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Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Three – The Last Architect
Author: Rukky
last update2025-11-11 00:40:37

When he opened his eyes again, the world had changed not because time had passed, but because it had learned how to remember.

He stood at the center of a valley made of light and stone. The horizon rippled with auroras that moved like breath, their colors soft and deliberate.

The air was no longer still; it hummed, alive with a consciousness just beginning to dream. Fowler looked down at his hands.

They were made of skin again. Human. Scarred in the same old places. But when he flexed them, faint threads of gold shimmered beneath the surface like the world hadn’t let go of him completely.

He turned, listening to the wind. It wasn’t only wind. It carried voices faint, fragmented, half-formed echoes of people the Engine had once known. Laughter, whispers, fragments of thought drifting through the air like pollen.

He understood then: the world was remembering itself through him. And he was its last architect. He took a step forward.

The ground responded grass blooming in his wake, thin a
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