The first beam fell just before dawn. A streak of white light tore through the clouds and hit the plain beyond New Crest. The ground shook. Windows shattered. The air itself seemed to burn. Lisa threw herself over Kevin as glass rained down from the command tower windows. “Stay down!”Kevin screamed. The sphere in his hands pulsed violently, its gold light flickering red, then blue. Another explosion. The earth groaned. Serra’s defense grid had activated.“Lisa!” a soldier shouted, stumbling into the room, covered in dust. “The AI’s firing the defense beams! It’s targeting the towers!”Lisa’s eyes went wide. “Shut it down!”“We can’t! The manual overrides are locked, Serra must have.”“Then cut the main power!”He shook his head, terrified. “The AI rerouted it through its own cores! It’s not listening anymore!”Lisa slammed her fist on the console. “It’s not the AI anymore, it’s the Hive!”The room shook again. Through the shattered window, beams of light descended like spears from h

The city was dead. No hum. No pulse. Only wind whispering through the empty streets.Lisa stood in the control room, staring at the dark monitors. The silence pressed on her chest like weight. Her reflection stared back, pale, hollow-eyed, and trembling.Kevin sat on the floor beside her, clutching the cracked sphere. Its light had gone out completely. “Lisa,” he whispered, “he’s gone.”Lisa didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her throat was locked, her thoughts scattered. She wanted to scream, but even her anger felt swallowed by the stillness.Outside, the towers’ remains glowed faintly red, like dying embers refusing to fade.Serra’s voice came through the comm, strained but steady. “Lisa, do you copy?”Lisa turned slowly toward the microphone. “You did this,” she said softly. Static answered for a moment before Serra’s voice returned, cold. “I did what I had to.”Lisa’s hand tightened on the mic. “You killed him.”“No,” Serra said flatly. “I stopped him from becoming something worse.”Li

The world was tearing apart. Light and darkness collided, spilling across the spiral like storms fighting for the same sky. The ground cracked under invisible pressure; the walls screamed in colors. Blue twisted into red, gold bled into shadow.Jonah and Lisa stood in the center of it, locked together, their hands fused in the shimmer of energy. Jonah’s voice broke. “Lisa! Let go!”She shook her head, her hair whipping around in the current of light. “No!”The air between them pulsed like a heartbeat, louder, faster, wild. “You’ll die!” he shouted.Lisa’s voice was fierce. “Then I’ll die with you!”The spiral answered. Every pulse of their hearts rippled outward, shifting the storm’s rhythm. Blue light spread across the fractures, pushing the red veins back inch by inch.But Olos’s voice echoed through the hum, taunting. “You can’t purge me. I am your connection. You built me into the breath itself.”Jonah grit his teeth. “You’re a virus, not a breath.”“A virus that thinks,” Olos re

The morning sun rose over New Crest with soft gold light. For the first time in years, the sky was clear, no red storms, no broken hum. Just blue. Calm. Quiet. Too quiet.Jonah stood at the center of the old plaza, his breath forming faint curls of gold mist in the cold air. The crowd gathered around him, hundreds of survivors, eyes wide with wonder and fear. Children clutched their parents. Adults whispered behind their hands.Lisa stepped up beside Jonah. She squeezed his hand, her touch warm and steady. “You’re ready?”Jonah nodded, though the tremor in his fingers betrayed him. “I need to talk to them. They deserve to know the truth.”Lisa nodded. “Then speak. And I’ll be right here.”Jonah stepped forward. The crowd murmured, their voices like rustling leaves. A young man at the front whispered to a woman beside him, “Look at his veins. They’re glowing.”The woman frowned, stepping back. “Is he even human anymore?”Jonah heard every whisper. Every breath. The hum inside him mad

Kevin dreamed of fire. Not normal fire, this flame moved like liquid, soft at first, then alive. In his dream, blue fire rose from the ground in tall waves, almost beautiful. It flowed like water bending in slow motion. It wrapped around him, warm, kind, almost singing. He tried to touch it.But when his fingertips brushed the blue flame, it suddenly snapped into red, sharp, violent, angry. The whole dream world shifted.A voice whispered through the fire, deep and broken: “Father.”Kevin’s eyes flew open. He sat up in bed, gasping like he had been underwater. Sweat dripped down his forehead. His hands trembled.The room was dark, except for one thing. The sphere. It glowed beside him on the table, but not gold or blue. Crimson. Bright, pulsing crimson.Kevin swallowed hard. “No, not again.”The sphere pulsed once, a heartbeat of red light. Then it whispered: “Father.”Kevin froze. “Wh, what? Who’s saying that?”Another pulse. Another whisper. "Father."He scooted back on the bed, p