Chapter : 1385

The chest vents were open.

Mina stood up. She balanced on the swaying stone. She wound up her arm. She wasn't a pitcher. She wasn't an athlete. But she was desperate.

"For the future," she whispered.

She threw the jar with everything she had.

It sailed through the air, a humble clay pot against a god of metal. It spun end over end.

It hit the edge of the central intake vent.

Smash.

The jar broke. A cloud of fine, grey dust puffed out.

For a second, nothing happened. The Golem kept moving. Mina's heart stopped. Did she miss? Was the powder useless?

Then, the intake fans sucked the dust inside.

The Golem froze mid-swing.

A terrible, grinding noise erupted from deep within its chest. The purple light flickered. It turned red. Then white. Then... nothing.

The humming of the quartz stopped. The song of the earth was silenced.

The Golem took one stumbling step back. Its arms dropped to its sides. The light in its eyes died.

It tilted, groaning under its own immense weight.

"Timber!" Lloyd shouted from somewhere above.

The God-King fell. It crashed into the fortress with an earth-shattering boom that knocked Mina off her feet. Dust billowed up, covering everything.

Silence fell over Ramos.

Mina lay on the rubble, coughing. She looked up. The Golem was down. It was dark. It was dead.

She started to laugh. It was a weak, shaky sound. She had done it. The librarian had silenced the story.

"We did it," she whispered.

But as the dust settled, she didn't see Lloyd celebrating. She saw him landing on the chest of the fallen giant, walking towards something. He wasn't cheering. He was staring.

And the look on his face wasn't victory. It was pure, frozen horror.

The dust cloud was thick, tasting of copper and pulverized stone. Lloyd landed on the chest of the fallen Golem. His boots rang against the cooling metal. He was exhausted. His muscles twitched from the aftershocks of the Demon Gates. His mana was dry. But he was alive.

"Good throw, Librarian," he wheezed, giving a thumbs up to the distant figure of Mina on the rubble pile. "Remind me to never get in a snowball fight with you."

He walked across the vast landscape of the Golem's chest plates. The machine was massive. It was a city block of engineering. Now that it wasn't trying to squash him, he could appreciate the craftsmanship. It was ancient, yes, but Wilfred had modified it. He had added new armor plates. New weapons.

"Wilfred didn't design this," Lloyd thought, looking at the seamless welds on the newer sections. "He's a miner, not an engineer. He didn't have the skill to integrate the quartz drive this perfectly. Someone helped him. Someone gave him the upgrades."

He reached the central cockpit hatch. It was sealed shut. Wilfred was likely inside, trapped in his own tin can. Lloyd considered knocking, but he was too tired for banter.

He looked around the chest area. He wanted to see the modification. He wanted to see the signature of the engineer who had helped turn a relic into a modern weapon. Every engineer left a mark. A signature.

He wiped a layer of soot from a smooth, hexagonal plate near the neck joint. It looked like a maintenance panel.

Under the grime, there was an engraving. It wasn't an ancient rune. It wasn't the crest of House Wilfred. It wasn't even a magical symbol.

It was a logo.

A stylized, geometric insect with glowing wings. A firefly.

Lloyd stopped. His breath hitched in his throat. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The sounds of the dying fires and the shouting soldiers faded away. All he could hear was the rushing of blood in his ears.

He knew that symbol. He knew it better than his own face.

He reached out, his hand trembling uncontrollably. He traced the lines of the logo. It was precise. Machine-tooled. It didn't belong in this world of swords and magic. It belonged to a world of neon lights, corporate wars, and cold steel.

"No," Lloyd whispered. "That's impossible."

Memories crashed into him. Memories of his past life as KM Evan. Not the glory days. The dark days.

The Firefly Corporation.

They were a megacorp from Earth. A weapons manufacturer. They were ruthless. They were efficient. They were the ones who had started the wars he fought in. They were the ones who had sold weapons to both sides. They were the architects of half the misery in his old life.

Chapter : 1386

They were his greatest enemy. And they were supposed to be dead. Left behind in another universe.

"How?" Lloyd croaked. "How is this here?"

He stared at the mark. It wasn't a coincidence. It was the exact logo. The same angles. The same arrogant design.

"Wilfred didn't find ancient blueprints," Lloyd realized, his mind racing with horrifying clarity. "He found them. Or they found him."

This wasn't just a local lord getting ambitious. This wasn't just a magical threat. This was corporate expansion. Firefly was here. In this world.

And if Firefly was here... that meant they had brought their technology. Their knowledge. Their lack of morality.

"The quartz," Lloyd muttered. "The draining tech. That's not just magic. That's bio-harvesting. That's Firefly tech adapted to magic."

He felt a wave of nausea. He thought he was fighting a fantasy war. He thought he was the only one with advanced knowledge. He thought he was special.

He was wrong.

He wasn't the only one who had crossed over. Or maybe... maybe Firefly had found a way to open a door.

"The counterfeit soap," Lloyd thought. "The efficient mining. The sudden leap in technology."

It all made sense. A terrifying, sickening sense.

"Lloyd!" Mina's voice called out from below. She was climbing up the Golem's side. "Are you okay? You're staring at the metal."

Lloyd didn't answer. He couldn't take his eyes off the mark. It stared back at him, a small, silent symbol that changed everything.

The dust from the collapsed fortress walls hung in the air like a thick, grey fog. The massive Golem, the God-King that had threatened to stomp Lloyd into a fine paste just moments ago, was now a silent mountain of cooling metal and stone. Lloyd stood on its chest, staring at the Firefly logo. His heart was hammering against his ribs, not from the physical exertion of opening the Demon Gates, but from the sheer, cold terror of what that symbol represented.

"They are here," Lloyd whispered to himself. "The ghosts aren't just in my head anymore. They have branding."

He expected the machine to be fully dead. The Anti-Aethel Quartz powder Mina had thrown was a spiritual poison. It should have severed the connection between the quartz and the ether, turning the Golem back into a very expensive statue. And for the most part, it had. The purple lights were gone. The hum of the engine was silent.

But then, a sound cut through the silence. It wasn't the grinding of gears or the hiss of steam. It was a voice.

"I am... sorry."

Lloyd jumped back, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword. He looked around. There was no one on the chest plate but him. Mina was still climbing up the side.

"Who said that?" Lloyd demanded. "If you are a ghost, I am very tired. Please make an appointment for next week."

"I never wanted... this," the voice came again. It was soft. It was weak. And it was terrifyingly human. It sounded like a young woman, her voice heavy with a sadness that felt older than the stone she was made of.

The sound was coming from beneath his feet. From inside the machine.

Lloyd knelt down, pressing his ear against the cold metal near the cockpit hatch. "Hello? Is someone in there? Wilfred, if you are doing a funny voice to avoid getting punched, it isn't going to work."

"Father's creation..." the voice whispered. It was fading, like a radio signal losing power. "He made me to live... not to destroy. I am sorry for the pain. I am sorry for the noise."

Lloyd froze. The pieces of the puzzle, which had been floating around in his head like a chaotic storm, suddenly clicked into place with a deafening snap.

Elder Corin had said Anubis wasn't trying to build a weapon. He was trying to save his daughter. He was trying to transfer her consciousness into a perfect vessel so she wouldn't die.

"You're her," Lloyd whispered, his eyes widening. "You aren't a computer. You aren't an AI. You're her."

The Golem wasn't just a machine piloted by a madman. The Golem was the daughter. Or at least, the Golem Heart was holding her soul. Wilfred hadn't just stolen an engine; he had kidnapped a person. He had forced a sleeping girl to wake up and become a tank.

"Pain..." the voice drifted out, weaker now. "So much pain. Please... let me sleep. The dreams were better."