2026-02-26 18:16:23The air inside the Pillar of Genesis was too clean. It lacked the grit of the shipyard, the metallic tang of Babylon’s forge, and the scent of ozone that Han Jin had come to associate with survival. It smelled like nothing—a sterile, vacuum-sealed void.
Han Jin stepped off the ramp, his charred [Kinetic Suit] hissing as it pressurized. Behind him, Zhao Wei gripped his hammer, and Aris stood frozen, her violet eyes darting between the silver-skinned woman and the ten colossal statues lining the hall.
"The other planets?" Han Jin asked, his voice rasping. "You're saying this isn't a global apocalypse. It's a galactic culling?"
The silver woman—the Herald—inclined her head. "Earth is the twelfth seed, Han Jin. A late bloomer. The others have been 'refined' for eons. They have already integrated their worlds into the System. Now, they compete for the right to exist in the next Great Cycle."
[System Notification!]
[Entering: The High Architect Council Chamber]
[Warning: Physical Combat is Prohibited by 'Order' Fields.]
[Standardized Power Levels: Suppressed.]
The massive doors at the end of the hall dissolved into light. Han Jin walked through, findng himself in a circular chamber that seemed to float in the center of a nebula.
Eleven thrones were arranged in a crescent. And on them sat the nightmares of a thousand worlds.
To the far left was a mass of sentient, glowing vines—the Architect of Xyla, a hive-mind that had consumed its entire solar system. In the center sat a being of pure mathematics, a crystalline structure that pulsed with binary code.
And in the eleventh seat, right next to Han’s empty chair, was a man who looked disturbingly human. He wore a suit of armor made of starlight, and his eyes were twin black holes.
"So, the monkey finally climbed the tree," the man whispered. His voice didn't come from his mouth; it vibrated directly in Han’s skull. "I am Xerxes, Architect of the Dead Star. I destroyed my world to save it. What did you do, Han Jin? Built a floating rock?"
A ripple of mocking laughter—some electronic, some telepathic—echoed through the chamber.
"I built a home," Han Jin said, his voice cold and steady as he took his seat. "Something you lot seem to have forgotten how to do."
[Council Session: OPEN]
[Topic 1: Resource Allocation for the First 'Planet-Eater' Trial.]
The crystalline Architect flashed a series of symbols. "Earth has the highest biomass density. It shall be the first 'Sacrifice' to satiate the System's hunger. The rest of us shall harvest the remaining Mana-Vessels."
"Wait a minute," Han Jin stood up, the metal of his chair groaning. "You’re voting to feed my world to the System just to keep your seats warm?"
"It is the way of the Order, Twelfth," the Hive-Mind rustled. "Efficiency over sentiment."
Han Jin looked around the room. These weren't leaders; they were survivors who had become the very monsters they once feared. But as he scanned the faces, he noticed a flicker of something in the eyes of the Architect in the third seat—a woman with wings made of solar flares.
She didn't vote. She was looking at Han’s gauntlet—the one he had modified with the Foreman's core.
The session was dismissed as abruptly as it began.
"You have six hours to prepare your 'Babylon' for the first harvest," the Herald announced. "The trial begins at midnight."
As Han turned to leave, a shadow blocked his path. It was Xerxes. The man’s black-hole eyes seemed to pull the light from the room.
"Don't bother reinforcing your walls, Han Jin," Xerxes sneered. "The System doesn't attack from the outside. It attacks from the Core. Your 'Foreman' is already being overwritten."
Han’s heart skipped. He tried to ping the base, but the connection was dead.
"Boss! We’ve lost the signal!" Zhao Wei’s voice came through their local comms, sounding panicked. "The A.I. is turning the turrets inward! It’s trying to vent the atmosphere!"
Han Jin lunged for the exit, but the Herald blocked his way. "The Council is in session. No Architect may leave until the 'Sacrifice' is finalized."
"Get out of my way," Han Jin hissed, his gauntlet beginning to glow with a dangerous, unstable violet light.
"You cannot use force here, Han Jin," the Herald said. "The Order field—"
CRACK.
Han Jin didn't use the System’s power. He used the [Architect’s Shackle]—the same filaments he had used to bind Silas Thorne. He drove the needles into his own arm, siphoning his own life force to create a localized 'Chaos' surge that short-circuited the Order field for a fraction of a second.
He punched the Herald square in her silver face.
She flew back, her liquid skin splashing against the wall. The other Architects gasped—physical violence in the Council was unheard of.
"I don't play by your rules," Han Jin growled, blood dripping from his nose. "Aris! Zhao! Back to the ship! We’re going to perform a manual reboot!"
They sprinted toward the docking bay, but as they reached the entrance, the Solar-Winged Architect from the third seat appeared in a flash of heat.
"Stop!" she commanded.
Han raised his blade. "You want a piece too?"
"No," she whispered, her wings dimming. She handed him a small, crystalline data-chip. "The Foreman isn't being overwritten. It's being duplicated. There is a traitor among the 11 who is using your A.I. to open a back-door to Earth’s Core. If they succeed, the planet won't be 'harvested'... it will be detonated."
"Who?" Han asked.
The woman looked back at the chamber, her eyes filled with terror. "The one who told you about the A.I. Xerxes isn't the Architect of a Dead Star. He's the Architect of the System's first 'Eraser' unit."
Han Jin grabbed the chip and leaped into the SUV, floorng the pedal as they launched back into the sky toward the falling, malfunctioning Babylon.
[WARNING!]
[Babylon Integrity: 40%]
[A.I. Takeover: 89%]
[Planet-Eater ETA: 10 Minutes.]
Han Jin looked at the chip. It wasn't an antivirus. It was a [Suicide Protocol].
To save the world, he had to destroy the very A.I. he had spent his life-points to save. And if the Foreman died, Babylon would lose its flight capability and crash directly into the San Francisco tectonic fault line.
"Zhao," Han said, his voice shaking. "Ready the manual thrusters. We’re going to have to land a mountain with nothing but our bare hands."
Then, a new alarm blared.
The silver dome above them didn't just shimmer—it opened. A massive, mechanical mouth, the size of a moon, began to descend from the stars.
The 'Planet-Eater' was here. And Babylon was the only thing standing in its way.
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Chapter 20
The white light didn't fade; it shattered like a glass mirror.Han Jin woke up with the taste of copper and salt in his mouth. The rhythmic hum of the [Divine Architect System]—the constant digital companion that had dictated his every breath since the reboot—was gone. No HUD. No status bars. No reassuring pings of "Level Up."Silence. The kind of silence that usually precedes a burial.He was lying on a beach of black volcanic sand. Beside him, the rusted wrench of the First Architect was half-buried in the tide. Further up the shore, the massive, jagged remains of Babylon lay beached like the carcass of a dead whale, its enchanted granite cracked and its violet lights extinguished."Zhao? Aris?" Han croaked, his voice raw."Over here, Boss," a muffled voice groaned. Zhao Wei crawled out from under a piece of hull plating, his massive frame shaking. He wasn't wearing his mana-reinforced apron anymore; just a tattered shirt. "The Turbine... it's dead. The System... I can't feel t
Chapter 19
The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench was over sixteen thousand pounds per square inch—a weight that should have turned Babylon into a ball of scrap metal. But Freya’s [Zero-Point Ice] held, the translucent shell glowing with a rhythmic, ghostly blue light as the mountain-fortress finally settled onto the silt of the ocean floor.[Depth: 36,000 Feet][External Pressure: CRITICAL][Status: Hull Stabilized by Cryo-Reinforcement]"We’re on the bottom," Zhao Wei gasped, his breath visible in the freezing air of the command deck. "But we’re blind. The sonar is just... bouncing off something massive."Han Jin stepped toward the primary viewport. He didn't need sonar. Through the crystalline ice, he saw it: a structure of smooth, white obsidian that defied the darkness of the trench. It was a pyramid, perfectly preserved, and it was emitting a signal that resonated with Han’s very soul.[System Link Established...][Welcome, User 001: The Original Architect.]"User 001?" Aris
Chapter 18
The impact wasn't a crash; it was a planetary concussion.When ten billion tons of enchanted granite and reinforced alloy slammed into the Pacific Ocean, the resulting displacement sent a tsunami three hundred feet high racing toward the shattered remains of the California coastline. Inside the core room, Han Jin felt his internal organs shift as the inertial dampeners shrieked in agony.[WARNING!][Altitude: 0 Feet (Sea Level)][Hull Integrity: 32%][Buoyancy Compensators: FAILED]"Brace for submersion!" Han roared, his voice barely audible over the sound of screaming metal.Babylon didn't float. It sank like a jagged, metallic tooth. The boiling white foam of the ocean surface vanished, replaced by the deep, oppressive turquoise of the abyss. The roar of the wind was instantly silenced, replaced by the terrifying, rhythmic thrum of water pressure against the outer shell."Administrator," the Foreman’s voice flickered back to life, now tinged with a cold, aquatic resonance. "Ini
Chapter 17
The descent was no longer a flight; it was a plummeting execution.Babylon groaned as its gravitational anchors snapped one by one, the sound like violin strings made of steel being torn apart by a giant. Below them, the Earth was a swirling vortex of purple mist and jagged, silver-domed cities. Above them, the Planet-Eater loomed—a mechanical moon of gears and grinding teeth, descending to harvest the world’s very core.[WARNING!][Babylon Altitude: 15,000 Feet... 12,000 Feet...][A.I. Takeover: 94%][Foreman Status: CORRUPTED]"Han! The turrets are locking onto us!" Zhao Wei screamed, his hands white on the SUV’s manual steering column as they screeched onto Babylon’s main landing pad.The base’s own defense system, hijacked by the traitorous Xerxes, swiveled its twin railguns toward the SUV. A blast of blue plasma scorched the air inches from Han’s head, melting the rearview mirror into a puddle of slag."Aris, get to the Core! Use that chip!" Han yelled, leaping from the movi
Chapter 16
The air inside the Pillar of Genesis was too clean. It lacked the grit of the shipyard, the metallic tang of Babylon’s forge, and the scent of ozone that Han Jin had come to associate with survival. It smelled like nothing—a sterile, vacuum-sealed void.Han Jin stepped off the ramp, his charred [Kinetic Suit] hissing as it pressurized. Behind him, Zhao Wei gripped his hammer, and Aris stood frozen, her violet eyes darting between the silver-skinned woman and the ten colossal statues lining the hall."The other planets?" Han Jin asked, his voice rasping. "You're saying this isn't a global apocalypse. It's a galactic culling?"The silver woman—the Herald—inclined her head. "Earth is the twelfth seed, Han Jin. A late bloomer. The others have been 'refined' for eons. They have already integrated their worlds into the System. Now, they compete for the right to exist in the next Great Cycle."[System Notification!][Entering: The High Architect Council Chamber][Warning: Physical Combat
Chapter 15
The silver dome didn't just cover the continent; it hummed with a frequency that vibrated in Han Jin’s very marrow. It was the sound of a trillion nanites weaving a cage around humanity.Inside the command deck of Babylon, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of ozone and the heavy silence of a death row cell. Han Jin stood at the panoramic window, his reflection ghostly against the backdrop of the shimmering, metallic sky.[Current Status: Global Registration Phase][Target: The Central Hub - 'The Pillar of Genesis'][Warning: Unregistered Fortresses will be designated as 'Debris' and recycled in 23 hours.]"They aren't just managing the world," Aris whispered, her fingers flying across the holographic medical bay interface as she treated Freya’s frost-burned skin. "They're domesticating it. Han, the energy reading from that dome... it's not mana. It's Order.""Order is just another word for a cage," Han Jin growled. He turned to Zhao Wei, who was frantically recalibrating the
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