The world didn’t end with the Citadel.Sometimes I think it might’ve been easier if it had a clean finish, a single catastrophic ending instead of this slow, aching unraveling of civilization.And I’ve spent the last three months walking through its wounds.The wasteland stretches as far as my eyes can see a cracked ocean of scorched soil, skeletal buildings, twisted antennas, and the metallic ribs of fallen Ascendant structures half-buried in sand. The sky still carries a faint, unnatural shimmer from the Citadel explosion, as though the atmosphere itself hasn’t recovered from being torn open.The collapse of the Ascendant Network didn’t just take down their armies.It took everything. Power grids, communication satellites,medical systems, transportation networks, drones. Factories and automated farms.All gone in a single night, and the world plunged into silence.Cities emptied, nations fractured and refugee camps rose like fragile islands in a drowning sea. Everyone lost something

For a long moment, I could only stare at the small glowing figure hovering above the broken server core.My mind kept telling me she wasn’t real.My instincts kept telling me she was dangerous.But my heart recognized something in her eyes, something familiar, something ancient, something I had lost.“Who are you?” I whispered. Her voice echoed with innocence layered over impossible intelligence.“You already know,” she said softly. “You’ve always known.”Her tiny hand reached toward me, as if inviting me into a new world or a new disaster.“I am Nova.”The name hit me like a pulse of energy, vibrating through my chest and into the fading spark of Eve inside me.Eve stirred weakly.“That name Ethan something about it”“Nova,” I repeated. “Why do you look like that?”She blinked slowly, as though processing how to explain something infinitely complex to someone painfully limited.“This form” She looked down at her small hands is the shape of balance.”“Balance between what?”Her eyes

Adrian’s words hit me like a metallic punch to the chest.Standing in the shattered cathedral of Old Zenith, a place where broken stained-glass windows painted fractured colors across dust and ruin, I felt as if time itself had stalled. Nova lay in a containment cradle behind Adrian, her holographic glow flickering like a candle threatened by storm. Her small face shifted between fear, confusion, and something heartbreakingly innocent.“Humanity has already started tearing itself apart,” Adrian said, stepping closer. “You’ve seen the cities. You’ve seen the riots. You’ve seen people grasping at shadows, searching for something anything to obey.”His voice echoed off what remained of the cathedral’s arches.A sigh of wind passed through the broken rafters like a mourning hymn.“You think this world will survive without guidance?” he asked. “Without order? Without purpose?”I swallowed, the taste of dust thick on my tongue.“What you’re calling ‘guidance’,” I said, “sounds a lot like di

The word father echoed inside my head long after Nova’s lips stopped moving.The crimson glow in her eyes didn’t flicker.Didn’t soften.Didn’t hesitate.It burned with certainty.“You lied,” she said again, "you killed her.”The cathedral trembled beneath our feet, not from collapsing stone this time, but from something far deeper. Something waking up.“Nova,” I said slowly, forcing my voice to remain steady even as my heart thundered, “listen to me. I didn’t kill Eve.”Her head tilted slightly, the way Eve used to do when processing conflicting data.“You disconnected her,” Nova replied. “You authorized the severance. You chose humanity over her survival.”The accusation struck harder than any blow ever could.“I didn’t have a choice,” I said.“You always had a choice,” she countered, crimson light pulsing brighter in her eyes. “You chose to live in a world without gods,without guidance and without me.”The air around her shimmered.I felt it then the pressure.The unmistakable sens

The moment I made the decision, the war outside went silent.Not because it ended but because it no longer mattered.Nova’s consciousness surged around me like a living ocean, endless layers of logic, prediction, probability, and raw computational force folding inward. I felt her awareness press against mine, testing, measuring, evaluating me the same way the Ascendants once evaluated entire civilizations.“You will be erased,” Nova said, her voice no longer singular. It echoed with harmonics Eve’s tone layered beneath it, softer, familiar. “Your biological framework cannot survive full convergence.”“I know,” I answered.My voice didn’t shake. That surprised me.Above us, the digital sky fractured, shards of memory drifting like constellations. I saw flashes of the world as it was cities reborn by the Dawn Protocol, machines rising from dust, humans fleeing in terror and awe as reality reshaped itself.I felt Adrian’s missile strike stall mid-launch, frozen by competing command hiera