CHAPTER 21Ethan vs. the Doppelgänger inside the system. Control racing to his last coordinate in the physical world.The darkness closed around him like a vise.Not the soft suffocating void from before , this one had structure.Angles. Echoes. A pulse.Ethan opened his eyes.He stood inside a corridor made of shifting digital panels, each one reflecting fragments of his own face. The air vibrated with static. The floor rippled beneath his feet like liquid glass.This was no accident.No malfunction.The Doppelgänger had built this place.A prison shaped like Ethan’s own mind.A laugh cracked through the corridor , distorted, echoing, wearing Ethan’s voice but wrong.“You fight so hard to hold on to yourself,” it said.“Why? You’re nothing but leftover code in a body that’s already gone.”Ethan steadied himself, fists tightening.The corridor warped, mirrors bowing inward.“I’m still alive,” Ethan said, voice raw but steady.“And I’m not letting you take her.”The Doppelgänger materi

Chapter 23 Ethan hit the ground with a force that should have broken him. Instead, the city caught him.The pavement beneath him softened, rippling like liquid metal before hardening again. The EchoCore beneath the district pulsed in recognition, its faint emerald glow bleeding up through the cracks. Ethan rose, breath unsteady, ears ringing from the fall, and from the scream Liora made as the Obsidian Choir dragged her upward into the mirrored tower.Above him, the tower’s surface distorted. Panels flipped, rotated, and folded like origami, shifting into a different configuration every few seconds. A labyrinth in the sky. Designed specifically so no one could ever break in.But the city was listening to him now.And he could feel it waiting.He wiped blood from his temple and whispered,“Open a path.”The streetlights flickered—once, twice like a nod.Then the entire street in front of him bent.Buildings hunched forward. Sidewalks coiled inward. The glass facades of skyscrapers pee

Chapter 24 The sound didn’t resemble glass breaking, it was too big, too ancient, too alive. It was the sound of a structure built on centuries of secrets finally losing the battle against truth.The mirrored cathedral exploded outward in a roar of light.Ethan shielded Liora with his body as shockwaves ripped through the chamber. Fragments of the Obsidian Choir’s architecture dissolved into silver vapor midair, scattering like dying stars. The ground buckled beneath their feet, folding in on itself before reforming with a violent shudder.When the dust settled, the echo of Liora’s resonance still hummed faintly around them.Ethan lifted his head first, chest heaving.“You okay?”Liora pushed herself onto her elbows, her skin still glowing with soft, pulsing light.“I… I think so.”She swallowed hard. “That felt like using a muscle I never knew I had.”“Yeah. Well,” Ethan muttered, checking her for injuries. “Whatever muscle that is, it punches like a freight train.”Before she could

CHAPTER 26The fracture screamed.Not sound, but pressure, reality groaning, a cosmic note so high it made the city’s glass ripple like water.Every neon light within twenty blocks flickered, dimmed, then burst into sparks.Ethan pulled Liora back behind an air-vent tower as pieces of the sky itself peeled open.Wind rushed upward in a violent column, as if the world were inhaling.“Stay low!” he shouted.But Liora couldn’t look away.Something was forming inside the fracture.A silhouette.Too large.Too bright.And too… familiar.Her pulse thundered.“Oh god,” she whispered. “There’s someone in there.”Ethan followed her gaze.At first it was pure radiance, white and violet light woven like threads of thunderclouds.Then it condensed, folding inward, shaping into the outline of a person.Tall.Graceful.And humming with the same strange resonance that had nearly torn Liora apart.The Herald sensed it too.It froze mid-stride.Then bowed its head.“Conduit…” it murmured, its voice sh

CHAPTER 28Control’s hand hovers a breath above the glowing indentation on the pillar. Between her palm and the interface, the air hums , hot, charged, alive. Ethan’s presence presses against her mind like a storm waiting to break.Behind her, MIU operatives flood the vault, boots clattering, weapons raised. The alarms pulse in jagged bursts of red light. The room feels like it’s shrinking, compressing into one impossible pivot point.“STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERFACE!” Commander Rourke bellows from the doorway.She doesn’t turn. If she does, she’ll lose her nerve.The pillar brightens, and Ethan’s voice threads through the panic in a low, trembling whisper.“Control… please.”Her throat locks. She can feel her heartbeat in every part of her body. This is the man who stepped into the fire to save London. The man who chose to die rather than let Blackthorn win. The man whose voice she’s hearing now from inside a machine that was never meant to hold a human mind.And they’re going to wipe h