Kai’s boots slammed against the fractured platform as the Core Node roared to life. Spiraling conduits of raw Convergence energy flared, casting distorted shadows that twisted across the chamber like living predators. The shard in his neural lattice pulsed violently, interfacing with Seraphine’s Echo, amplifying both their presences.Veil’s distortion rippled through the chamber. Black circuitry and white light contorted into a humanoid form, towering above the Core Node. Her voice sliced through static and energy alike:“Kai Gibson… you have no idea what you’ve unleashed.”Kai gritted his teeth, fists clenching. “I’ve been running from the impossible my whole life. Not this time.”The Ascendants surged forward, forming a deadly perimeter. The Paradox Enforcer leaped from the upper conduits, its blade-like limbs slicing arcs of energy toward him.Kai activated the shard fully. Blue fractal light erupted from his body, forming a shimmering shield. He sprinted forward, dodging energy bl

Light swallowed Kai whole.Not warm light.Not bright light.This was structured illumination a lines of code arranged into spiraling lattices, folding and unfolding around him as the floor vanished beneath his feet. It felt like falling through a machine-made storm.Kai braced for impact.It never came.Instead, the light slowed, thickened… and set him down gently in a circular chamber that felt impossibly vast. The ceiling was too high to see, swallowed by shifting constellations of floating fragments—broken shapes of architecture, suspended like debris frozen mid-explosion.The floor wasn’t solid.It was a translucent grid of energy, each step rippling outward like water.Kai exhaled once.“Okay… not normal.”His voice echoed.Then something echoed back but distorted, like a voice repeating itself through decades of interference.He scanned the chamber.Symbols floated in the air, drifting like dust motes made of light. Some formed short sequences. Others coiled around each other b

Kai’s first step into the fractured chamber sent ripples through the world. The floor beneath him bent, lifting, folding into itself, and reshaping in response to the raw energy pulsing from his shard. Every motion generated waves of light and sound, each one bending reality in unpredictable ways.Veil’s eyes widened behind her mask. She had faced Ascendants, Paradox Enforcers, and every nightmare the Sovereign Order could create—but this… this was beyond everything.“Kai!” she shouted, raising her blade. The shards of Convergence energy along its edge flickered with her rising fear. “You’re destabilizing everything! Stop—focus!”Kai didn’t answer. Words had no meaning anymore. He didn’t even know if he could speak. Instead, he raised his hand, and the chamber—walls, ceiling, fractured floor responded. Metal sheets bent and spiraled upward. Data streams from the facility twisted like water around him, wrapping him in a cocoon of raw, unfiltered Ascension energy.Veil staggered back, s

The Architect steadied itself among the swirling debris of its collapsing Domain, its form flickering between impossible geometries. Kai faced it across the fragmented floor, chest heaving, one arm glitching into raw static. Veil crouched behind a ruptured column, breathing hard, blade at the ready.The Domain groaned like a dying machine.Kai’s voice came out distorted, layered with harmonics that should not exist.“I’m ending this.”The Architect tilted its head—if the gesture could even be called that.Its voice was emotionless, but the distortion behind it hinted at strain.“YOU CANNOT. YOU ARE NOT COMPLETE.”Kai’s shard pulsed a warning so sharp it nearly dropped him to his knees.CRITICAL ASCENSION INSTABILITYNEURAL FLUX OVERTHRESHOLDREALITY SYNC: 41%Veil called out, “Kai—you push further, you’ll tear yourself apart.”He already knew.He didn’t care.He sprinted toward the Architect, feet cracking through the fracturing floor. The air split around him as his unstable Ascensio

The moment the Architect’s Domain collapsed, Kai felt a tearing sensation, a force ripping outward from him, not toward him.It wasn’t energy.It wasn’t power.It was impact.A shockwave of Ascendant data, raw system pressure, and fragmented reality burst from Kai’s unstable core and tore through the dissolving Domain. The echo of it shook the remnants of the Architect’s realm, and then it hit the real world.Violently.At 03:17 local time, Blackreach slept.The first warning came from the sky.A faint white pulse shimmered overhead, silent and thin as a knife. Then another. Then a third—each brighter than the last.Streetlights flickered.The power grid surged.And then—BOOM.A rip the size of a city block tore open in the sky like someone dragging claws through the atmosphere. Citizens spilled into the streets as the air trembled and windows shattered.“What is that?!”“Is it an attack?”“It’s another Convergence event—get inside!”Except it wasn’t.This wasn’t an event.It was a s