The surge of energy that followed the detonation of the Ether Core cracked through the entire expanse of the Citadel’s inner sanctum like lightning breaking the back of heaven. The chamber Ethan and his team had entered moments ago was no longer the sterile, silent vault it once was. Now, it pulsed with ancient resonance, like a dying god exhaling one last time.Sera stood at the edge of the containment field, eyes wide, lips parted in awe and terror. The Threshold Portal had opened—not completely, but enough to leak through something primordial, something wrong. A sliver of the Dominion’s true nature oozed out into their world. Not shadow, not light, not even energy in the classical sense. It was memory twisted into madness. Voices. Screams. Echoes.Ethan staggered to his feet, blood dripping from his temple, and shouted into the comm, “Team status!”A flurry of static preceded Kael’s voice. “Still alive. Barely. We los

 The silence that followed the explosion was not quiet—it was oppressive. A thick pall of smoke and dust blanketed the shattered command room of the Dominion Citadel. Monitors sparked, walls buckled inward, and across the fractured floor, Ethan Cross lay motionless beneath a collapsed beam. A low groan escaped his lips as consciousness clawed its way back into him.He blinked, disoriented, the flickering red of emergency lights casting everything in hellish tones. The HUD in his visor was cracked but still functioning. Time: 03:46. Status: Critical.“Echo-One… do you copy?”A muffled voice broke through the static. Ethan coughed, his throat burning from inhaling smoke, then tapped his comm. “Still breathing,” he rasped.“Thank God.” Nova’s voice. Frantic. Relieved. “I’m triangulating your position. Hang tight. There was a secondary detonation—Sebastian’s alive. He&

The metallic doors of the Vault groaned open, their ancient hinges echoing like thunder down the obsidian corridor. Ethan’s flashlight beam sliced through the darkness, casting flickering shadows along the stone walls, carved with symbols that pulsed faintly with blue light.“Everyone keep your guard up,” Ethan murmured, stepping forward.Behind him, Vega and Kaito followed closely. Ayla lingered for a moment at the threshold, her gaze locked on a rune etched above the doorway—one that matched the birthmark on her shoulder.Inside, the Vault was nothing like they’d imagined. It wasn’t a chamber of gold, weapons, or ancient relics. It was a long corridor lined with memory crystals suspended in air—each one swirling with blue-white light, as if containing frozen thoughts. They stretched down the corridor in perfect formation, humming softly.Kaito touched one gently. “It’s… consciousness. Preserve

The scream of the Aegis Core was not one of pain—but of release.As Ayla’s palm lifted from the console, light erupted upward in a cyclone of energy, laced with fragmented symbols and cascading data streams. It reached the vaulting heights of the crystalline chamber and then burst outward like a shattering halo, collapsing every corrupted line of Consortium code in its path.Outside, the storm died instantly.Weapons jammed mid-fire. Drones plummeted from the sky. And for a long breathless moment, the mountain range stood still—silent, as if history itself was holding its breath.Ethan staggered backward from Alaric’s limp form, his knuckles bleeding, chest heaving. He turned to Ayla, who had dropped to one knee at the Core’s base, her eyes glazed over but her body intact.“Ayla!” he shouted.Kaito and Vega rushed in behind him, weapons drawn—though none of them were sure what threat remained.<

The walls of the Citadel groaned like a dying beast as the atmospheric pressure shifted unnaturally. The energy field that had surrounded the Silent Dominion for centuries began to ripple and distort. Above, the once-pristine dome cracked like glass beneath cosmic weight, threads of violet lightning crawling across its surface like veins rupturing under the strain of forgotten gods.Ayla stood at the epicenter, her eyes still locked on the inert frame of the Parallax Key, now quiet in her palm. She could still feel the echo of it—resonant, ancient, like it had left a permanent mark on her DNA. Behind her, Damaris coughed violently, ash coating his lungs. Ethan steadied him, while Wren and Riven dragged the wounded away from the central rupture zone.“They’re coming through,” murmured Wren, looking up.Above them, portals yawned open like wounds in the sky. But these weren’t Echo’s original portals—these were raw, unstabl