2025-05-25 07:25:00The silence on the Orion Blade was thick as vacuum. The Caelestis station floated behind them—powered down, dormant, but still ominously intact. Ethan Cross sat in the rear medical chamber, hooked to biometric nodes, breathing slow and steady, his face pale.
Mira’s voice cracked over the comms. “Talk to me, Evelyn. Is he alive?”
“Yes,” Evelyn replied, her voice flat but controlled. “Neural vitals are stabilizing. He made it through.”
“And the station?”
Evelyn glanced at the readings. “Dead. No comms, no bio-signals, no uplinks. It’s as if the Dominion never existed inside it. Like someone wiped it retroactively.”
Kaz leaned back in his seat, exhaling. “Then why does it still feel like it’s watching us?”
Because it was.
They just didn’t kn
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Chapter 267 – Through the Ashen Veil
Ayla stood at the edge of the smoldering ruins that were once the Dominion’s control nexus. The veil was thinning now—literal and metaphorical. A heat shimmer clung to the air like ghosts reluctant to pass on, and the scorched horizon trembled beneath what little remained of the Core’s protection.Behind her, the surviving coalition forces gathered, nursing wounds that were more than physical. Each soldier, scientist, and sentinel bore the weight of knowledge: there would be no going back. The Dominion wasn’t just dying—it had been unmade.And yet, the sky didn’t fall. The stars didn’t flicker out. Reality, fragile as it was, held together.For now.“We’re still here,” murmured Davien, stepping beside Ayla. His left arm was in a sling, cybernetic fingers twitching erratically. “I don’t know if that’s a miracle or a punishment.”Ayla didn’t reply. Her attention
Chapter 266 – The Dominion Fractured
The walls of the Citadel groaned like a dying beast as the atmospheric pressure shifted unnaturally. The energy field that had surrounded the Silent Dominion for centuries began to ripple and distort. Above, the once-pristine dome cracked like glass beneath cosmic weight, threads of violet lightning crawling across its surface like veins rupturing under the strain of forgotten gods.Ayla stood at the epicenter, her eyes still locked on the inert frame of the Parallax Key, now quiet in her palm. She could still feel the echo of it—resonant, ancient, like it had left a permanent mark on her DNA. Behind her, Damaris coughed violently, ash coating his lungs. Ethan steadied him, while Wren and Riven dragged the wounded away from the central rupture zone.“They’re coming through,” murmured Wren, looking up.Above them, portals yawned open like wounds in the sky. But these weren’t Echo’s original portals—these were raw, unstabl
Chapter 265 – The Ash Warden Protocol
The council chamber was no longer a war room. Now, it pulsed with debate, voices from across every restored territory patched in via hololinks. A thousand dialects. A hundred philosophies. All pulled together by a fragile thread—Ayla’s Vault.But peace, as Ethan Cross had learned long ago, was not the absence of war. It was the interval before the next campaign.At the central podium, Ayla stood still, her posture calm, but her mind whirling. The archive had been live for ten days. In that time, three minor skirmishes had broken out over interpretation rights. One city had been caught distributing altered memory strands—rewriting history in their favor. And now, a new concern had emerged.The Ash Warden.Ethan entered through the side, flanked by Vega and Kaito, his face tight. “He surfaced again.”Ayla turned to him, brow furrowing. “Where?”Kaito tossed a datapad onto the table. “Northern fri
Chapter 264 – The Covenant Line
The scream of the Aegis Core was not one of pain—but of release.As Ayla’s palm lifted from the console, light erupted upward in a cyclone of energy, laced with fragmented symbols and cascading data streams. It reached the vaulting heights of the crystalline chamber and then burst outward like a shattering halo, collapsing every corrupted line of Consortium code in its path.Outside, the storm died instantly.Weapons jammed mid-fire. Drones plummeted from the sky. And for a long breathless moment, the mountain range stood still—silent, as if history itself was holding its breath.Ethan staggered backward from Alaric’s limp form, his knuckles bleeding, chest heaving. He turned to Ayla, who had dropped to one knee at the Core’s base, her eyes glazed over but her body intact.“Ayla!” he shouted.Kaito and Vega rushed in behind him, weapons drawn—though none of them were sure what threat remained.<
Chapter 263: The Aegis Decision
For a heartbeat, time fractured.Light crashed in waves against Ayla’s skin as her fingers remained pressed to the Aegis Core. The world around her blurred—no longer snow, steel, or shadow, but data, memory, sensation. She was falling through time. Rising through meaning. The Core had no language for what it held, only truths buried in the hearts of countless minds, echoes of intent that resonated across centuries.A dome of light expanded from the Core, freezing the battle outside in perfect stillness. Bullets stopped mid-air. Flames turned to static. Alaric, halfway through a snarl, hung motionless as if caught in amber. Even Ethan’s shout faded to silence.In this frozen instant, Ayla was alone.Alone… except for the voices.“Heir of the Sigil.”It was the Founder’s voice again—but multiplied now. Male. Female. Human. Synthetic. Each carried the same calm intensity, a current
Chapter 262: The Legacy Vault
The metallic doors of the Vault groaned open, their ancient hinges echoing like thunder down the obsidian corridor. Ethan’s flashlight beam sliced through the darkness, casting flickering shadows along the stone walls, carved with symbols that pulsed faintly with blue light.“Everyone keep your guard up,” Ethan murmured, stepping forward.Behind him, Vega and Kaito followed closely. Ayla lingered for a moment at the threshold, her gaze locked on a rune etched above the doorway—one that matched the birthmark on her shoulder.Inside, the Vault was nothing like they’d imagined. It wasn’t a chamber of gold, weapons, or ancient relics. It was a long corridor lined with memory crystals suspended in air—each one swirling with blue-white light, as if containing frozen thoughts. They stretched down the corridor in perfect formation, humming softly.Kaito touched one gently. “It’s… consciousness. Preserve
