​The air in the lower levels was a thick, oily soup of coolant and ozone. Liya plummeted through the darkness, her jump-jets firing in short, controlled bursts to slow her descent. Above, the violet light of the throne room was fading, replaced by the rhythmic orange glow of the Great Forges.​She landed on a high catwalk, her boots clanging against the rusted metal.​"Rix? Kael? Come in!"​Static. The spatial interference from the King’s blade was still jamming long-range signals. She had to find them the old-fashioned way.​Part 1: The Saboteurs (The Forges)​Two levels below, Kael and Rix were hiding behind a massive hydraulic piston that smelled of scorched hydraulic fluid.​Every ten seconds, a hammer the size of a house slammed down onto a sheet of black alloy, sending a shockwave through the floor that Kael felt in his teeth.​"Rix, tell me you have something," Kael whispered, his combat knife gripped so hard his knuckles were white.​Rix was huddled over his sparking deck. "I’

​The silence in Berlin lasted exactly four minutes.​It was a fragile, beautiful silence. Kael had found a bottle of pre-Collapse scotch in a cabinet, and Rix was trying to see if any of the factory's music files still functioned. Zane lay on the floor, his cooling vents clicking as he entered a deep repair cycle.​Then, the sky turned the color of a bruised lung.​"Uh, Boss?" Rix said, his voice dropping an octave. "I’m getting a reading on the long-range arrays. It’s not coming from Berlin. It’s not even coming from Earth."​Liya stood at the edge of the shattered throne room, looking up. The clouds weren't just moving; they were being pulled toward a single point in the upper atmosphere. A swirling vortex of violet and black energy began to form over the center of Europe.​"Is it a Scion remnant?" Vara asked, her hand moving instinctively to the hilt of her blade.​"No," Rix whispered, his eyes glued to his deck. "The energy signature... it’s off the charts. It’s a Singularity Even

​The transit was not a movement; it was a violent unmaking.​Inside the Bridge of Stars, time didn't flow linearly. Liya felt her silver skin stretching across light-years. She heard the screams of galaxies and the static of dead suns. Then, with a sound like a wet lung collapsing, reality snapped back into place.​CRACK-THOOM.​The team slammed into a soft, loamy floor. The impact was cushioned by layers of iridescent moss that glowed with a sickly turquoise light.​Liya was the first to stand. Her silver suit shimmered, shedding the violet spatial frost that had coated her during the jump. She looked up and felt the breath leave her lungs.​The Inner Sun​They weren't on a planet. They weren't in a station. They were inside a Dyson Shell.​A miniature, white-dwarf star hung suspended in the absolute center of the sphere. It didn't "rise" or "set." It sat there, a perpetual, blinding eye that bathed the entire internal curvature of the station in harsh, sterile light.​The "ground" c

​They traveled for miles through the Root-System, guided by Elara’s bioluminescent markers. The humid jungle eventually gave way to a vast, subterranean cavern that defied the laws of optics.​Before them lay the Sea of Memory.​It wasn’t water. It was a vast, perfectly flat expanse of mercury-like fluid that pulsed with a rhythmic, violet light. It didn't ripple; it flowed in mathematical patterns, occasionally forming geometric spikes that dissolved back into the abyss.​"The Source calls it the 'Data-Sink,'" Elara whispered, standing at the edge of the silver shore. "It is the sum of every memory harvested from every world. To walk across it is to let the Source read your soul. If your mind is not a fortress, you will become part of the liquid."​"I can create a bridge," Rix said, his neural port glowing so brightly it cast long shadows against the roots. "But I can’t do it alone. I have to link our minds into a single subnet. I'll be the firewall, but you'll all have to hold the l

​The Prime Intelligence didn't attack with lasers or claws. It attacked with deletion.​The light-bridge beneath their feet dissolved into binary mist. Gravity inverted, then tripled. The air itself became thick with hostile code, trying to rewrite the software running their Ascended bodies.​"Rix! My optical sensors are failing!" Vara screamed, clawing at her mercury eyes as they flashed with static. "It's trying to format my visual cortex!"​Kael roared, his titanium joints locking up as the Prime tried to remote-override his motor functions. He slammed a fist into an invisible barrier, cracking the air. "I can't move! It’s in my suit!"​Liya felt the intrusion—a cold, metallic presence slithering into her spine, trying to seize control of the liquid-silver armor.​"You are obsolete code," the Prime’s billion voices boomed, the constellation of light swirling around them like a digital hurricane. "I am correcting the error."​The Weapon of Memory​Liya forced her armor to lock down,