Structure Shift

The floor shook hard as alarms echoed through the core

Lights overhead turned blood red

The tower's walls began to move gears sliding runes pulsing ancient code pouring through each seam

Structure evolving

Reiss stepped back and whistled

Now that's bad news

Aya checked the shard interface

Link in progress

Time until full overwrite

Nine minutes

They ran

Corridors shifted while they moved stairs inverted then reversed gravity halfway through

Aya leapt through mid-flip stabbing her blade into the wall to hold position

Reiss slid sideways along a moving platform launching his hook into the next floor

The tower wasn't just rising it was building weapons

Sentinel drones poured from the ceiling low defense code but numbers made up for it

Aya slashed through three midair Rewrite Edge absorbing their fragments

Reiss laughed as he swung and kicked one straight into a turbine

Keep up

Aya didn't respond just sprinted ahead jumping gaps as the ground crumbled

A large hall unfolded next layer not yet finished

Code walls still forming flickering between solid and void

A portal node floated in the center

The key

They had to reach it before the tower completed the override

But then the guardian of the node emerged

Towerborn

A massive construct stitched from failed evolution data unfinished incomplete but deadly

One eye locked on Aya

The other tracked Reiss

Target error

Permission mismatch

Execute anyway

The thing lunged

Aya dodged to the left Reiss flanked right

They struck together

But the Towerborn adapted mid-hit changing code form to absorb the impact

Reiss growled

It's learning faster than the last ones

Aya's eyes narrowed

Then we rewrite faster

She dove forward blade glowing bright

Reiss followed up with rollback spikes hammering it from behind

It cracked

They both struck the core in unison

It exploded in silence

The portal node dropped

Seven minutes left

Aya touched it

Teleport initialized

They vanished as the floor collapsed into void