Witch of Envy: Riftwalker

The city looked different now.

Colder.Sharper.Like the metal skin of Neo-Lumina was hiding something far darker beneath.

Elaria stood on the rooftop of an old transit station with Maris beside her, watching the ChronaTech Spire in the distance—glass and chrome twisting into the clouds like a divine spear.

"That's where they store all their blacksite data," Maris muttered. "They call it the Core Vault. Vault's off-grid. Not even their execs have full clearance."

Elaria narrowed her eyes. "Then that's where they're hiding it."

"Hiding what exactly?"

She held up the shard from Kaelira, still flickering with faint red light.

"Proof that they know who I am. Who we were. What the Witches did."

That night, they moved.

Maris used old janitor codes from a worker she once smuggled out of the East Wing. Elaria disguised her mana signature by embedding a nullifier rune into Maris's shield emitter—her first field test of inverted spellcraft, which dampened magical traces instead of amplifying them.

They slipped into the Spire through a forgotten maintenance duct.

Inside, the world changed.

The Vault wasn't cold.

It breathed.

Glowing cables like veins ran through the walls. Digital glyphs pulsed faintly beneath translucent floors. Machines hummed with artificial rhythm, like a heart beating out of sync with time itself.

They moved past labs filled with cryopreserved cores, some clearly infused with what Elaria recognized as aetheric anchors—relics designed to store magical signatures.

They weren't just collecting ancient magic.

They were reverse engineering it.

At the lowest level, they found it: A chamber of seven columns, each labeled not with tech serials, but with arcane symbols.

Elaria approached the one marked in violet, heart pounding.

 "Designate: WITCH-6 – Envy. Status: Inactive. Subject presumed lost."

 "Energy signature anomaly: Reactivation potential 12.4%."

 "Tracking protocol: WITCH-1 priority elevated."

Her breath caught.

They had been tracking her since she arrived.

She turned to the others:

 WITCH-2 – Wrath. Status: Fragmented.

 WITCH-3 – Gluttony. Status: Dormant signal detected in Sector Dustline.

 Others… blank or labeled unknown.

"They're indexing us," she whispered. "Even after two thousand years…"

Maris glanced around nervously. "They think you're all… artifacts?"

"No," Elaria said bitterly. "They think we're resources."

Suddenly, a voice echoed through the chamber.

 "You're not authorized."

A humanoid figure stepped into the light—draped in polished black synth armor, face hidden behind a mirrored mask.

"Chrome Fang?" Maris whispered.

"No," Elaria said. "Worse."

The figure raised a hand. The room warped—space folding inward, time itself slowing.

Elaria gasped. "He's using temporal compression. That's—"

 "ChronaTech has advanced," the voice said. "And you are obsolete."

Elaria acted on instinct.

With one motion, she slammed her hand against the panel labeled WITCH-3, channeling the last of Kaelira's shard into it. The machine stuttered, blinking red.

 "Unauthorized memory spike detected."

 "Chrono-lockdown failure."

 "Energy surge…"

The floor trembled.

The chamber erupted in a pulse of magic and light.

They ran.

Glass shattered overhead. Warning klaxons screamed. Temporal shields collapsed in flashes of fire.

As they burst into the upper corridor, Maris glanced back once.

"What did you do?!"

"I unlocked a signal. I gave them a reason to chase me faster."

"Why would you—"

"Because now I know where to go next," Elaria said. Her eyes burned with certainty."They've found Gluttony. And if she's still alive... so is hope."