The moment the System descended, reality protested, Air turned brittle. Light fractured into data streams. Every line of code that governed life, death, time, and logic began to hum, singing in unison to the presence of their creator.The manifested form of the System hovered, an ever-shifting being of lightless energy and machine intent. Its voice was neither male nor female, neither loud nor soft. It simply was, omnipresent, undeniable, final.[Query: CAEL.][Violation Log: 329,178 Instances.][System Root Access: Breached.][Penalty Imminent.]Arianna tried to pull Cael back, but her hand passed through him, He was no longer fully anchored in their world.[Stabilization Failure: 89%.][Biological Integrity Degrading.]“Cael!” she cried.But he stepped forward. “I didn’t come this far to be erased,” he said through gritted teeth. “You built this world on control. I’m going to break that foundation.”The System tilted its head, a slow, unsettling shift like watching a glacier crack.

Arianna collapsed with Cael in her arms as the rift slammed shut behind them.The world they reentered wasn’t Earth. Not exactly. It was a liminal space, one of the System’s interim domains, a white void filled with floating shards of time, cracked memories, and broken code.[Recalibrating Host Consciousness…][Warning: Vital signs critical.][Injecting Emergency Protocol “PHOENIX HEART.”]A surge of gold lightning ran through Cael’s body. He convulsed, then gasped, eyes wide as if waking from drowning. “Chase…” he croaked. “He-he stabbed me.”Arianna nodded, trembling. “But it wasn’t him,” she said. “The Parasite, whatever it is, it’s hijacked him.”Cael sat up, blood still trickling from the wound that refused to fully heal.“I should’ve seen it… I felt the difference. His eyes… it wasn’t Chase at the end.”“Then what was it?”Cael clenched his fists. “Something older than the System. Something buried deep.”[Omega Link Severed.][System Anomaly Escalated: CODED ENTITY ‘NULL FATHER’

Cael stared at the red digits pulsing in his vision. The timer throbbed in sync with his heartbeat, each tick a reminder of the horror seeded inside him.[Ω–Root Contamination: 2.3%][Time Until Null Awakening: 71:59:48]His fingers clenched, He still felt like himself. His memories were intact. His thoughts were clear for now.But something beneath that clarity stirred like a storm behind glass. Watching. Learning. Waiting.“You should’ve let me die.”Cael’s voice was raw, low, Chase blinked, his brow furrowed. “You don’t mean that.”“I do. If I die now, the Null Father dies with me. You know that, right?”“Stop.” Arianna grabbed his wrist, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You don’t get to give up now.”Cael didn’t answer. He looked at the tent flaps instead, makeshift shelter deep in a ghost-zone sector they hadn’t dared enter before. Now, nowhere else felt safe. “Do you feel anything… different?” Chase asked hesitantly.Cael nodded slowly. “Everything’s louder. Thoughts. Voices. Data

The Genesis Protocol had triggered a planetary reset, Across every continent, data infrastructure stuttered. Markets crashed. Satellites stopped broadcasting.System-dependent implants went dark. And those who had wielded power through artificial enhancements found themselves… ordinary again. And Cael Lorne? He stood at the center of a storm he had created.“You shut down everything,” Arianna whispered. “Everything.”Chase was already barking orders, coordinating what remained of their rebel network. Most of the tactical gear no longer worked.The encryption algorithms used in their communication channels were obsolete now. The Genesis Protocol had overwritten all of it. Cael clenched his fists. “No, I didn’t destroy it. I rewrote it. Rebalanced it.”“You gave yourself god-mode access,” Chase muttered. “That’s what you did.”The Architect still hovered nearby, arms folded across her shimmering chest. “You misunderstand,” she said softly. “He is not a god. Not yet.”Elsewhere, far belo

The world was not the same anymore. It wasn’t even a world. It was a patchwork quilt of contradictions, stitched together by a mind that had become both human and not.Skyscrapers bent sideways into mountains, oceans boiled into deserts, and people were pulled through timelines like chess pieces shuffled across a broken board.And at the center of it, Cael. But he was no longer just Cael. Arianna staggered forward, clutching her chest as the shockwave passed. Around her, the city folded in half. Entire blocks tilted upward as if gravity itself had changed allegiance.A woman screamed, her voice cutting off as she blinked out of existence, reappearing moments later as a child clutching a doll in her arms. It wasn’t death. It wasn’t life. It was rewriting.Arianna pressed her palms to her ears as static roared through her head. The Architect had once warned her of paradox storms. This… this was worse. This was Cael’s mind unraveling the structure of reality itself.She saw him standing