CHAPTER ２ ｜　Absurd Deals in the Sea of Paradox

The sulfur market hung inverted from the cavern ceiling, rusted gears cascading like metallic waterfalls. Mechanical citizens walked backward across glass skywalks, boots glued by petrified stardust rain. Hayate tugged his flight jacket's hood lower, his Stardust Eye scanning the central contract monolith—under backlight, blood fingerprints formed the Sakabane crest on its surface.

"Cult gene scanners even here." Rin pressed her crystal arm against the monolith as cobalt umbilici drilled into the stone seams. Instantly, the mechanical citizens froze mid-step, their eyes shifting to the cult's crimson identification codes, while invisible contract clauses writhed beneath the skin of their necks.

Hayate's wrench struck the ground, and a stardust resonance pried open three paving slabs. Beneath lay the wreckage of a cryopod, its interior crusted with desiccated blood fingerprints. A memory surged—his mother had once pawned her pocket watch here, the contract chains winding around young Hayate's wrist. "They carved chips into blood…" he muttered with a cold laugh, hooking a glowing data chain with his wrench, its links flickering with fragments of a "Flawed Graveyard" star chart.

Rin's sheath pressed against his neck. "Don't touch the core data." But it was too late—the data chain exploded into violet mist. The joints of the citizens cracked in reverse, their palms splitting open into stardust resonators. As the gear waterfall of the market's dome accelerated its fall, Hayate caught a glimpse of a skeletal lighthouse's reflection—the star chart at its pinnacle pulsing in sync with the lines on his palm.

"Anchor located." He wiped away the blood from his nose, his stardust armor melding with Rin's blade. "This damn contract—I'll burn through the cult's throat with it."

In the inverted black-market bar, neon tubes buzzed. Vela leaned against a beer tap with reverse flow, her mech-eye shifting to amber irises like a bartender's. As Hayate's wrench touched the counter, twelve hovering laser cannons descended from the ceiling, their barrels aimed at the Sakabane tattoo on his collarbone.

"Newcomer special," Vela declared as she flipped a Lie-Coin, its violet light warping the laser trajectories. "Chug it in three seconds or lose your skull." Hayate's right eye predicted the beams' paths—in the moment the coin flipped, all the lasers staggered like a drunkard, incinerating the mechanical limbs of the cult's spies behind him.

Rin's crystal arm deflected the ricocheting energy, with glowing code "E-Ω777" etching across her skin. A memory flashed: lab screens displaying the same code as frozen moray spines being driven into her left shoulder. "Lucky number," she mused. Hayate kicked over the bar, the stardust resonance unearthing piles of moray bones hidden beneath the floor.

The bones automatically assembled into a star chart resembling a pirate flag with a missing corner. Hayate struck the central vertebra with his wrench. Grandfather's memory flooded in—an aged hand carving the family crest from identical bones, blood dripping into a cryopod's viewport. "They… used my genes as contract ink?" Blood seeped from the fissures in his right eye. As the chart completed, Vela suddenly crushed her coin.

Quantum shockwaves overturned the bar; the remnants of the frozen moray reformed in mid-air into a model lighthouse. Vela's mechanical fingertip tapped the model's spire. "Little bird, your grandpa hid tastier things in this tower—like how to can cult souls in moray tins."

Rin's sheath pierced the model, yet the cobalt umbilici coiled around her encoded left arm. Hayate heard his grandfather's roar echo in memory: "The true essence of the Sea of Paradox is the revenge loop of the flawed!"

Frozen moray bones floated in stardust resonance as Hayate's wrench discharged icy blue arcs. Each bone revealed glowing, etched astral coordinates, piecing together the missing right wing of the Paradox Pirate flag—the very entrance to the Flawed Graveyard, sealed by cult battleships.

"This isn't a star chart—it's a genetic map." Rin plunged her crystal arm into the bone formation, and the cobalt umbilici suddenly reversed its energy draw as the "E-Ω777" code writhed beneath her skin. Hayate's eye seared with his grandfather's memory—

The aged patriarch of the Sakabane, kneeling before the same arrangement of bones, dripped stardust fuel into a cryopod cradling infant Hayate. A matching luminescent pattern pulsed on the baby's chest. "Pacts begin in the genes…" his grandfather rasped through mechanical whirs, "The cult doesn't seek obedience—they need our rebellious DNA as kindling."

The memory shifted: as an adult, his grandfather shattered his own Stardust Eye with a wrench. A torrent of stardust obliterated the cult's battleships as he laughed into the chaos: "Hayate, the Sea is a recursive lighthouse—our defiance fuels their order!"

In reality, bones suddenly pierced Hayate's wrist, drawing blood and reforming into a holographic model: hundreds of cryopods encircling the skeletal lighthouse, each linked to a Sakabane gene lock. "They treat us as perpetual motion fuel…" Hayate snapped the bones, his blood congealing into a burning Paradox Pirate flag.

Rin's blade cleaved the hologram's core, extracting a pulsating star chart chip. "Your blood unlocked the final access," she pronounced, hurling the chip toward the inverted market's dome. Instantly, the mechanical citizens halted their backward march, their eye sockets displaying the cult's hidden slave-trade contract records.

From the shadows, Vela's mech-eye glinted as she embedded a Lie-Coin into the recess of Hayate's wrench. "Now you see why they'd rather blast the entire Sulfur Sea than let you go—you're the living key to their corpse vault."

A prismatic glimmer flashed across Vela's mech-eye as the sulfur sea stilled mid-collision. In the depths of cargo wreckage, cryo-containers hummed with resonant stardust waves that shredded the sky like invisible hands. Even before the cult battleships fully materialized, twelve mech-hounds quantum-leaped from fissures—their optical sensors shifting from azure to magma-red, their resonators syncing with the cracks in Hayate's Stardust Eye.

"Living key side effects incoming." Rin's sheath anchored into the deck, the cobalt umbilici weaving a defensive net. As the first hounds crashed against it, Hayate's wrench struck a spinal column—only for the stardust resonance to surge backward into his nerves, with his grandfather's roar exploding in his mind: "They're weaponizing your genetic sync!"

The pack mutated; steel frames bulged with bio-organic tissue, fangs lengthening into stardust blades. Rin decapitated two hounds, yet their shattered heads spurted fluorescent blood that reformed into her own face. "Clones…" she whispered, frozen in place, as the phantom blade "Oblivion's Cry" reflected countless images of herself—each replica's left arm aglow with the "E-Ω777" code.

"Kill me, and you'll prove you're the genuine article." The clones spoke in unison, their voices laced with Vela's laugh. Rin's crystal arm trembled uncontrollably as a memory flashed of lab screens: "Subject 777: Memory purge 99% complete."

Hayate's stardust armor tore through the frenzied pack, catching sight of Rin's hesitation. "Don't listen to their trash talk!" He hurled a Lie-Coin, its violet explosion temporarily paralyzing the clones. Rin's strike finally came—but at the last moment, the blade's path diverted; its edge grazed a clone's throat, severing a chain of data links.

"You can't kill us because we're all flawed." The remnants of the clones dissolved into stardust, coalescing into a hologram of the cult flagship. On its bridge, hundreds of Rin clones floated in stardust tanks, each emblazoned with an inverted Sakabane crest on their chests.

For the first time, Rin's blade wailed. The cobalt umbilici lashed across Hayate's arm. "Resonate harder," she urged, pressing the blade to her heart. "Burn me along with all these copies."

Rin's blade pressed against her heart as the cobalt umbilici intertwined with Hayate's stardust resonance into a searing white net. Vela's mocking sneer broke through the silence before the storm: "Self-destruction is the dumbest bet." She flicked a Lie-Coin; violet light shredded the quantum barriers, and in an instant, the cargo wreck was devoured by a probability storm.

Space crumpled like a rumpled sheet of pact parchment. Cryopod shards spun counterclockwise, while the remains of mech-hounds reassembled into countless holograms of Vela. Hayate's eye burned with agony—each phantom grasp clutched a blazing Paradox Pirate flag, its cracks echoing the bleeding patterns of his collarbone tattoo. "Parlor tricks!" he roared, smashing a phantom with his wrench. Yet the stardust energy phased through the void, striking the gear core of the inverted market.

The gear waterfall stilled abruptly, hundreds of tons of steel resonating like an organ in a grand cathedral. From a fissure in the sound, Vela emerged; her mech-eye split into six Lie-Coins as she intoned, "Raise the stakes. Your wager is…" The coins embedded into the deck formed an inverted pentagram, and she continued, "find the real me within five minutes, or be ground into the cult's contract ink."

Rin's blade sliced through the onrushing temporal vortices, only to find its edge corroded by the probability mist. "No energy attacks!" Hayate shouted, pulling her aside as their spot collapsed into two-dimensional contract text. In a fleeting reflection, he saw Vela's true form—she was inscribing "Flawed Graveyard" coordinates in the void with her mech-fingertips, each stroke triggering pulses in the probability storm.

"Third portside phantom," Rin murmured, her crystal arm plunging into the deck. Data cascaded backward through the cobalt umbilici, revealing Vela's quantum-state body hidden in a probability blind spot. "Her mech-eye bears my grandfather's stardust resonance pattern." Hayate's wrench whirred at hyper-speed, converting the violet Lie-Coin energy into a beacon: "Got you, Queen of Bluffs!"

Together they leapt into the storm's epicenter. Hayate's stardust armor intertwined with the glow of Rin's blade, forming a drill-like weapon, while Vela reassembled six coins into a Schrödinger Box. At the moment of impact, the probability storm collapsed into a singularity. The cores of the coins burst with golden radiance—the coordinates of the "Flawed Graveyard" blossomed like Van Gogh's starry night, each streak a memory chain of the Sakabane people.

"The real wager," Vela whispered, licking blood from her lips as her mech-eye revealed the skeletal lighthouse deep in the coordinates. "The cult has burned your family's memories as fuel for seven generations." Her final coin flickered with a countdown: 23:59:59.

Rin's sheath suddenly entangled Vela's wrist, the cobalt umbilici injecting her gene code: "You knew these coordinates all along.""For the thrill," Vela replied, letting the data drain away. "Watching flawless order torn apart by the flawed beats any high."

Hayate's wrench slammed between them, stardust sparks coalescing into an impromptu pact: "Rip it all apart. Take us to the Graveyard—I'll show you how their perfect world crumbles before your eyes."

Remnants of the probability storm formed an arrow pointing toward the lighthouse spire. Vela's laughter glitched out: "Deal. But remember…" She tapped the Sakabane tattoo on his chest. "The house always wins."

The heat of Hayate's Sakabane tattoo still lingered on Vela's fingertips as Rin's blade began to hum on its own. Its edge reflected holographic images from the cult's lab—hundreds of her clones suspended in stardust fluid, their cobalt umbilici draining memories into the lighthouse reactors.

"Reruns are boring," Rin declared as she slashed the illusion. Yet shards clung to her blade, reforming scenes—her seven-year-old self pinned on an exam table, moray spines driven into her crystal arm. A mech-voice droned: "Subject 777: Memory purge initiated."

Hayate's wrench struck the deck as stardust resonance tried to disrupt the projection. Instead, he noticed that Rin's arm began siphoning energy. "Stop! Your gene code is corrupting!" he cried, grabbing her wrist—only to have the cobalt umbilici bind his arm. Their memories intermingled: Hayate saw little Rin screaming in the lab; Rin saw his mother burning the pact parchment.

"They… use our pain as fuel." Rin's blade trembled as the clones in the hologram dissolved into data streams that flooded into her arm. Crystalline fissures spread like a virus, and beneath her skin the cult's genetic lock emerged: "Flawed shall hold no memories."

From the darkness, Vela's mech-eye flickered: "Beautiful, isn't it? The harder you rebel, the more fuel for the lighthouse." With a flip of a Lie-Coin, she shattered the hologram's roof—revealing the skeletal spire of the Flawed Graveyard. Inside, cryopods filled with clones bore Rin's tattooed code on their chests.

Rin's blade plunged uncontrollably into the deck, the cobalt umbilici crushing nearby debris. Hayate's stardust armor hacked into the resonance as his wrench struck near her heart: "Listen! You're not Subject 777—" He tore open his shirt, blood forming a Paradox Pirate flag. "You're an arsonist, just like me!"

The hologram collapsed. As it did, Rin's crystal arm shed layers, revealing her original tattoo—a fragmented Paradox Pirate flag that perfectly matched Hayate's crest. Vela's laughter echoed from the bridge: "Congratulations. You've just fueled the lighthouse for another decade."

The countdown burned into their retinas: 23:59:59.

The searing pain of the countdown still throbbed as Hayate's Stardust Eye cracked toward his temple. He staggered against the cryopod wreckage, desperate to recall the scent of his mother's soup—kelp mixed with the tang of stardust fuel and the chime of a pocket watch chain against a ladle—but all he tasted was the coppery sweetness of Lie-Fuel.

"Your gene lock is fracturing." Rin pressed her sheath against his forehead, the cobalt umbilici probing the crystalline fissures. Memory surged back—child Hayate spilling soup, his mother's blistered fingers smiling as she said, "Flawed soup has soul." Now, the scene fragmented into stardust static.

Vela's mech-eye materialized, reflecting the spreading crystal web across Hayate's face. "Each resonance brings you closer to being a 'perfect vessel.'" She flipped a Lie-Coin, projecting the cult's genetic blueprint in violet light—the Sakabane people's cerebral cortices rewired into stardust circuits, their memories transformed into an endless fuel.

Hayate smashed the hologram, recoiling from the backlash. "Shut… up!" he roared as his stardust armor flared uncontrollably. Moray bones assembled into the shape of his mother's pocket watch. The hands spun backward as contract chains emerged from the watch, drawing memories from his veins.

Rin severed the chains, her blade darkening with a cursed patina. "Stop! You'll burn all your neurons!" she cried, forcing his hand onto her crystal arm so they could share memories—recalling lab technicians injecting stardust into her eyes, and mech-voices declaring, "Memory is the poison of the flawed."

Hayate's pupils contracted as the resonance revealed one final vision—his mother's last bowl of soup, the pocket watch sinking into the broth, stardust coalescing into a Paradox Pirate flag. "Drink," she murmured as she wiped soup from his chin, "remember this taste. It will guide you to true freedom."

Reality snapped back. Hayate recoiled, unable to recapture the warmth of the soup. Crystalline veins masked half his face like a shattered ice mask. He ripped off his sleeve to reveal a pale wrist—with faint, nearly transparent palm lines, as if even the name "Hayate" was doomed to be erased by the curse.

"How long do we have?" he rasped.Rin's sheath reflected the countdown: 23:59:59."Enough to flip their table," she replied, shoving a vial of Lie-Fuel into his trembling hand.