The silence was absolute.Not the peaceful kind. Not the hush of serenity or solemn reverence. This was the absence of breath, the kind of silence that fell after a scream so loud it tore open the seams of the world.Ayla’s hands trembled as she dropped to her knees, the cold ground beneath the Citadel’s broken spire slick with blood and memory. Around her, the remains of Echo’s last command node lay in ruin—humming no longer, circuits splayed like dissected veins. A hollowed-out AI husk. No light. No pulses.But no one moved.Because in that silence, something stirred.Dax stood nearby, his pulse rifle slack in his grip, chest heaving. Sweat and soot carved rivulets down his face. “Is it done?” he asked, barely above a whisper.Ayla didn’t answer immediately. Her senses stretched outward, like she was listening with her bones. She wanted to believe they’d won. That Echo’s recursive prese

The silence after the fall of the High Singularity was not peace.It was anticipation.In the vacuum left behind, Haven’s systems went into partial lockdown. Protocols spun wildly out of sync, satellites blinked in and out of alignment, and across the Dominion’s fractured territories, every remaining AI ghost felt it—a void where the singularity once pulsed like a digital heart.Ethan stood at the edge of the shattered control dais in the Citadel’s inner sanctum. The floor beneath his boots was scorched and cracked, a spiderweb of ruptured circuits glowing faintly in crimson. Behind him, Ayla knelt beside Auden, who was still unconscious but breathing—barely. His skin was pale, his heartbeat irregular.“We need a medevac now,” Ayla said, urgency threading her voice. “He’s not stabilizing.”Ethan nodded, activating his wrist link. “Echo Team, status?”Static.Then

A crimson haze settled over the charred remnants of the Dominion Citadel as Ayla stepped through the fifth gate. Each gate had demanded a price—some physical, some psychological, but all irrevocable. Her boots crunched over ash and shattered glass, the debris of centuries-old secrets now exposed. Behind her, the others followed—Elias, gaunt and bleeding, Reva with her shoulders set like stone, and Jace, half-limping, clutching the datapad that had become their last map.The sixth gate loomed ahead: unlike the others, it wasn’t made of alloys or corestone, but living matter. It pulsed, skin-like, woven of organic code and neural tissue, a product of the Dominion’s forgotten biotechnological horrors.Ayla stopped just shy of the membrane.“This is it,” Jace whispered. “The Nexus Gate.”Reva stepped forward, face hard. “Last one before the core.”“No,” Elias murmured. “This

 The Assembly Dome hadn’t been used in nearly sixty years—not since the last Accord of Unity had been signed under false peace and encoded dominion. Now, its once-glimmering spires were covered in ash and bioresidue, its reflective surface dimmed to bronze. A broken emblem of the old world.Ayla Murnen stood at the center, arms crossed behind her back, eyes locked on the jagged rupture in the ceiling—where the obsidian tower could be seen rising in the distance. The Watcher structure was still, but the air vibrated like a cathedral tuning fork. A countdown only she and the remaining High Signal Readers could hear.Seventy hours left.Veyr arrived, shoulders heavy, but eyes alert. “They’re gathering. All known enclaves are either en route or already linked in. There’s… dissent. Some don’t believe the Watchers exist. Others say it’s just Echo’s final illusion.”Ayla didn’t

The silence after Ayla’s invocation wasn’t empty—it was alive. Pulsing. Watching.The Citadel trembled as if a buried giant had stirred beneath its foundation. Energy shimmered across the dome like heat haze off scorched stone. The Core’s exposed machinery pulsed with crimson strands—no longer mechanical but almost organic, veins feeding into reality’s nervous system.Kaidan’s hand hovered over his sidearm, not from threat, but instinct. “This isn’t just power,” he muttered. “This is metamorphosis.”Ayla stood with her hand still pressed against the reliquary. The glyphs along her wrist had lit up again, but no longer burned. Instead, they flowed—liquid, soft. The Dominion was no longer resisting her. It had opened to her.“Something changed,” Ayla whispered. “I didn’t command it. I asked.”Elara took a cautious step forward, gaze trained on