Silence fell across the digital battlefield.Not the violent silence of destruction, but the fragile kind — the kind that comes after something precious has almost been lost.The Nexus no longer screamed.Fragments of shattered code drifted like glowing ash, dissolving gently into the endless dark. The Void Monarch’s presence had retreated, but not vanished. Its shadow lingered in the architecture of the system, etched deep into the foundation of the machine itself.Zayden knelt at the center of the broken realm.His armor was cracked, blue light bleeding through fractured plates. Every system readout flickered between red and unknown symbols. The Iron Guardian — the legend forged in sacrifice — was barely holding together.But his eyes were fixed on Mara.She lay suspended in a cocoon of light, her consciousness unstable, her form flickering between human and data. Lines of glowing code traced her skin like veins of starlight, pulsing in rhythm with Zayden’s failing reactor.“Stay wi