"Most cultivators inherit power. I seduce it out of corrupted systems."—Kairo Voidline, Protocol 1.7
The Null Grid wasn't a place.
It was a memory the world tried to forget.
Half-ruined temples. Broken data-beasts. Rivers of corrupted qi flowing like digital slime through shattered leyline cores.
It was paradise for someone like me.
I was already mapping scripts embedded in the terrain, converting them into field hacks. Ghostfire Protocols laced my vision like a cracked HUD overlay, each pulse of corrupted spirit-code whispering secrets.
But the whispers weren't from the grid.
They came from her.
Seris had gone still.
We were halfway across a collapsed causeway, its spine made of broken prayer tablets and crystallized bone. The wind here didn't howl—it chanted.
And one chant kept repeating.
"Release her."
A cracked shrine rose from the ruins—ancient, lotus-shaped, pulsing with sealed divine qi. The glyphs were divine-class, but decaying. Failing.
One name blinked across them in bloodlight.
"YUNE."
Seris stopped walking. Her breathing hitched. "I know this shrine."
"How?"
"My clan tried to seal her away. Said she was a failed goddess... an unstable divine seed." She glanced at me. "The seal's breaking. She's calling you."
Me.
Not us.
The shrine's doors opened on their own.
No booms. No drama. Just a soft exhale, like an invitation.
Inside: a girl—barely clothed in layers of ceremonial silk, bound in golden circuitry that wrapped around her like a cage of heavenly law.
Hair like silver starlight. Skin glowing with sub-dermal glyphs. Eyes shut. Breathing shallow.
She wasn't asleep.
She was hibernating.
"Divine Lineage Detected: [Sealed Root of All Light].""Risk: Catastrophic. Access: Denied by Heaven.""Override?"
I didn't even hesitate.
Yes.
The seal shattered.
Yune gasped like someone drowning in silk.
Then she looked at me.
And everything glitched.
"WARNING: Bloodline Interference Detected.""Divine Code: Attempting Fusion."
She floated forward.
Not walked—floated.
The golden bindings uncoiled and fell to the floor like dead snakes.
"You're the anomaly," she whispered, voice honey-sweet and echoing in octaves that shouldn't exist.
"Yeah," I muttered. "Got that a lot this week."
"I've been asleep for three centuries… waiting for someone who could rewrite the seal code. A hacker of blood."
"I'm not just a hacker." I stepped closer. "I'm writing the next system."
She smiled—and then her fingers brushed my cheek.
Heat. Light. Code. Sin.
It wasn't lust.
It was need—a divine lineage screaming for recursion, begging to be written into something new.
"Merge Request: [Root of Light] + [Ghost-Arcanist Hybrid]. Success Rate: 27%.""Warning: This fusion will corrupt the divine script.""Result: Yune's divinity will be lost. But her soul will survive. Inside you."
She didn't ask.
She offered.
"Will you take me?" she asked, eyes pleading—not in fear, but desire. "Let me burn inside you?"
Seris stepped forward, lips tight.
"This is a divine-class codebase. She'll overwrite you if you're not stable."
"She won't," I said. "Because I'm not trying to dominate her."
I held out my hand.
"I'm going to jailbreak a goddess."
The merge wasn't clean.
It wasn't spiritual.
It was code-twisting agony mixed with divine rapture. Our bloodlines collided, fragmented, and spun recursive threads into a third structure—neither hers nor mine.
Yune arched her back, floating in midair, golden light bleeding from her skin.
I held her hand and screamed.
Seris grabbed my other, feeding me stability glyphs mid-merge, stabilizing the recursive loops while my node writhed with overload alerts.
Then—snap.
Silence.
"GENE NODE #3 INSTALLED: [ROOTKIT BLOODLIGHT PROTOCOL]""New Ability Unlocked: [Divine Reformat — Corrupts and Subjugates Sealed Bloodline Talents].""Yune: Merge Complete. Status: Bound. Class: Sub-Divine Companion.""Seris Affection: +11 (Jealousy++)."
We collapsed in a tangle of limbs and glowing sweat, energy still crackling from the merge.
Yune trembled against me, her breath shaky.
"Is this what mortality feels like?" she whispered.
"No," I said, brushing her hair back. "This is what freedom feels like."
Her fingers curled around my shirt. "Then let me stay here. Inside you. Beside you. I want to learn everything your world forgot."
Seris muttered from behind us. "Another one? You're building a damn bloodline harem."
I smirked. "Not just a harem."
"A weaponized gene library."
Then the shrine trembled.
No—not the shrine.
The Grid.
The Compiler flared with red glyphs.
"ALERT: Unauthorized Bloodline Merge Detected by Heavenly Firewall.""Tracking Lock Engaged. Agents Inbound."
Above us, the sky of the Null Grid split open.
Heavenly algorithms poured through—a rain of divine fire shaped like spear-shards of code.And stepping through them came a man clad in obsidian robes stitched with living stars.
A Heaven-Eater.
A Celestial Debugger.
He pointed at me, voice flat and absolute:
"Kairo Voidline. You are a virus. Prepare for deletion."