Chapter 39: Leviathan's Breath** **POV: Lin Shen**

The drones came at twilight—not the sleek silver sentinels of Neo-Kyo's security grid, but *things* of rust and weeping flesh. Their fuselages bulged with tumorous growths that pulsed in time with Lin Shen's entropy core.

"Threshold's welcoming committee," Bai Ye muttered, her photon arm flickering as she calibrated the spectral scanner. "They've fused human neural tissue with attack drones. Each one's piloted by a fragment of someone's uploaded consciousness."

Lin Shen pressed his palm against the bulletproof glass of the Dawn Spire's observation deck. Fifty floors below, the cybernetic swarm was painting the city in shades of madness:

—A kindergarten teacher's face stretched across a bomber drone, singing nursery rhymes through missile launch tubes.

—Fingerbone shrapnel embedding in concrete, sprouting copper wires that danced like Medusa's hair.

—The smell. Oh god, the smell—burnt honey and rotting dental fillings.

"Energy signature matching Vorath's core," Bai Ye's voice tightened. "But there's something else..."

The swarm parted.

It rose from Neo-Kyo Bay like a mechanical kraken—Threshold's Leviathan. Human spinal columns formed its hydraulic system, still-twitching hands served as pressure valves. Where its head should be floated a hologram of Ghosthand's signature bonsai tree, each leaf displaying a stolen memory:

▼ Lin Shen's first kiss (age 16, cherry blossom alleyway)

▼ The moment Mira chose to detonate the photon charges (Chapter 22's gut-punch)

▼ A never-before-seen clip of Vorath whispering to a child version of Bai Ye

"Targeting its core," Lin Shen activated the entropy reversal array. The familiar icepick pain stabbed his temples—until he realized the Leviathan *wanted* this.

*Feed me your rage,* the leaves seemed to whisper. *Let me bloom.*

His silvered eye began weeping black fluid.