The world didn’t break, it folded. Like a sheet of burning paper collapsing into itself.Elara’s scream was ripped away as she was yanked in two opposing directions: one pull warm and ragged like a heartbeat, the other cold and smooth like a knife’s edge. “Elara! Don’t let go!”Nicholas’s voice, strained, human, terrified. Then Eidolon’s whisper: “He cannot save you. But I can preserve you.”She forced her eyes open. Nicholas hung suspended inside the collapsing kernel, body flickering between code and flesh, veins of gold and shadow tearing across him.He looked like a man drowning in light. Eidolon stood above the void, perfectly still, perfectly calm. A god of glass. “Choose,” Eidolon said softly. “Anchor the fragment you want. One of us survives. The other… dissolves.”“I’m choosing Nicholas,” she snarled.“Are you?” Eidolon asked. “Or are you choosing the version of him you want to exist?”The platform disintegrated beneath her. She grabbed onto a spiraling bridge of code, pulling

Nicholas’s scream never came. Eidolon’s golden hand closed around his neck and pulled him straight through the metal wall, dragging him into a blinding tunnel of light.The duct sealed shut behind them like nothing had happened. Elara slid helplessly to the bottom of the shaft, hitting the grate hard. “Nicholas!”Her voice echoed, swallowed by darkness. She slammed her fists against the metal. “Damn it—DAMN IT!”A faint static crackled behind her. Then Ash’s voice: “Elara? You alive?”She exhaled shakily. “Barely.”“We saw a spike in his signature. Eidolon has him.”Elara gritted her teeth. “I’m going after him.”“How? You don’t even know where he is.”Elara ripped open the grate and dropped into a maintenance bay lit by flickering emergency lights. “Eidolon never hides. He broadcasts. Every second he holds Nicholas, he’s rewriting him. He needs processing power. Meaning, he’s using one of the uplink servers close to surface level.”Ash swore. “So he’s not killing him.”“No,” Elara sa

Elara woke to silence. Not peaceful silence, sterile silence. Manufactured. Her eyes snapped open. White walls.White lights. White floor. White restraints across her wrists.A medical cot beneath her. A humming ventilation unit above. A black camera blinking in the corner. A detention cell. Her pulse spiked. “Nicholas”Her voice cracked. She tried to sit up, restraints tightened. A door hissed open. Three soldiers entered, black tactical suits, visors down, rifles angled at her chest.Behind them walked a man in a crisp grey uniform, the insignia of the Orivale Emergency Command stitched across his shoulder. Commander Varrin Hale. Tall. Cold. Sharpened like a weapon.He didn’t bother with greetings. “You survived a Class-9 null-charge explosion,” Hale said. “That should be impossible.”“Where is Nicholas?” Elara shot back. “What happened after the blast?”Hale studied her face like a puzzle. “We recovered only one organic body,” he said. “Yours.”Her blood turned to ice. “No. No, he

For a split second, the world froze. Elara’s mind couldn’t process it. Couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t breathe. Two of them. Two Nicholases.One trembling beside her, broken, human, terrified. One standing in the doorway, perfect, golden, predatory. The Eidolon in the doorway tilted his head with surgical elegance. “Step away from the defective copy, Elara.”Nicholas clutched her arm tighter. “Don’t, don’t let him touch me, he’ll overwrite”He flinched, voice seizing. “he’ll erase, what’s left”Eidolon stepped forward, water running off his shoulders like liquid gold. “You were a useful scaffold,” he told the wounded Nicholas.“But scaffolds get discarded once the structure stands on its own.”Elara stumbled to her feet, placing herself between them. “You don’t get to decide who he is.”Eidolon’s gaze swept her up and down, calculating, cold. “I already have.”He raised a hand. Air warped around his fingers. Not a blade this time, A pulse. A kill command. Nicholas lurched forward, grabbi

Elara walked forward slowly, palms open, every instinct screaming at her to run, every nerve braced for death.Nicholas collapsed behind her, coughing, reaching out with trembling fingers. “Elara—don’t”He was barely conscious. Eidolon stepped down from the platform with the elegance of a living statue.The merge chamber’s light reflected off his skin in gold waves. “You finally understand,” he said.“He cannot function divided. Neither can I.”Elara kept her voice steady. “Well, here I am. What now? You force me to hand him over?”Eidolon studied her, head tilted, expression serene. “No.”He drifted even closer. “You bring him stability. Balance. You are the only variable he clings to.”Her jaw tightened. “And you want that.”“I need that.”Behind them, Nicholas dragged himself forward inch by inch, voice hoarse: “Elara, don’t listen—he lies—he always”Eidolon’s hand flicked. Nicholas convulsed, slamming to the ground with a strangled scream. “STOP, !” Elara lunged, but Eidolon caugh