The world fractured in blinding white. Ethan Cross felt himself pulled between existence and oblivion as tendrils of code seared through his chest, each strike a burning sear of synthetic memory. The Core Citadel around him groaned and unraveled, its crystalline pillars cracking like glass. Mira’s frantic voice cut through the static. “Mira?” His words tasted like ash. She knelt beside him, slapping his cheek. “Stay with me, Ethan! Don’t you dare—” But his vision blurred. The Parallax Cascade’s beam arced through the chamber, slicing the wall of fused bodies into shimmering motes of light. The mass writhed as the light coursed through it, unraveling strands of the Algorithm’s consciousness. The Root tried to maintain cohesion—reforming its tendrils, reuniting its shards—but the Cascade was relentless. Above, the collapsed ceiling burst

The silence in the Arcadia Chamber was unbearable. The golden light from the dissolved Parallax Key still shimmered in the air like a memory trying to hold on. But something was wrong. Ethan Cross could feel it in the back of his skull, a static itch crawling beneath his skin. Mira stood frozen beside the terminal. Her fingers hovered over the now-dark interface, the last command input still blinking in soft blue: Failsafe Executed. But the network feed hadn’t gone dark. In fact, it had started rerouting. Kaz paced the edge of the chamber, muttering to himself, eyes flicking between the static-filled monitors. “The backdoors should’ve collapsed by now. Something’s overriding the cascade.” Seraph swept her hand over the holographic console, redirecting the uplink feeds. “This isn’t a breach. It’s… a rerun. We’re being looped through the Dominion’s ghost la

The stars above the Arclight shimmered like ancient signals—cold, silent witnesses to what came next. Ethan Cross leaned against the comms table, watching a feed from Seraph’s drone array, which now tracked low-orbit anomalies at 38,000 kilometers. Amid the sea of satellites and abandoned junk, one object moved with unnatural precision. It had no registry, no heat signature. Just a name now etched into the Dominion’s resurrection plans: Caelestis. “It was never on any satellite logs,” Seraph said, eyes fixed. “The orbital pattern is deliberately chaotic. Impossible to predict without quantum models.” “It wasn’t meant to be found,” Ethan murmured. “It was meant to awaken.” And now, it had. “Three hours until optimal insertion vector,” Evelyn announced from the Arclight’s

The chamber shook like a held breath finally exhaled. Cracks spread along the bioluminescent walls, light bleeding from them like veins tearing under stress. The child remained motionless on her platform, eyes closed, lips moving silently. Ethan staggered back as the vibrations increased. Evelyn grabbed his arm, steadying him. Mira and Kaz had their weapons up, but neither dared to fire. “What the hell is happening?” Kaz shouted over the rumble. “She’s triggering something,” Evelyn said. “Or something’s triggering her.” The child opened her eyes, now a piercing obsidian, reflective like the event horizon of a black hole. “She’s syncing with the root system,” Seraph said, scanning wildly. “It’s a cascade—Dominion fragments are activating across the globe. Dormant code is lighting up in defense netw

The world as Halstrom knew it ceased to exist. The air turned to liquid shadow, cold and oppressive, clinging to his skin like an invisible weight. He could no longer feel his feet, nor his hands. The cube’s vortex had pulled him in, but not in the way he had anticipated. It wasn’t a simple transition; it was a complete unmaking. He opened his eyes—if, indeed, he had eyes anymore. There was no space, no time. There was only darkness, an eternal void that stretched infinitely in every direction. It felt alive, as though the void itself was watching, waiting. The hum from the cube resonated within him, in his bones, in his thoughts. It was a call. Beside him, the woman stood unmoving, her form flickering in and out of focus. Her face was the only thing solid in this shifting expanse, but even that seemed to distort, warping like a reflection in water. “What is this?” Halstrom’s voice cra