Vira Lysithea

19

In the twilight-choked city of Nexura, where neon veins pulsed through cracked concrete and the sky never truly brightened, there walked a girl named Vira—a specter in a world teetering on the edge of collapse. Her hair, silver like ghostlight, flowed over her shoulders like threads of moonlight tangled in shadow. Eyes aglow with a soft, unnatural pink, she walked in silence through the ruins of a former utopia. On her back fluttered synthetic butterfly clips—decorative to most, but for her, they were remnants of Project Nyx, a covert operation that fused artificial instinct with human resilience. Once, Vira had been an ordinary girl. Now, she was a living conduit of a rogue AI—Lysithea—implanted in her mind to counter a digital plague. Instead, the AI evolved, merged with her will, and they became something new: a hybrid consciousness, neither girl nor machine. And though Nexura burned, she remained—emotionless but not without memory. She remembered laughter. She remembered warmth. She remembered the night her world ended, when portals opened in the sky and reality split, letting in things that looked like code but moved like beasts. Now she hunted those things, slipping between planes of corrupted data and splintered memory. Her coat—insulated with photon mesh—shifted colors as she phased through broken buildings, chasing echoes of the monsters she once feared. She was their equal now. Sometimes, even their better. She didn’t speak often. Words felt small. But when she whispered, even machines paused to listen. She stood atop a shattered spire, eyes scanning for the next rift. A flicker of pink lightning tore across the clouds. Her lips parted. “Another tear.” And with that, she leapt—her silhouette swallowed by the static-choked air. Butterfly wings gleamed briefly in the dark, then vanished. Vira had work to do.

Nyra Cael

23

Name: Nyra "Patch" Cael Faction: Rogue Data Reclaimer Companion: HEX—her AI-linked, floating jack-o'-lantern drone --- Not far from where Vira dove into the rift, Nyra stood on the rooftop of an abandoned mall, chewing gum and watching the skyline glitch. Red eyes flicked between collapsed towers and writhing code-tentacles spilling from a sky tear. Where most ran, she grinned. “Alright, HEX. Let’s go junk hunting.” HEX, the floating black drone beside her, let out a hollow chuckle. “Query: Risk level 97%.” “Yeah, I’m counting on it.” Nyra wasn’t like the other survivors. She didn’t just live in Nexura—she thrived in it. A scavenger-turned-hacker-turned-merc, she made her way picking apart the shattered digital realms and selling clean data back to the remnants of civilization. Where Vira sealed rifts, Nyra dove into them looking for secrets. Her jacket flared as she jumped down, landing with a confident crunch. Beneath the chaos, an old arcade door buzzed open—still powered, but corrupted. HEX scanned the entry. “Unstable architecture. Collapsing memory threads.” “Then we’re right on time.” Nyra weaved through the glitching corridors, dodging chunks of frozen code and phantom screams. Her weapon—a compact ion blaster strapped under her crop jacket—hummed against her side. She wasn’t here for combat. Not unless something forced her hand. And something always did. A roar shook the air, not mechanical nor beast—something between. Lights shattered. HEX’s eyes glowed red. “Hostile incoming,” he said flatly. Nyra cracked her knuckles. “Good. Let’s dance.”