The explosion of gold and violet light didn’t consume Jovan; it flowed through him like a rushing river of molten lead. He stood at the center of the hub, his fingers still ghosting over the sleeping boy’s cold hand. The machine groaned, a deep, tectonic sound that vibrated through the soles of his boots. Above them, the golden sphere of data whirled, its hum becoming a rhythmic, predatory screech."Jovan, stop! The feedback is tearing the floor apart!" Anisa yelled over the cacophony. She was bracing herself against a server rack, her face illuminated by the flickering, erratic light. "If you channel that much energy into the seal while the child is still connected, you’re going to vaporize the kid!"Jovan stared at the boy. The child’s chest rose and fell in a slow, artificial rhythm. He wasn't breathing air; he was inhaling raw, processed reality. Jovan’s heart hammered a frantic, uneven beat. "I can't just rip him out, Anisa! Look at the interface. He's fused! His nervous system i

The impact of the bullet was not a release, but a jarring, suffocating shove. Jovan hit the cold, reinforced roof of the transmitter station, the air knocked out of his lungs in a sharp, wet gasp. He waited for the burning—the searing, final heat of a life ending—but instead, he felt the heavy, rubbery sting of a non-lethal round hitting his shoulder. He curled into a ball, clutching his chest, his vision swimming with jagged, flickering spots of white."Subject is down!" a voice barked, muffled and distorted behind a tactical mask. "Don't kill him yet! The Gardener wants him alive for the recalibration!" another voice snapped back, its tone vibrating with the same artificial authority Jovan had learned to loathe. Rough hands grabbed him by the hair and the collar of his jacket, hauling him upright. His head lolled, his vision clearing just enough to see Anisa being dragged from the stairwell by two massive enforcers, her bag already stripped from her shoulders and tossed into the

The doors to the server hub didn't just open; they groaned, bowing outward under the pressure of the security team’s thermal charges. Jovan didn’t wait for them to finish the job. He grabbed Anisa by the jacket, hauling her toward the only secondary exit listed on the console’s flickering map.[ "Run, Jovan! Now!" ] Anisa shouted, her voice tight with panic as the metal buckled. [ "If they catch us in this hallway, we’re finished. No fancy tricks, just move!" ][ "I’m moving, I’m moving!" ] Jovan grunted, his feet thudding heavily on the metallic floor. [ "My legs feel like they’ve been replaced with lead. How are you keeping up?" ][ "I’ve spent the last six months running from everything, remember?" ] she gasped, her breath coming in ragged hitches. [ "My cardio is elite at this point. Don’t look back!" ]A drone—a sleek, lethal sphere of matte black—detonated the ceiling panels just behind them. It descended with a whir of high-speed rotors, its single red eye scanning the corridor

Jovan stood on the ridge, his boots biting into the loose shale as the ink-black fingers of the Void Deity raked across the firmament. The mountain groaned, a sound of tectonic plates screaming in agony, as the entity’s presence began to collapse the local space-time."Jovan, move! You're going to get crushed by the debris!" Anisa’s voice was a jagged tear in the oppressive silence. She was hovering a few meters down the slope, her hands clawing into a crevice, her eyes wide with a terror that made Jovan’s own blood run cold.[ "I can't just move, Anisa!" ] Jovan yelled back, his voice strained. [ "Do you see that hand? It’s not just reaching—it’s anchoring itself into our reality. If it locks onto the temple, the whole valley gets pulled through to whatever hellscape it came from." ][ "Then let the valley fall!" ] she shouted, her knuckles white. [ "We can't win a wrestling match against a hand the size of a skyscraper! We need to get to the extraction point before the gravity spike

The dust was still settling in the crater, a fine, grey powder that coated the back of Jovan’s throat like ground glass. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky, watching the clouds drift by with an agonizing slowness. Everything felt muted, as if the world were being filtered through a thick, woollen blanket."Jovan? Hey, look at me. Stay with me."The voice came from somewhere to his left, frantic and sharp. He turned his head, feeling the sharp protest of his neck muscles. Anisa was hovering over him, her face smudged with soot and her eyes wide with a fear that seemed to vibrate through the air."Who… who are you?" Jovan asked. His own voice sounded like a stranger’s—thin, brittle, and hollow.Anisa froze. The air left her lungs in a short, sharp hiss. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she brushed the hair back from his forehead. "Don't do that. Don't you dare do that to me. It's Anisa. It’s me. We just got out of the station. We—we jumped, Jovan."Jovan squinted, trying