Neon Gaze Part 3: Escape the Loop

...System Failure

The dungeon screamed.

Not in words, not in sound—but in light. The ruins flashed like lightning with no thunder. Overloaded, as if a thousand corrupted spells were trying to execute at once. The walls fractalated, the runes surged with unstable neon lightning, and the corridor broke apart into shifting layers of past and present.

Lazul dragged Xander forward, gripping his arm as he staggered, still caught between two versions of himself. His visor flickered, unreadable glyphs flooding the display, his eyes half-seeing something beyond_reality.

Orrin slammed his hands onto his keytar, chords sliding like liquid light, forcing the dungeon’s glitches into sync before the whole space crashed.

And the Medusa of the Neon Gaze watched.

Unmoving.

Unblinking.

"You were not meant to leave."

The moment she spoke, the dungeon synced again. The shifting walls locked back into place, the neon ghosts resumed their silent, endless loops, and the Medusa solidified into form again.

Xander took a breath. His hands stopped phasing.

"I… was in there," he whispered, his voice glitched at the edges. He trailed off with a stuttering pause, confused at the sound of his own voice. With effort he continued, "I saw it. What’s coming."

Lazul drew her blade, the pixel-light edge humming, her necrocrafted arm vibrated malice like a haunted tuning fork.

"Then tell us later." She turned toward the Medusa.

We End This Now

The Medusa moved—not like a person—not even like a monster. Her body jumped frames, stuttering, blinking from position to position like a glitching CRT monitor.

Lazul charged in, shoulder first in a high sword stance.

She fought blind, reading the dungeon’s reflections in her sword, letting the whispers of her necrocrafted arm predict what her eyes could not. She attacked the hollows between the vibrations in the purple-black hum around her. Her blade clashed against solid light, sparks cascading in pixelated flares.

Orrin’s keytar pulsed, cycling through discordant loops, searching for the one frequency that would disrupt the Medusa’s signal.

Xander—still dazed—fought in a different way. In a different world.

His Dreamthief training kicked in. He felt the way the dungeon looped itself, the way the Medusa wasn’t just inside it—she was it.

And that meant she could be hacked.

He worked the incantation to tune his visor, his hands moving in patterns only he understood. Lockpicks wouldn’t help here. But maybe… he could unlock her mind.

Glitching the Snake

"Keep her busy!" Xander shouted.

Lazul didn’t answer. Duh. She couldn't be any more busy.

Her sword flashed in arcs of violet fire, reflecting the neon serpents back into themselves, cutting through liquid light like a hawk's shadow.

She silently blessed her mentor for the long nights training with blindfolds. Every scar, every bloody nose prepped her for this showdown. Distantly, she hoped that Xander would have a good recording of the fight for her to review later.

Orrin’s fingers moved faster. The keytar's looped _bass_beat met with a furious, screaming solo, throwing out a weaveform that he hoped would _system_overload the dungeon's synapses.

The Medusa lagged.

Her form fragmented for a split second—and Xander saw his opening.

He tugged at the crackling thread of the weave.

Into the loop that created her.

And he snapped it.

The Medusa lurched. Her glow flared too bright, her body stuttered between forms—solid, spectral, mist... Forgotten...

She tried to reload herself—but Xander had already erased the command.

She turned to them, her neon gaze scrambling, fading, breaking apart into nothing but static.

And as she faded to black lit mist, her voice came one last time, layered and hollow.

"The Godcore…"

"It was made to keep you out."

Then—silence.

The Dungeon Exhales

For a long moment, none of them spoke.

The neon hum of the dungeon faded. The ghosts in the walls flickered, then disappeared, their final echoes breaking free into the endless grid beyond.

Xander stared at the spot where the Medusa had been. His visor was clear now, but he still saw afterimages.

"She wasn’t lying," he murmured.

Orrin slumped against a pillar, breathing hard, his hands still pins and needles from the last note of his song. "No. She wasn’t."

Lazul stepped forward, past the place where the Medusa had stood, to the end of the corridor.

There, at the center of a massive stone dais, humming with low, ancient energy, was the Godcore.

A single crystal, blood red like a blood clot, the size of a lovers heart, pulsing with pure golden light and a slow, impossible rhythm.

They had won...

But as she reached for it, her necrocrafted arm twitched.

And for the first time that she could recall, its whisper didn’t speak of duels.

It said only one thing.

"Leave it."

...

Epilogue: The Glowing Heart

The Dicepunk Trio stood in the golden-lit chamber, staring at the treasure they came for.

The Godcore hummed in slow pulses, casting golden light across the violet chamber.

"It was made to keep you out," Xander repeated, voice distant.

"Not you, us, right? Who else even knows about this?" Orrin asked.

None of them had an answer.

Lazul, blade still drawn, extended her necrocrafted hand. The closer she got, the more her fingers trembled. She didn't even know they could tremble.

And as she brushed the surface—

The dungeon blinked.

Just for a moment.

And when the world snapped back—

The Godcore was already in her hand.

And something, somewhere, had noticed.

Thunder cracked just outside, sending the already crumbling stone walls tumbling around them. A flurry of neon lightning tore the sky apart above while bolts tore apart the ground around them.

The Trio dashed to their tempest bikes, and fled...