Chapter 4 - The Hidden Gods - II

As night deepened, Neo-ilka was repainted to vibrant violet and electric blue, the towering spires falling like a riverside of neon. Under this manufactured canopy, Zypher made his way through the labyrinthine alleys, his eyes flicking from shadow to shadow as he trailed the pulse of the blueprint, which hummed faintly in his jacket pocket and nearly led him toward something guarded deeply within the city's heart.

Neo-ilka appeared to drown in its streets: a mad mix of gleaming technology and ancient, decaying trash. It is a city founded upon paradox, with the gods receding, their legacy remaining, hidden under the pressure of a synthetic future under perpetual motion. And yet, even while the city's power reached its zenith, Zypher knew that from within it rotted.

Every corner now was different, as if the blueprint had opened his eyes to the hidden undercurrents of Neo-ilka. He could see the symbols Andra had spoken of, faint but unmistakable, etched into the walls and pavements like forgotten scars, ancient runes nearly invisible under layers of grime and graffiti that glowed faintly in the neon light. Each mark pulsed, strange, lingering energy that set his nerves on edge. Clues, whispers from the gods, toward that end.

Zypher hastened his pace. Not knowing what was moving him, he felt the signs were marked indelibly to form a path winding through Neo-ilka's darkest and most overrun alleys. And amidst his movement, he noticed some signs of life, small groups lingering in shadows, their faces thrown into the eerie glow of neon as they gazed at him with cautious, almost knowing eyes, as if they recognized something in him, a pulse beat in the blueprint.

He stopped before a cracked wall that showed the faintest outline of a winged creature marked in the blueprint—a symbol he recognized. It glowed quietly, almost otherworldly, and as Zypher reached out to touch it, the wall quivered slightly. Vibrating beneath his fingers, he hesitated a moment longer, though his instincts pushed forward whispering that this was a door, a hidden entrance.

With one push, the wall slipped down, revealing the narrow stairway that plunged into the shadows of Neo-ilka. Metallic, acrid smells filled his senses as he stepped up onto the first stair, the door sliding shut behind him. He was suffocating in the darkness but the blueprint pulsed harder now, excited to be here, closer to where its fragments came from.

At the bottom of the stairwell, he stood in an underground chamber that seemed a full city all its own, hidden under the city he thought he knew. Ancient columns stretched toward the ceiling, their surfaces carved over with inscriptions and symbols he couldn't understand. Around the chamber were row after row of dimly lit stalls, each glowing with faint, ghostly lights, selling relics belonging to another age—a strange bazaar from some other world that existed under the city.

The market hummed, a gentle murmur of robed and cloaked faces shadowed, their voices low, trading in odd, unearthly trinkets. Full of power-it was neat, untempered, and ancient power; pulsing through the veins of Zypher, magnifying the beat of his own heart.

He took several steps forward, eyes scanning the line of faces before him, wondering if any of them could be among the Demi-Techs Andra had spoken of. Each face seemed as inscrutable as the last; and no two features were cut out from a distinction between light and shadow, plus the glow of their wares. But as he moved farther into the market, he heard a voice calling out to him, soft and laced with a chilling familiarity.

"Lost, are we?"

He turned and saw the tall figure standing at the next stall-a thing hooded, face indistinguishable, but those glinting eyes, like some live thing beneath shadows. The figure pointed to the blueprint that Zypher did not know he clutched in his pocket.

"Where'd you get that?" the figure whispered, a bare whisper.

Zypher took a moment, his eyes sizing up the man. He looked like the kind of person who would send out all sorts of wrong signals-for some reason, then all the right ones. As if one was from this world and not at all. "I… found it," he replied cautiously. "Why? Do you know what it is?

The man laughed, and the sound was low and almost predatory. "More than you could ever imagine. But that knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hands." His eyes remained fixed on Zypher's face, studying him with an intensity that made Zypher's skin crawl. "Tell me, do you believe in the old gods, boy?

Zypher's instincts shrieked at him not to trust this man, yet some part of him wouldn't allow himself to dismiss the pull of the question, the strange sense of inevitability to all this. "I didn't," he admitted. "Not until recently.".

The man slowly nodded. "You're closer to the truth than you know. The gods aren't just stories. They are among us, hiding under that neon illusion."

He waved towards the market; his eyes were sparkling. "It's a sanctuary for its remnants, its followers and descendants. Demi-Techs. Us who are capable of carrying inside us one spark of that which belonged to them - a small measure of the powers they could wield.

His mind racing, heart pounding with this mix of fear and excitement. "Then…", he started, "Are you one of them? A Demi-Tech?"

The man's lips curled into a knowing smile. "Perhaps. But that is not what matters now. What matters is that you carry a piece of the gods' power, and there are those who would kill to possess it."

Zypher shivered. "Who are they?

Corporations, cults, power-hungry leaders who saw the gods as not there to be worshiped but rather as tools to be exploited. They wanted to take away the heart and soul of the gods and harness it all to power their empires. He leaned in, his eyes burning with an intensity that had made Zypher's skin prickle. "If you want to save that blueprint—and your life— you're going to need friends."

The man pointed towards the far end of the market, as if shadows were deepening there to merge with the dark recesses of the underground. "Seek out the Oracle. She knows better than anyone the gods and their ways. She will see you for what you are and tell you where your path lies.".

Zypher swallowed hard, his pocket heavy with the weight of the blueprint. The Oracle… He'd heard whispers of her, an apparition veiled in myth, said to be the last vestige of real connection to the gods. He nodded to the man and made his way into the darkness, where the Oracle waited.