The city burned with its own silence. No traffic, no screens, no artificial hum of the neon grid. Just fire licking out of shattered windows and the sound of chaos swelling from the streets below.Ethan led the strike team through the blackout like a shadow cutting across flame. Five of Maya’s best operatives moved at his flanks, rifles trained, eyes darting for threats. Every few steps, the system interface in Ethan’s vision glitched—half the code dead, half of it snarling with errors from Ragnar’s purge.“Stay close!” Maya’s voice cut sharp through the comms, though even the comms were fraying in and out with static. She motioned them into cover beneath a half-collapsed billboard, the giant metal frame groaning under its own weight. “Ragnar’s purge fried every unsecured Host. This place is crawling with corpses and scavengers.”“Not just corpses,” Ethan muttered, scanning the street. The smell of burnt circuitry mixed with blood choked the air. Fallen Hosts twitched on the ground li

The Ghost Network pulsed around him like a living organism, threads of light stretching into infinity, humming with power that felt older than the city, older than the corporations that fought to control it.Host 001 stood unmoving in the center of it, its presence oppressive, yet calm, like the eye of a storm. Ethan’s breath came ragged, each inhale a battle against the gravity pressing down on him.His voice broke the silence first, sharp, furious.“Who the hell are you really? Why me? Why my mother?”The hooded figure tilted its head, as if amused. The code around its body shifted, forming shapes—faces, fragments, static—before dissolving again.“You think the Paragon was built,” Host 001 intoned, its voice layered, vibrating in tones that didn’t belong in human ears. “You think corporations forged this order, that Ragnar, Brooks, or any empire ever had the power to shape destiny. They are scavengers. Nothing more.”Ethan clenched his fists, his system interface sparking violently.

The numbers burned into Ethan’s HUD.72:00:00.71:59:59.Each second was a hammerbeat in his skull. Ada’s voice still haunted him: End the cycle, or become its god. And now, her last breath had chained itself to a clock that threatened every Host alive.Maya’s fingers hovered above his trembling hands, her face pale with exhaustion and fear. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”Ethan swallowed hard, his throat dry as ash. “It’s worse. The file isn’t just locked—it’s tethered to Ragnar Core. If it detonates, it’ll collapse every Host in the network. Billions. Gone.”“Host Collapse,” Maya whispered, the words tasting like poison.Around them, the rebel bunker shuddered with distant aftershocks. Survivors limped and stumbled into makeshift rows, some staring at Ethan with awe, others with terror. He didn’t need to look to feel it—half of them wanted him to save them, the other half feared he’d burn them down with a blink.David Sloan stepped forward from the shadows, his armor scorch

The safehouse was quieter now, though “quiet” was relative. The walls still trembled from distant fires. The blackout painted the city outside in eerie shadow, punctuated by the occasional flash of gunfire. Maya had collapsed onto a cot, pale but alive, her side bandaged hastily.Ethan sat alone in the adjoining room, staring at his hands. His veins still glowed faintly with the remnants of the overload, skin raw where code had burned through flesh. He felt hollow, emptied out, but not clean. The assassin’s final words gnawed at him like rust in bone.It’s inside you.He clenched his fists until blood seeped from reopened wounds. “Am I fighting them… or am I fighting myself?”The System, silent for once, gave no answer.The door creaked open. Ethan’s head snapped up. His pulse froze.Lena Brooks stepped into the room.For a moment, neither spoke. The shadows seemed to deepen, pulling them into a bubble where only their breath existed. She looked thinner than he remembered, her hair pi

The room was already collapsing when Lena opened her eyes.Not the Lena Ethan remembered. Not the one who had once sat across from him in kitchens too small for their dreams. This was something else entirely—something alive with fire and code, a storm that wore her skin.Her scream fractured into frequencies that rattled the glass in their frames. Ethan’s HUD went black, then rebooted, jagged symbols stuttering across it. His System wasn’t rejecting her. It was kneeling.HOST 000 — AWAKENED.The Ghost Network tore open above them, a spectral map visible through every wall, ceiling, and window. Ethan staggered as the familiar whispers of Hosts became thunder, a choir of broken voices that surged and split.Half of them bent toward him, their tones ragged, loyal. The other half bent toward Lena, hailing her as if she had been carved into their code since the beginning.And then, from the center of it all, Host 001’s voice rang clear, calm, inevitable.“Two pillars,” it intoned. “The Mot