The possibility settled over Stephen like a sentence waiting to be carried out.You may not remain yourself afterward.Those words echoed through the endless void long after his father’s voice faded. Around them, the Core continued pulsing with unstable energy, its vast neural structure glowing brighter with every passing second.The constructs remained perfectly still beneath it, waiting for a command that had not yet been given, waiting for him.Stephen stared upward at the enormous consciousness suspended in darkness. For the first time since entering the Core, he truly understood the scale of what stood before him.This was no longer merely technology.It was the accumulation of countless human minds, emotions, memories, and instincts compressed into a single evolving intelligence. Fear existed inside it. Grief existed inside it. Desire, rage, loneliness, hope—all of it had become woven into the system over decades of synchronization.And now the Core wanted him to become part of