Chapter 30 Protocol: Rebirth

The Executioner Memorial burned.

Blasts cracked stone and vaporized dust. Cipher's blade clashed with a soldier's halberd, while Kira danced through projectiles, her digitized arrows piercing through armor. Mark's hammer shattered bones. Vincent sent out a pulse — disabling dozens of codes in a single burst. Tony weaved between enemies like a shadow, light-pistols flashing.

But Riven saw only one thing: Cigar stepping into the glowing teleport sigil behind the lone Executioner sent to extract him.

"No"

Flash.

The world bent. Light folded.

Riven tore through the fabric of the portal in the instant before it closed, vanishing.

The light spat him out inside a massive underground dome. dark metal, thrumming power, unfamiliar glyphs. The heart of Death Protocol.

Cigar stood at the center.

The other Executioner staggered backward, stunned. "He got through"

"Go," Cigar ordered. "This one's mine."

"But"

"I said go."

With hesitation, the Executioner vanished.

The silence stretched.

Cigar exhaled smoke.

"You weren't supposed to follow."

Riven's eyes narrowed. "You knew I would."

Without another word, they collided.

Fist met fist. Cigar's raw strength launched Riven through a pillar. Riven rebounded mid-air, Flashing behind Cigar and slamming him to the ground. The floor cracked.

Riven activated red judgement. His hands explode with red digitalized code.

suddenly.

It disappeared. Seemed like something had stolen it from him.

Cigar laughed. Blood in his mouth. "That all you got?"

He rose, shoulders burning with effort, fists clenched like stone. "You think this is about codes? Orders?.
Red lightning cracked against the wall.

Riven froze.

Cigar's eyes glinted.

"It's starting."


Behind them, a rift, thin and pulsing opened in mid-air. A scream of reality torn open.


And elsewhere… the rifts began to open.

Lucy, guarding the children in a
safehouse, turned as the sky above them darkened. She reached for her blade.

"Everyone stay inside," she said softly.

One child pointed. "What's that?"

Above the clouds — a red fissure in the sky, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Kira, still fighting near the Executioner Memorial, paused mid-attack. Her breath caught in her throat. "No…"

Cipher turned, seeing it too. "it can't be?"

Tony, Mark, and Vincent stared into the sky above the wastelands.

A crackling rift had opened miles away. Silent. Not yet fully formed. But enough to know: something
was waking.

Around the world, people looked up.

In shattered cities, overgrown forests, buried labs. In refugee zones and war zones.

Red cracks in the sky.

The beginning of something they could not yet understand.

Back in the hidden base.

Cigar didn't flinch. His voice was almost reverent. "so it's true."

He turned toward Riven one last time.

The rift began opened even more.

The code pulsed.

A new shape emerged.

A man.

Blades floating in orbit around him, his body wrapped in blue flames that spoke of annihilation.