The outer perimeter was a ballet of darting shadows. Cass and Jax neutralized patrols with silent shots and trained blows. Alia bypassed mechanical locks with keys pressed from memory. Ethan’s Dominion Protocol pulsed faint inside him like a metronome; he could feel lesser system users around them hesitate, the pull of his influence nudging drones into inertness. Neural Dominion hummed at the edge of his senses; synthetic intelligences dipped to his influence as if recognizing an old command.They reached the inner conduit. Miles’ code box spat out a lattice of spoofed signatures, ghosts in the electronic machinery that registered as Council IT maintenance — old, trusted, invisible. Samir’s ghost projected the path: a sliver of reality mapped in white lines across their vision.They entered the Tower like men stealing a god’s keys.Inside the archive hall the air smelled like burnt paper and static. The walls were shelves of glass canisters, each containing a bundle of shimmering data

The city never slept now. It pulsed like a living organism, flooded with the chaos Ethan Cross had unleashed. Every light, every drone, every data feed hummed with the restless energy of newly freed Hosts — people who, until yesterday, had been nothing more than silent puppets tied to the Council’s will.And now, their strings were gone.Cass stood on the balcony of the safehouse, watching as columns of smoke rose across the skyline. News channels flashed with riots, market crashes, and flashes of brilliance — ordinary people suddenly manifesting their long-dormant System traits for the first time. Liberation was supposed to bring hope. Instead, it brought fire.Miles’s voice carried from the living room, tight with exhaustion. “You realize you’ve triggered the single largest network desync in human history, right?”Ethan didn’t look up from the console he was coding into. His fingers moved fast, his mind faster. “Desync is the price of autonomy. Freedom was never supposed to be neat.

The flight to Geneva Arcology was long and silent. Clouds rolled like iron waves beneath the aircraft’s wings, and thunder crawled lazily through the horizon. Cass sat in the corner, eyes closed but never resting. Miles stared at his console, trying to keep up with the growing madness of the System’s data flux. Ethan sat at the center table, the two fragments — Memory and Emotion — hovering before him like twin hearts of light.Their glow pulsed in rhythm with his own pulse. Sometimes, he thought they were breathing.[System Notice: Fragment Synchronization at 36%. Host stability: 78%.] [Warning: Extended use of Prime Vector will erode cognitive partition.]He ignored the warning.Cass opened one eye. “You’re thinking too loud.”He didn’t look up. “We’re going to need more than weapons for this one. The next Architect built the one thing even Prime can’t directly manipulate.”Miles glanced over. “Time.”“Time,” Ethan confirmed. “Before the Council built the Towers, before the System s

The world had gone quiet after the fall of the Logic Spire. For two full days, Ethan’s team crossed the storm-wracked deserts toward the city once called New Jerusalem — the cradle of religion, reborn under the Council’s rule as the Citadel of Faith.The skyline rose like a crown from the dust, its towers made of white-gold alloy, carved with symbols from every creed humanity had ever believed in. At the center stood the Eidolon Tower — a spire that shimmered with sacred light by day and bled crimson by night. That was where the next Architect waited.Miles adjusted his glasses as he read from the System feed. “Council data confirms: the Architect of Faith isn’t an AI in the conventional sense. It’s something else — an entity composed of collective human belief. The System uses it to stabilize emotional sectors worldwide.”Cass leaned against the window of the armored transport, her eyes cold. “You mean it controls what people believe in.”“Exactly,” Miles said. “Every miracle, every

The desert was silent as glass. And then, without warning, it began to move.The air rippled around Ethan’s team as the horizon shimmered like a mirage. Towers of steel and brass rose from the sands — gears grinding, clock faces turning, light refracting through intricate glasswork. The dunes folded in on themselves, revealing the impossible city buried beneath them.The Clockwork City.Cass stared through the cockpit window of their hovercraft, her voice low. “You’re telling me this was under the desert the whole time?”Miles nodded, sweat running down his temple as he scanned the System feed. “Not just under. Outside. The city’s phasing in and out of local time-space. It shouldn’t even exist here.”Ethan stood by the viewport, eyes reflecting the golden spires below. “That’s because it doesn’t. The Architect of Time exists between moments — every tick, every breath, every decision humanity ever made.”Cass let out a dry laugh. “And you want to fight that?”He glanced at her. “No. I