Chapter 51 (3)
Author: Nightingale
last update2025-08-29 05:34:01

Awareness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a brutal, crashing wave of the present. The ghost of Elian’s world-shattering grief was a shard of ice lodged deep in her own psyche, and the cold, entropic whisper of Nyx’s first contact was a resonant echo in the corrupted pathways of her mind. She was back in her body, and her body was a prison of pain and exhaustion. The permacrete was a relentless chill against her cheek, the hum of the energy dampeners a monotonous drone that now felt flimsy and pathetic after the symphony of creation and destruction she had just witnessed. She drew in a ragged breath, and it hitched in her throat, becoming a sob that was equal parts horror, pity, and a profound, soul-deep weariness. She had not just seen the System’s origin; she had lived it. She had felt the idealism, the love, the ambition, and the catastrophic, desperate error in her very bones. The knowledge was a weight that threatened to pin her to the floor forever.

But beneath the weight,
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