The sky split open. Not with thunder. Not with lightning. It peeled apart, as if reality itself had grown tired of pretending it was whole. George felt it before he saw it. The fragment inside his chest screamed.He staggered backward, breath hitching, as pressure crushed down on him from above. The air thickened, vibrating with an unnatural frequency that rattled his teeth Asher grabbed his arm. “Don’t move.”George laughed weakly. “You say that like I can.”Above them, the clouds spiraled faster, symbols burning brighter, ancient runes spinning like gears in a cosmic machine. Then the first Execution Warden descended.It didn’t fall. It lowered, suspended by invisible force, its massive armored body forged from obsidian-black metal etched with glowing sigils. Its eyes burned a cold, surgical white. No rage. No emotion. Just purpose.George’s pulse thundered. “So those are the Wardens,”he muttered. “They look… friendly.”Asher didn’t smile. “They were created to erase anomalies,”h

George woke up screaming. Not because of pain. Because of silence. No heartbeat thundered in his ears. No breath burned his lungs. No weight pressed his body into the ground. He opened his eyes.And realized he was floating. Not falling. Not rising. Suspended in a vast, dim expanse that looked like the inside of a forgotten cathedral, pillars of shadow stretching infinitely upward, symbols drifting through the air like ash.George tried to inhale. The instinct was there. The response was not Panic surged. “I can’t breathe,” he said. His voice echoed… then folded back into itself, as if the space had considered his words before allowing them to exist.A second later, realization hit harder than fear. He didn’t need to breathe. George looked down at himself. He still had a body, arms, legs, hands, but they shimmered faintly, like heat rising off asphalt.Veins glowed beneath his skin, pulsing with a deep blue light that wasn’t blood.Memories flickered at the edges of his mind. Not his.