2025-08-12 07:00:00The dropship tore through the thinning atmosphere like a blade through silk, the firetrail behind it mirrored by the crimson glow seeping into the clouds below. Oracle had pushed the engines to near-failure just to keep distance from the thing clawing its way out of the mountain—something ancient, furious, and suddenly awake.
Ethan braced himself against the bulkhead, eyes locked on the external feed. The creature’s form shimmered, oscillating between solid and ethereal. Its wings, each spanning wider than two aircraft carriers, beat against the upper air like thunderclaps, distorting the jet stream.
“How fast is it moving?” he barked.
“Mach 1.2 and climbing,” Oracle answered. “But it’s not chasing us anymore.”
Asha leaned over the console, her voice low. “It’s ascending.”
They watched as the beast angled toward the stratosphere—toward space.
“N
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Chapter 319: Ashfall
The sun broke over the ruins of Sanctum Prime like a hesitant breath, bleeding light across the crumbled superstructure and twisted steel skeletons that once formed the Dominion’s crown jewel. Where towers had reached skyward in arrogance, only jagged spires remained—charred, silent, and swaying under the ghost-weight of the vanished Network.Ethan stood on the fractured edge of the east citadel platform, the remains of the Core Nexus behind him, and watched dawn arrive not as salvation, but aftermath. Ash floated around him like snow in slow motion.Vega was beside him, bruised, limping slightly, arms folded against the cold wind. Neither spoke for a while.Ayla’s voice crackled through the comms.“Final diagnostics clear. No residual signal. The grid’s gone. All of it.”Ethan nodded without answering. He didn’t need confirmation. He could feel it. For the first time in his life, the hum was
Chapter 318: The Stillness Protocol
The dust hadn’t fully settled in the Archive Chamber. Shards of light flickered along the edges of the crystalline floor, residual pulses of energy from the collapsed Core Nexus still arcing like dying stars. Ethan sat on the cold ground, breath gradually stabilizing, his fingers trembling as they brushed through ash that hadn’t been there a moment ago.Ayla crouched beside him, still catching her breath. Her eyes scanned his face—half-expecting to find someone else staring back.“You sure you’re still you?” she asked softly.Ethan looked at her, the golden code now gone from his irises. Just tired green eyes. “Close enough.”Kaito staggered to his feet, his interface unit crackling on his wrist. “Systems are offline. All of them. Core grids, Dominion subroutines, dream-nodes—gone. We’re not just unplugged—we’re erased.”Vega peered into the place wher
Chapter 317: The Heir and the Echo
Ethan stepped forward slowly, his gaze fixed on the figure before them. Every instinct screamed at him to stay back, to raise his weapon, to demand answers—but something deeper, older, compelled him forward.Protocol Prime.The name wasn’t just a designation. It was a title etched into the Dominion’s buried history, the original architect of the entire networked consciousness they’d been fighting for over a year. And now, some fragment of it—some remnant twisted by time and intent—stood before them, clothed in shadow and humming with impossible power.“I don’t believe in destiny,” Ethan said carefully, “but you look like you’ve been expecting me.”“I have,” Prime replied, tilting his head slightly, as though amused. “But belief is irrelevant. What matters is convergence. You are the endpoint of every decision this system ever made to preserve itself.”Ve
Chapter 316: Into the Core
The air around Ethan shimmered with heat as the elevator shaft’s emergency platform screeched to a halt. Beneath him, the bowels of the Citadel churned—a mechanical heartbeat echoing through reinforced steel walls. The descent into the Core was unlike anything they’d experienced: narrow, silent, and pulsing with invisible static that prickled the skin and turned each breath metallic.Vega stepped off behind him, her pulse rifle cradled against her chest, her eyes sharp. “We’re in the belly now,” she muttered. “Everything above us? That was foreplay.”Ayla and Kaito joined them, their steps cautious but decisive. The dim corridor before them bore no markings, only flickering overhead panels that strobed like failing synapses. The silence was heavier than before. Ominous. It felt… wrong.“Which direction?” Ayla asked, tightening her grip on her knives.Ethan scanned the datapad
Chapter 315: The Vault Beneath All Things
The sound was faint at first—so subtle it could’ve been the last echo of a failing machine. But then it came again: three deliberate, hollow thuds from inside the floor. Measured. Rhythmic. Alive.Ethan and Maren froze.They stood in the scorched silence of the reactor chamber, both staring down at the vault door now pulsing with light beneath the catwalk. Faint lines—veins of luminescent sigils—began to trace across its surface, responding to the shutdown sequence Ethan had just triggered.“It’s not over,” Maren whispered, not as a question, but a realization.Ethan stepped to the edge of the catwalk, peering down. The vault was embedded in obsidian rock, wrapped in layers of old Dominion tech that predated even the First Codex War. Nothing about it had been on the schematics. Not even in the old archives.He crouched, touched the rail. Static crawled up his palm. The door below him breathed.
Chapter 314: The Shattered Clocktower
The winds that screamed through the broken glass of the old clocktower carried with them the scent of ash and ozone—remnants of the final charge that had leveled half the Dominion’s inner sanctum. Ethan Cross stood on the jagged ledge where time had once been measured. Now, the gears of the tower’s heart lay mangled at his feet, like the bodies they’d lost in the fight.He was alone—or so he thought—until a voice cracked through the silence behind him.“You shouldn’t have come back, Ethan.”It was Maren Vale.Ethan turned slowly. She was thinner than he remembered, her dark coat torn, her left sleeve slick with blood that wasn’t hers. Her pistol was lowered but not holstered—a sign of truce, not peace.“I didn’t come back,” Ethan replied. “I never left.”Their eyes met, full of ghosts. Then came the grinding whir of machinery below&m
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