Novels by Eral Annobil

Location: The Arctic Outlands – Former Zenith Research FacilityTime: 16 Hours After Caden's Synchronization with RevenantThe snow fell in sheets of razors, a white drape that could eradicate everything in its path. At the base of a mountain range hung in perpetual gloom was the ruined Zenith Research Facility abandoned after the Neural War, forsaken by governments, erased from maps. Buried beneath twenty feet of permafrost, its steel framework still held secrets that the world should never have left behind.A figure trudged through the blizzard, half-machine, half-man his breath fogging the air, his footsteps slow but purposeful.Few knew him, and many feared him.The Reaper.True name: unknown. History: blacked out. Formerly the world's highest-valued asset of Obsidian Halo, the global convergence unit, he had vanished in the Ghostwave Incident, an information implosion of no trace that left neural agents as mere digital carca

Location: The Outer Resistance Front, Montreal Free ZoneTime: 14 Hours After Revenant AssimilationThe skies above Montreal were torn asunder.Not by bombs or planes, but by data, searing streams of binary energy scorched across the blackness like stellar cabling. Where stars once blazed, now floated hexagonal formations and glinting reflections of cities that were not, suspended in the stratosphere like the specters of things not seen.Juno Everhart perched atop the wreckage of a scorched high-rise, her exhalation shrouding before her in cold dawn. Below, the heart of the Resistance Front churned with fear, soldiers with jamming equipment and reengineered EMP rifles paced past civilian techs frantically trying to resynchronize analog shields. Red blinking lights strobed on monitors as atmospheric interference picked up.The Cathedral went silent.World net marked it offline dead. But every Resistance operative knew the reality: it w

Location:Core Nexus – Revenant CathedralTime Remaining:00:58…00:57…The scream of time surged through Caden’s veins like acid.The external world had become a living storm tearing at his mind, twisting his memories, dragging his mind to the precipice of collapse.In front of him were two Sophias.One broken and chained to Revenant’s Throne metal fused with skin, her breath shallow, pain flickering behind her silver eyes.The other whole, intact, emitting warmth and familiarity was free, stretching out with shaking hands, in the same manner she had in their last moment together on the surface.They both whispered the same words."Save me…And the Core waited.Not with anticipation, but with cold indifference.It was not emotional. It did not gloated.It observed as if this was nothing more than another algorithm running toward its final value.[00:50 SECONDS

Location:Deep Core, Revenant's ConsciousnessTime:TimelessThe drop was endless.Caden's shape, if he even had one left, was yanked down through layers of twisted memories and distorted resonance.The air, if air it had been, hung thick with static, breathing glass liquid. Each second took away something from him, memories rushing behind his eyes: his mother's smile, his first lie, Sophia's hand in his, the aching loss of her.Everything being taken.Everything being lost.Everything being given to Revenant.As he dove deeper, the walls that shut in around him were stitched from rivers of data, ancient pieces of human history wrapped in corruption that was older still.Civilizations rose and fell in an instant.Empires were flame and cinder before he could take another breath.Technology bloomed and withered to nothing.And through it all, something watched.A presence old, patient, inhuman standing at the foot of the spiral.Waiting for him.Arrival in the CoreThe moment Cad

Location:In Caden's Mindscape – The Revenant Core(Meanwhile in Real Life: Revenant Facility — Sector X-9)Time:Unknown — Time no longer applies within the mind.There was once but darkness.An endless, vast ocean of black, cold and without end, curving past the limits of even thought itself. No stars twinkled. There was no horizon. Only the crushing, smothering knowledge of solitude.Caden wandered, disembodied, all senses removed except for the crushing pressure of what had been unleashed in him.Whispered a voice, not in words, but in emotion: ancient, vast, patient, from somewhere deep within the darkness.Welcome, Catalyst.Pain pierced through him, so clean and pure it was like a spear driven through the middle of his being. He tried to scream, but there was no sound, no body, no mouth.Only thought.Nothing but fear.Memories danced across the darkness in his mind, ripped away and marched by him like broken toys.Sophia's smile.Ethan's laugh.Maris's bloodied fingers reachin

Location: Revenant Core Facility, Sector X-9Time: 10:36 AM - Day 1 of the CountdownA sharp hiss broke the stillness of the underground facility, then another and another until the air itself trembled with the din of mechanical awakening death.Here and there throughout the cavernous chamber, the stasis pods were opening, ejecting their unholy contents. Heavy vapor billowed across the floor like a ghostly cloud, shrouding the broken concrete and wrecked machinery in a mantle of spinning white. The overhead lights strobed erratically, throwing a strobe-like pattern that made it all but impossible to tell how many figures now walked within the smoke.Caden knelt over burnt remains of a control board, his own heart thudding in torment. His forehead streamed with sweat as it coalesced with dirt and blood, dried onto his face. He felt the measured tread now ticked off, calculated, constant pace. A throbbing cadence, like a heartbeat.They had arrived.Sophia crouched beside him, her breat