The tremors beneath the Dominion’s capital were no longer subtle. What began as a distant rumble had now become a full-blown convulsion, shaking the very foundations of the Black Spire. Panic spread like fire through the lower tiers of the city as crimson light bled from the cracks in the earth, staining the air with the smell of scorched ozone and something darker—older.High above, at the pinnacle of the Spire, Ethan Cross stood on the shattered obsidian dais with blood running down his temple. His left arm hung limp, dislocated from the last strike, but his eyes were locked on the thing before him—the Sovereign.No longer shrouded in humanoid form, the Sovereign had fully manifested into its ancient state: a serpentine wraith cloaked in glimmering armor made of collapsed time. Its voice echoed in frequencies that bent space.“You were never meant to reach this far, Ethan. You, who were a product of war and grief. You were built to serv

 The blast crater pulsed with faint blue light, the remnants of the Dominion Core’s implosion etched into the scorched earth. Smoke curled from fractured stone, whispering like the ghosts of every secret the Consortium had tried to bury. Ethan stood at the edge, blood drying in a jagged line down his cheek, his breathing ragged but even. Around him, the last survivors of his team staggered toward one another, drawn by shared purpose and the unbearable silence.“Asha?” Ethan’s voice cracked.“I’m here.” Her silhouette emerged from the haze, clutching a charred dataslate. “I’ve got the data. All of it. The names, the funding trails, the black-site locations—they didn’t wipe it in time.”Ethan nodded grimly. “Good. We bury them with truth.”Behind them, the earth groaned. A massive shard of collapsed alloy wall shifted, and a gloved hand reached through. Talon. E

 The watchstation shuddered as solar winds battered its shields. Station Helion, once a research outpost on the fringes of the known world, had been hastily retrofitted into a command center. Screens lined the walls, all showing the same image: a silhouette against nebular stars, rising slowly into view—something vast, alien, and anything but dormant.Ethan Cross stood at the panoramic viewport, arms crossed, jaw tense. Behind him, Asha paced, boots clicking against the metal deck. Oracle’s avatar—a calm, crystalline shape—hovered beside a cascading data feed.“There,” Oracle said. “The scaners detect a foreign mass. It’s approximately two hundred kilometers long. Signatures unknown. Gravitic resonance off the charts. Not Dominion.”Asha stopped pacing. “We thought we erased the last god. But this… this is something else entirely.”Ethan didn’t answer. He stared at

 The vault’s mechanisms groaned under the strain, ancient gears twisting for the first time in centuries. A breathless silence clung to the air as the last layer of the seal hissed open, revealing the obsidian box—the Codex itself.Ethan took a cautious step forward.Behind him, Zara’s fingers hovered near the trigger of her plasma repeater, her eyes scanning for traps. Silas stood motionless, his expression caught between awe and fear. The rest of the team held their breath.The Codex wasn’t ornate. It was brutally simple: matte black, unmarked, and humming with low, unnatural energy.“It’s… humming,” Zara whispered.“Not just humming,” Silas murmured. “It’s alive. Sentient coding. A living algorithm.”Ethan didn’t hesitate. He reached out and placed both palms on the surface of the box.A pulse surged through him—violent, mind-rip

 The jagged spires of Virelios Citadel loomed overhead like the claws of some ancient beast buried beneath the ice. They shimmered beneath the aurora that cracked the sky into ribbons of green and violet. Snowstorm remnants clung to the shattered battlements, but it was the silence—so total, so unnatural—that unnerved Ethan most. No alarms. No guards. Just stillness, as if the fortress itself were holding its breath.Ethan and his team—Aria, Bishop, Kato, and the now-restored Echo-6—stood just inside the outer threshold, the last security gate long since overridden by the viral pulse Aria deployed. Each of them bore the scars of a thousand battles, and tonight, they would wear them like armor.“Motion dampeners enabled,” Bishop whispered, crouched low, eyes sweeping. “I count no sentries within the thermal radius.”“That’s because they’re not here,” Aria said, her voice brittle.