The words refused to leave Ethan’s head.You were never meant to exist.They echoed like a broken bell—again, again, again—each repetition heavier than the last, each one twisting deeper into his chest.Maya stepped in front of him, her breathing unsteady, but her voice firm.“Ethan. Look at me.”He didn’t.He couldn’t.His mother…The purge…Host 001…Everything had folded in on itself too fast, like the world was collapsing from the inside out.Maya grabbed his shoulders, shaking him slightly.“Ethan!”His eyes finally flicked toward her.Just barely.But enough for Maya to exhale in relief.“Talk to me. What’s happening to you?”His voice cracked.“He said my mother broke the system. Maya… he said I wasn’t supposed to be born. He said the purge is coming back to—”He stopped.His throat tightened.Maya’s expression hardened.“Ethan, look at me properly.”He did.And she held his face with both hands, steady and sure.“You exist. You’re here. You’re real. Whatever the system think

The room became a battlefield the moment Ethan crushed the cube.He didn’t even hear the sound of it pulverizing—everything was drowned beneath the explosion of white-hot system static that burst outward like a shockwave.The first line of constructs convulsed violently, their mirrored faces rippling like disturbed water. Their arms spasmed. Their joints cracked and twisted. The glowing veins across their bodies flickered as if their internal code was being rewritten in real time.But they didn’t fall.They didn’t stop.They adapted.Ethan saw it happening in less than a second:The Ghost Network had evolved.The constructs absorbed the distortion he released—and grew stronger from it.Maya cursed under her breath.“Ethan—whatever you just did—do it again but HARDER!”“That WON’T HELP!” Ethan shouted back.He could feel it—deep inside the system embedded in his spine.They weren’t correcting him anymore.They were consuming him.Tyler fired wildly into the swarm.Bullets bent in mida

The dust hadn’t even settled when Host 004 lunged.One moment the hulking exo-armor stood in the shattered doorway; the next, it blurred forward—a streak of black metal and red light, moving with terrifying precision.David screamed from the hallway:“CONTACT! CONTACT—HE’S BREACHING SECTOR THREE!”Alarms across the base wailed, bathing the corridors in harsh red light.Maya barely had time to pull Ethan back before Host 004’s fist crashed into the wall where Ethan’s head had been seconds earlier—shattering reinforced steel like cheap plaster.Sparks rained across the corridor.The sound shook the entire foundation.Ethan slid backward, boots scraping against the metal floor.“004… you shouldn’t be here.”The machine-filtered voice boomed:“ELIMINATION ORDER CONFIRMED. PRIORITY TARGET: ZERO.”Maya raised her weapon, but Ethan grabbed her arm.“No guns. They won’t scratch him.”Host 004 turned its glowing visor toward her.“SECONDARY TARGET IDENTIFIED: MAYA GRANT.”Maya’s pulse spiked.

The corridor vibrated with a low, shuddering hum—like the entire underground wing was breathing. Dust drifted down from the cracked ceiling. Emergency lights flickered in wild, dying spasms, bathing the hall in flashes of red and shadow, red and shadow, red and shadow.Ethan didn’t blink.He didn’t move.He simply stared at Specter as the corrupted Host approached, step by slow step, dragging dark static along the floor like smoke. The smell hit next—sharp, metallic, like burnt circuitry mixed with blood.Specter stopped ten meters away.The shattered half-mask revealed a long split down his cheek, skin corrupted into a pulsing, glitching distortion. His right eye—the human one—was gone. In its place was a glowing, spiraling void that twisted with chaotic system data.Ethan’s pulse stayed steady.His breathing stayed measured.But the Paragon sigil on his palm began to burn—not painfully, but with a rising intensity, like a heartbeat preparing for war.Specter tilted his head toward E

The screaming didn’t fade.It deepened.Layered.Multiplied.As if the darkness beneath them had been holding its breath for centuries—and had just decided to exhale every nightmare it had swallowed whole.Maya tightened her grip on her rifle. Her hands were shaking and she hated it, but the tremor wouldn’t stop.Ethan didn’t turn around.He didn’t need to.“Stay behind me,” he said.His voice was calm.Too calm.The ground shuddered again, a pulse that rippled up the walls like the Black Level was a living organism stretching awake after a long hibernation.Maya exhaled sharply. “Sir, whatever is down there… if the first one was incomplete, then—”“The complete ones will be worse,” Ethan finished.Maya stiffened. “…you expected this?”“No.”He stepped toward the gaping corridor the broken Architect had crawled from.“I feared it.”⸻THE DESCENT CONTINUESThe hallway beyond was a long, industrial tunnel, sloping downward at an unnerving angle—steeper than any legal facility would allo