Grid: Omnipotence Series

Issue #4: In The Shadows

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Chapter 20 — Remnant's Watching

Everywhere Nocturnal and Cassiel went, the crows followed.

On rooftops. In alleys. In the corners of their vision. Silent, deliberate.

Cassiel tried to shoot one, but her round hit only rust. The crow was gone before the echo faded.

Later, she found her bunk marked again—this time not the insignia, but a sentence scratched in alloy:

"YOU LOOK BACK, I LOOK FORWARD."

She ground her teeth until sparks almost hissed from her jaw.

Nocturnal, visor dim, whispered: "He's closer every night."

Pancho hissed in his skull: "He's daring you. You take the step, you're on his board. But if you don't—he'll keep bleeding us."

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Chapter 21 — The God's Shadow

In the Grid, Remnant followed the Architect again.

The plain stretched endless—black metal ground, white sky heavy with swaying wires.

He stepped through a library where the shelves were filled with masks—each one a face of someone still alive in the waking city. He brushed one with alloy fingers, and a civilian in the Outer Markets dropped dead that same hour.

He smiled with his jaw of steel.

The Architect drifted like a storm on the horizon, massive, unseen, bending the plain. Remnant whispered into the Grid, voice echoing through the wires:

"Show me. Show me how you rise."

The crows followed, circuits glowing faint. They carried fragments of the Architect's voice back to him:

"SHADOWS MUST KNEEL."
"BUILD. BURN. REPEAT."

Remnant's laugh echoed sharp and hollow. "Not kneel. Replace."

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Chapter 22 — Preparations End

Cassiel walked the stronghold walls with her rifle slung and her optics scanning every shadow. Nocturnal walked beside her, cloak dripping from the rain, visor fixed ahead.

"Tomorrow," she said. "We go in tomorrow. If we wait longer, he'll break us from the inside."

Nocturnal nodded. His visor caught a reflection—two crows perched on the barricade ahead. They tilted their heads in unison.

The insignia glowed faintly on the steel, carved deep: half-skull, crow's wing.

Pancho's mind-voice buzzed sharp. "Door's open. He's waiting."

Cassiel gripped her rifle until her gloves creaked. "Then we don't knock. We break the hinges."

Nocturnal's visor flared bright in the dark.

"Let's end the hunt."

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Chapter 23 — The Step Into the Grid

The Resilience gathered around the tram frame at dawn. The air was heavy with silence, as if the city itself held its breath.

Nocturnal and Cassiel stood before the coordinates, their anchors strapped tight, Pancho perched on his shoulder with his bullet-casing token clutched between claws.

The wires above the city shimmered faintly, visible only to those who had been marked.

Cassiel looked at Nocturnal, cobalt optics burning steady. "Ready?"