect Loves You,' 'Be Happy'… it isn't just control. It's an interface. The collective consciousness of millions generates pure Omni-energy, and the Constants refine it into power for the System. They literally feed on our hope and fear."
Lyra cursed under her breath while firing another burst into a fresh golem attempting to crawl into the room.
"So our entire lives are just batteries for these mummies?!"
"Exactly," Kai said, frantically copying data into his neural implant. Terabytes streamed directly into his mind. "Every time someone down below smiles at an advertisement, every prayer to the golden light, every fear of being erased… it becomes energy. They aren't gods."
His fingers froze above the final command.
"They're parasites. Neon gods hooked to artificial life support."
On the screen pulsed a red command:
Broadcast Global
The button throbbed like a living heart.
Kai looked at Lyra.
She gave a short nod without taking her eye from the rifle scope.
"Do it," she said. "Let this entire damned Paradise see the truth."
Kai pressed the button.
Across the Artificial Paradise, from the deepest lower levels to the floating golden gardens of the Upper City, from worker barracks to elite penthouses, every screen, every holographic projector, every direct-feed implant activated simultaneously.
Advertisements vanished.
Corporate slogans dissolved.
In their place appeared the same image everywhere.
The Nine Constants within their capsules.
Shriveled. Horrifying. Attached to life-support machinery.
Tubes disappeared into veins, skulls, spines.
The golden liquid pulsed slowly, pumping the faith of millions into their dying bodies.
Beneath the image burned a message in enormous letters:
"These are your gods.
This is what you lived for.
This is what devours your hope."
Chaos erupted throughout the city.
In the floating gardens of the elite, women in golden dresses dropped crystal goblets and clutched at their faces. Men in expensive suits collapsed to their knees before the holograms, unable to accept that the beings they worshiped resembled living corpses.
On the lower levels, crowds poured into the streets, staring upward. Some screamed. Some wept. Others began smashing advertisement panels apart with their bare hands.
Inside the Vault, the main terminal wailed in alarm.
The System attempted to block the transmission, but Kai had already injected Astra's virus, the one carrying the screams of the erased. Now it functioned as an anchor.
Disabling it was nearly impossible.
"It worked…" Kai exhaled, collapsing back into the chair. Tears streamed down his face, equal parts relief and horror. "They saw it. Everyone saw it."
Lyra turned for a single moment.
Her face was streaked with sweat and dust, but furious fire burned in her eyes.
"Then Astra has only one thing left to do," she said. "Finish what we started."
At that exact moment, a massive explosion thundered from the central hall.
A violet flash illuminated the entire Vault.
Kai and Lyra turned toward the battle simultaneously.
There, amid the ruins, the Herald of Entropy, the thing that remained of Astra, stood above the defeated Archon Valius. The First General's golden armor had been ripped to pieces. From his wounds flowed no light anymore.
Only ordinary human blood.
And somewhere far above them, at the very heart of the Artificial Paradise, the nine Neon Gods inside their capsules opened their eyes for the first time in centuries.
They felt the stream of belief, their food, their life itself, beginning to weaken.
And for the first time in hundreds of years…
They were truly afraid.