Adrian hit the floor hard enough for his ribs to scream. The white sphere flickered as though reacting to the impact, its surface rippling like disturbed water. Lorenzo came at him again, silent and swift, a ghost wearing a borrowed body. The pale energy in his hands pulsed brighter with each strike, each movement powered by something mechanical and merciless.Adrian rolled aside, the blast scorching past him, leaving a trail of fading light on the sphere’s floor.“Lorenzo,” he said, breath tight in his lungs. “You need to fight him.”There was no hesitation from Lorenzo, no recognition, no flicker of humanity. He moved with surgical precision, each step placed exactly where the Architect needed it. A puppet cut from flesh instead of strings.The Architect watched them like a man admiring a piece of art. His hands folded behind his back, his expression one of cold curiosity.“You should stop talking to him,” the Architect said. “That man is gone.”Adrian answered with a strike of his

Pain was no longer sharp.It was everywhere.Adrian skidded across the white floor, momentum carrying him until he slammed shoulder-first into an invisible boundary. The impact drove the breath from his lungs. The air tasted sterile, thin, wrong. The Lumen Room did not bleed. It did not echo. Even violence here felt curated.Lorenzo came at him again.No hesitation. No fear.His movements were faster now, stripped of human delay. The room adjusted itself around him, manifesting mass and resistance only where necessary. White energy crawled over Lorenzo’s forearms, coalescing into a blunt, destructive force. Not a blade. Not a gun.A correction tool.Adrian rolled just as Lorenzo struck. The impact cratered the floor, fissures spiderwebbing outward before immediately sealing again, as if the damage offended the room.“You’re fighting him,” Adrian shouted, scrambling to his feet. “You’re still in there.”Lorenzo did not answer.His eyes glowed brighter.He turned, recalibrated, charged

The first thing Adrian became aware of was silence.Not the kind that followed explosions or gunfire. Not the hollow ringing that settled after violence. This silence was deliberate. Engineered. It pressed against his skull like a padded room meant to keep screams from escaping.White stretched in all directions.Not light. Not space.Absence.He pushed himself upright slowly, every movement measured, waiting for pain that never came. His body felt intact, but wrong, like his nerves were wrapped in static. He flexed his fingers. They responded a half second too late.Delay.Simulation lag.The last thing he remembered was Lorenzo charging him, eyes burned hollow by borrowed light. White energy cracking in his fist. Adrian raising his blade. Then, Impact.Or termination.Or rollback.He scanned the space.No Architect.No Lorenzo.No Mara. No Cole. No Marcus.Just white.And then the white breathed.The surface beneath his boots rippled, almost imperceptibly, like skin reacting to tou

Adrian hit the floor hard.Not because Lorenzo struck him but because the ground itself ceased to agree with gravity.One moment there was resistance under his boots. The next, the surface dissolved, atom by atom, into crawling grids of light. He fell through them and landed again as the system reasserted structure, steel condensing beneath him with surgical indifference.The impact drove breath from his lungs.The Lumen Sphere shuddered.Not violently.Precisely.Like a machine correcting an equation that had just gone wrong.Lorenzo’s fist hovered inches from Adrian’s throat.Frozen.White energy crackled around his clenched hand, then sputtered. The glow fractured into sharp geometric shards that splintered away and evaporated before they touched the floor. Lorenzo himself stood locked in place, spine rigid, eyes burning with borrowed light, mouth parted as if caught between a command and a scream.The Architect turned.For the first time since Adrian had met him, the movement lack

Adrian came back to himself in fragments.Sound first. Not alarms this time, not the shriek of dying systems, but the deep, distant thud of artillery somewhere far above. Concrete trembling. A city under siege.Then weight. Real gravity pressing into his bones. His body hurt in a way no simulation ever managed dull, throbbing, uneven. Real pain meant real time.He opened his eyes.Low ceiling. Exposed cables. A strip of flickering fluorescent light that buzzed like an insect trapped behind glass. The room smelled of oil, antiseptic, and scorched metal.A safehouse.Not Cipher clean. Not Lumen white.Old-world ugly.He tried to sit up and failed, teeth grinding as pain flared along his ribs. A hand pressed firmly but gently against his chest.“Don’t,” a woman said. “You cracked two ribs and bruised a lung. You sit up, you bleed.”Mara.She crouched beside the cot, sleeves rolled up, dark hair pulled back, eyes sharp in a way that felt learned rather than inherited. There was blood on h