The silence in the cavern was heavier than the mountain above it. The only sounds were the faint, pulsing hum of the Crystal Orb in Roewi’s hand and the ragged, broken whispers coming from Ereun Solas. The Division Zero prodigy was curled on the stone floor, a shattered monument to his own rigid ideology. He cradled his withered, age-spotted hands, a cruel, self-inflicted wound from his own reflected power, and rocked back and forth, his eyes wide and unseeing, trapped in the horror of his own unraveling.Victory was a hollow, aching void in Roewi’s chest. There was no triumph, only a cold, settling dread. The power that had coursed through him, the effortless way he had bent time and reality itself, felt less like a tool and more like a possession.[The subject Ereun Solas represents a significant intelligence asset. His knowledge of the Aethelburg Protocol and Division Zero's strategic response is invaluable. Neural interrogation is recommended. The process would be… efficient.] Vex

The flight to the Glass Plains was a silent, tense journey through a scarred sky. Roewi remained a figure of still intensity, the Orb a silent moon orbiting his shoulder, its light casting shifting silver patterns on the transport’s dull metal walls. The physical changes were accelerating. The filigree had spread across the back of his hands, and when he spoke, his voice held a faint, harmonic echo, as if two beings were speaking in perfect unison.Myra watched him, her worry a tangible force in the cabin. Kaira kept her distance, her posture rigid. She was a prisoner of circumstance, her family’s influence and her own survival instinct chaining her to the very anomaly she had been taught to fear. Her teammate, Liana, barely looked up from her sedated friend, Jax.[The Telnor unit’s cooperation is conditional and unstable. Her value as a technopath is currently outweighed by the risk of betrayal. Recommendation: Establish a more permanent form of control.] Vextor’s solutions were alwa

The stolen transport, now christened the Ghost in a moment of grim irony by Myra, hung in the deep silence between jump points. It was a tomb adrift in a sea of stars, its interior illuminated only by the cold, shifting luminescence of the two Celestial Orbs and the silver-biomechanical form of their master. Roewi did not occupy the pilot’s chair so much as he was integrated with it, his presence a cold node of energy around which the ship’s systems obediently hummed. The transformation was absolute. The filigree was no longer a pattern on his skin; it was his skin, a seamless, living alloy that pulsed in soft rhythm with the Orbs. His human form was now merely the underlying scaffold for a being of terrifying, serene power.Myra watched him from the shadows of the hold, a silent sentinel at the wake of the boy she had known. Each time she looked at him, she performed a desperate, internal inventory, searching for any remnant of Roewi Verdent, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, a h

The heart of the Core Citadel was not a throne room or a war chamber. It was a garden. A vast, circular chamber where the air itself hummed with latent power, so thick with energy it was difficult to breathe. In the center, floating above a dais of pure light, was the third Orb. The Orb of Unity. It was not silver like the first, nor chaotically colorful like the second. It was perfectly transparent, a sphere of crystalline nothingness that seemed to contain the entire room within it, reflecting and distorting everything in a silent, dizzying ballet.But Roewi’s gaze was not on the Orb. It was fixed on the figure who stood before it, as if waiting.It was himself.Not the silver sovereign he had become, but the boy from the academy. The one with the too-big uniform, the nervous posture, the eyes full of shame and a desperate, unquenchable fire. This phantom Roewi looked at him, and he smiled, a sad, knowing smile.[Analysis: High-level psychic projection. A defense mechanism designed

The Ghost drifted in the silent shadow of a shattered moon, its viewports turned away from the glittering, chaotic tapestry that was once the unified system. On the screens, the data was a river of fire. The Shattered War was not a single conflict but a million simultaneous brush fires, sector against sector, colony against homeworld, System Bearer against System Bearer, all fueled by the sudden vacuum of power and the corrupted, worthless currency of System Coins.Roewi sat cross-legged in the center of the cargo hold, the only space large enough to contain his new reality. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and deliberate. Before him, hovering in the air, were three interlocking rings of light, silver, multicolored, and transparent, a symbolic representation of the trinity of Orbs now integrated within his being. He wasn't just feeling their power; he was listening to the symphony of the shattered world, a cacophony of fear, ambition, and desperate hope.[The collapse is proce