The System notification appeared the moment Silas opened his eyes.「 Ding! Day 64 Sign-In successful! 」「 Reward 1: $300,000 」「 Reward 2: Physique +1 (24→25) 」He sat up in bed. The penthouse was dark. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Veridian City's skyline glowed against the night sky. Three buildings in the Crown District pulsed with faint Aether threads that only he could see.Silas looked at his hands. Flexed them.Physique 25. He could feel the difference immediately. His muscles were denser. His tendons tighter. Every fiber of his body hummed with a quiet power that had nothing to do with cultivation. This was raw physical enhancement — the System rebuilding him from the cellular level outward.He got out of bed and walked to the kitchen. Poured a glass of water. Drank it standing at the counter.'Sixty-four days,' he thought. 'Sixty-four days since Ward 7B.'The man who had lain broken in that hospital bed would not recognize the person standing here now. The Physique st

Silas sat cross-legged on the penthouse balcony. Eyes closed. Breathing steady.The Aether moved through his body in a slow, stubborn loop. Ten times now he had completed the full circulation cycle. Ten out of a thousand.It was progress. Slow progress. But real.Lyra stood behind the glass door, watching. She had been observing his technique for the past twenty minutes without speaking. Now she slid the door open and stepped out."You're forcing it again," she said.Silas opened one eye. "I'm guiding it.""No. You're shoving Aether through your meridians like you're pushing water through a pipe. That's not how it works." She crouched beside him. "Your father didn't force anything. He felt the flow and followed it. That's why his buildings worked. He didn't impose structure on Aether. He let the Aether show him where the structure wanted to be."Silas closed his eye again. He thought about Marcus's blueprints. The way every line seemed to curve naturally, as if the building had always

The sign-in notification appeared the moment Silas opened his eyes.「 Ding! Day 68 Sign-In successful! 」「 Reward: $600,000 」「 The funds have been transferred to the Host's account. 」Common tier. Nothing special. He closed the interface and got out of bed.Kira was already in the living room, standing by the window with a cup of black coffee. She didn't look like she'd slept. Then again, she never did."Anything overnight?" Silas asked."Quiet. No movement from Blackmere. No Athenaeum contacts. Zephyr's feeds are clean.""Good."He poured himself a coffee and checked his phone. Three messages from Graham about the Ashford Quay foundation pour scheduled for next week. One from Vivienne — a logistics update on the resort project's revised timeline. Nothing from Serath.The quiet should have felt good. It didn't.Roderick was planning something. The Thorne Tower activation was coming — Silas could feel it in the same way he could feel Aether flow through walls now. A pressure building