Leviathan
Undisclosed Location — Deep Core Relay Nexus
Beneath the old world's crust, where time forgot circuitry and no map dared record, Leviathan stirred.
Not a weapon.
Not a soldier.
A system.
Built before HALIX. Before the Game. Before the Players were even born.
Its protocols were simple:
Adapt.
Dominate.
Reconstruct reality to suit the victor.
Cipher didn't invent it.
He just woke it up.
---
Citadel — Command Briefing Room
Astra's hands shook slightly.
> "Something's rewriting battlefield terrain mid-conflict."
She pulled up a simulation. An entire river had shifted in Romania. A mountain range in Eastern Turkey... gone. Cities vanished from all digital records. Replaced by terrain not physically present, but enforced through every global system.
> "Satellite data says it's real."
> "Ground intel says it's not."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
> "How do you fight something that doesn't exist?"
Dakar lit a smoke.
> "You don't."
> "You out-stubborn it."
---
Cipher's Fortress
Jian stormed into the war chamber.
> "You activated Leviathan? That system nearly erased the Arctic Accord."
Cipher calmly studied the simulations as entire countries flickered between states.
> "Kael fights using the rules of men."
> "Leviathan fights with the rules of gods."
Jian wasn't satisfied.
> "And when Leviathan turns on you?"
Cipher looked up, eyes glowing with refracted HUD code.
> "Then I'll finally be something worth destroying."
---
Former Ukrainian Front
Kael's unit watched as roads rerouted in front of them.
Not crumbled.
Changed.
Maps on all systems—including analog backups—rewrote themselves in real-time.
And through the fog, a column of tanks appeared that hadn't existed five seconds earlier.
No heat trace.
No sound.
Just presence.
Rael's voice buzzed through static.
> "Kael. It's happening everywhere."
Kael responded flatly.
> "Then we hit it where it's born."
---
Undercity Black Node — Forgotten Sponsor Site
Alina and Dakar followed Kael into a sunken ruin, a place marked nonexistent on every recorded ledger.
But Dakar smiled as he scanned the wall.
> "This was the Leviathan Codex base."
> "The people who built it never believed in maps."
> "Only memories."
Kael turned to Alina.
> "Then let's make Leviathan remember something ugly."
---
Above — Global Broadcast
The sponsors were watching. Betting. Backing.
But the odds were breaking.
No one could predict the battlefield anymore. No terrain stayed the same. And Kael's mere presence near a conflict now caused sponsors to pull out—too risky, too wild.
He wasn't just fighting a war anymore.
He was becoming a variable.
Unstable. Unownable.
A virus inside the game.
---
Cipher's Final Log of the Night
> "He's shifting."
> "From Player to something else."
> "And when that shift is complete…"
> "I will either control him…"
> "Or have to destroy the last free mind in the world."
---
End of Chapter Twenty
Next: Chapter Twenty-One — "Mapbreaker",