Whispers in the Rust
Unravel the secrets of the Enigma Collection! This exclusive collection, a special airdrop for Faceless holders, expands the thrilling lore of the Enigma Collection NFT project. Discover where the legend began...
Aera moved with the precision of a machine, her fingers tracing the shard's rough edges. Its energy pulsed against her skin, an alien thrum that both fascinated and repelled her. The Ghost Blade protocol demanded immediate extraction, a return to the safety of Luminoxia's sterile labs.
But that flicker in the girl's eyes lingered.
Aera tucked the shard into a secure containment field. This close, she could sense its chaotic pull, the faint echo of that spectral dragon's shattered roar. If it was this volatile, if it had affected the girl so profoundly...there was more to this than a simple retrieval mission.
The decision was a glitch in her system, a violation of protocol. Yet, it resonated with a certainty formed before Luminoxia, in that other dying world she'd once called home. This wasn't just duty, it was survival instinct.
She exited the factory, her internal sensor array sweeping for threats. The girl was long gone, vanished into the labyrinth of the ruined city. Finding her would be a needle in a rust-filled haystack – unless...
Aera paused. One of the flickering sodium lights above cast a distorted reflection on the algae-covered wall. An earlier scan detected a subtle structural anomaly there. Hidden passage? Pre-collapse shelter? A potential place of refuge.
She leaped, her bio-enhanced boots finding purchase on crumbling concrete. She pried at the weakened plaster, revealing a hand-width gap, and beyond it...darkness. Drawing her light blade, Aera descended into the hidden space.
It was cramped, stifling. Decades of accumulated dust triggered air filters in her mask. She spotted scraps of tattered fabric, an abandoned child's doll. So, the girl did use this as shelter. But where was she now?
Suddenly, something sparked at the edge of the light blade's illumination. A glimmer not of metal, but of eyes. The girl crouched in the shadows, a feral defiance in her gaze. Yet, something else now – a flicker of...trust? Or desperation?
"It talks to me," the girl rasped, her voice barely a whisper amidst the rust. "The shard...it sings in my head."
Aera lowered her weapon a fraction. "What does it say?"
The girl's brow creased in concentration. "Not...words. Feelings. Fear, but not of me. It's scared of...something else."
Aera frowned. Sentient energy? That possibility strained even her experience. But as she glanced around the hidden refuge, a different thought chilled her – it wasn't just the girl hiding here.
The Enigma Warriors and their world are constructs of the imagination. Any resemblance to persons, entities, or events beyond the boundaries of this fictional narrative is purely coincidental.