The smoke never left the city. Three nights had passed since the Judgment flare lit Redwater’s skyline, but the air still tasted like burnt wire and blood. Down in the tunnels beneath the old metro line, Liam moved through darkness with only the System’s faint red glow guiding him. Each pulse of light from his wrist interface showed the same thing corruption readings everywhere, like veins of infection spreading through the city’s code. Clara followed a few steps behind, pale, breathing shallow, her eyes flickering now and then with static. He tried not to notice, but the System did. “Subject stability decreasing,” it whispered. “Recommend purge.” He clenched his jaw. “Ignore recommendation.” The voice fell silent, but he could feel it sulking inside his head, waiting for him to slip.They reached a maintenance chamber lit by a single lamp. Rust dripped from pipes, and water hissed in the corners. Liam set Clara down on an overturned crate. “Rest,” he said. She nodded but didn’t speak

The rain didn’t stop for three days. It washed Redwater clean of the ash, the circuits, the blood. The city breathed again, slower now, almost human. For the first time since the collapse, the night sky showed stars instead of static.Liam stood on the roof of what was left of the broadcasting tower, the wind pushing his coat back as he watched the sunrise through the smoke. Every color looked different too sharp, too alive. The System inside him was quiet, but it wasn’t gone. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat buried under his own.I told you I’m still here.Clara’s voice echoed softly in his head.He closed his eyes. “I know.”You don’t sound glad about it.“I am,” he said. “I just… don’t know what we are now.”She laughed, a sound like a spark. You’re still you. I’m just… part of the system you refused to let die.He looked down at the streets below. Survivors moved cautiously between the ruins, scavenging power cells, helping the wounded, dragging broken drones into piles to be b

The light swallowed Liam whole. For a heartbeat he felt nothing no pain, no weight, no air just silence, like he had stepped outside existence. Then sound crashed back: the roar of collapsing reality, the crackle of burning data, a thousand voices whispering his name. He fell through an endless tunnel of shattered code, each fragment reflecting a different version of himself warrior, machine, child, ghost.Keep moving, a voice murmured, not Clara’s but something older, deeper. You are the breach.He hit ground hard. The impact shattered a surface that wasn’t stone or metal but memory, solid and fluid all at once. He pushed himself up, coughing light. Around him stretched a vast wasteland of broken geometry floating shards of city streets, fragments of faces, drifting weapons frozen in time. Above, the red vortex throbbed like a wound in the sky.“Where… am I?”A figure appeared in the distance, flickering in and out of focus. Not Marcus this time something smaller, hunched, half forme

The silence was not empty. It breathed. It waited. It listened.Liam opened his eyes and found nothing no light, no sound, no gravity just existence suspended in a void that felt infinite. His body floated, or perhaps it didn’t exist at all. He tried to move, but there was no direction. His thoughts echoed back at him like distant thunder.Is this death?A whisper came from somewhere within the darkness. Not yet.He turned or thought he did and saw a faint shimmer form ahead. The shape resolved slowly: Clara. Or the memory of her. She stood barefoot in the void, wearing the same white coat she’d worn the day he first heard her voice through the comm link. Her eyes glowed softly, her presence fragile but real.“Clara…” His voice cracked. “You’re still here?”She smiled faintly. “Only what’s left of me. When the Heart collapsed, fragments of my code were imprinted in the residual field. Enough to find you.”He tried to reach for her, but his hand passed through her image. “So, I really

The world dissolved into blinding white.Liam felt the ground vanish beneath him, replaced by the hum of something alive something vast and ancient. His body was weightless, suspended between pulses of light and sound. He opened his eyes and realized he was standing inside the Heart itself or what remained of it.It wasn’t the metallic sphere he remembered. It had evolved. The walls were translucent now, breathing like lungs, and veins of code glowed beneath the surface in living patterns. Each pulse of energy rippled through his skin, whispering fragments of data into his mind voices, memories, fragments of people long gone.Then he saw Varyn.The man stood calmly at the center of the chamber, his figure perfectly still amid the storm of light. His eyes gleamed the same artificial blue as the Heart’s veins.“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Varyn said softly, his voice carrying like thunder and silk at once. “The new dawn you tried to prevent.”Liam’s voice came out low. “You turned it into som