2025-04-21 07:00:00Ethan’s heart was still pounding in his chest, the sound of it deafening in his ears. He was hyperaware of the room around him—the broken glass from the door, the scattered bodies of men who had been far too eager to die, and Clara standing beside him, her expression grim but unwavering. It was a victory of sorts, but Ethan knew better than to allow himself a moment of relief. This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
The retreat had been swift and precise. The mysterious man—the one who had spoken of “The King”—had made sure to leave no trace, no sign of a battle other than the carnage left in their wake. They’d disappeared into the shadows as quickly as they’d appeared, but Ethan knew they weren’t gone for good. No one who operated with the kind of cold, calculated precision they had just witnessed was ever truly gone. Clara moved toward the wreckage of the door, her eyes scanning the room as though searching for any lingering threats.
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Chapter 127- Into the Abyss
The world as Halstrom knew it ceased to exist. The air turned to liquid shadow, cold and oppressive, clinging to his skin like an invisible weight. He could no longer feel his feet, nor his hands. The cube’s vortex had pulled him in, but not in the way he had anticipated. It wasn’t a simple transition; it was a complete unmaking.He opened his eyes—if, indeed, he had eyes anymore. There was no space, no time. There was only darkness, an eternal void that stretched infinitely in every direction. It felt alive, as though the void itself was watching, waiting. The hum from the cube resonated within him, in his bones, in his thoughts. It was a call.Beside him, the woman stood unmoving, her form flickering in and out of focus. Her face was the only thing solid in this shifting expanse, but even that seemed to distort, warping like a reflection in water.“What is this?” Halstrom’s voice cra
Chapter 126- The Last Echo
The cube pulsed with a faint, otherworldly hum. Its edges shimmered, as if trying to escape the confines of the metal casing, pushing against the bonds that held it. Halstrom and the shadowed woman stood unmoving, waiting. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees in an instant.“You were certain it was inert,” the woman said, her voice steady but carrying a thread of tension.Halstrom turned slowly, his face grim. “I thought so. But something has changed. The core programming… it’s never truly dormant.”The cube vibrated again, its pulse increasing in frequency. The hum filled the room like a vibration from deep within the earth itself.“What does it want?” the woman asked.Halstrom’s lips parted as he observed the cube, his fingers hovering over it, hesitant. “It wants the same thing it’s always wanted
Chapter 125- The Tremor Beneath
The chamber shook like a held breath finally exhaled. Cracks spread along the bioluminescent walls, light bleeding from them like veins tearing under stress. The child remained motionless on her platform, eyes closed, lips moving silently.Ethan staggered back as the vibrations increased. Evelyn grabbed his arm, steadying him. Mira and Kaz had their weapons up, but neither dared to fire.“What the hell is happening?” Kaz shouted over the rumble.“She’s triggering something,” Evelyn said. “Or something’s triggering her.”The child opened her eyes, now a piercing obsidian, reflective like the event horizon of a black hole.“She’s syncing with the root system,” Seraph said, scanning wildly. “It’s a cascade—Dominion fragments are activating across the globe. Dormant code is lighting up in defense netw
Chapter 124-The Lazarus Flicker
The 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
Chapter 123- Caelestis Ascendancy
The stars above the Arclight shimmered like ancient signals—cold, silent witnesses to what came next. Ethan Cross leaned against the comms table, watching a feed from Seraph’s drone array, which now tracked low-orbit anomalies at 38,000 kilometers. Amid the sea of satellites and abandoned junk, one object moved with unnatural precision.It had no registry, no heat signature.Just a name now etched into the Dominion’s resurrection plans: Caelestis.“It was never on any satellite logs,” Seraph said, eyes fixed. “The orbital pattern is deliberately chaotic. Impossible to predict without quantum models.”“It wasn’t meant to be found,” Ethan murmured. “It was meant to awaken.”And now, it had.“Three hours until optimal insertion vector,” Evelyn announced from the Arclight’s
Chapter 122- The Quiet Rebirth
The hum of the Arclight’s engines was the only sound as Ethan Cross stared into the pale horizon. The air above the polar waters no longer shimmered with the corrupted Dominion code. It was clean—silent. And yet, the silence was unnerving.They hadn’t won. Not truly.The Parallax Key was gone, the satellites scorched from orbit, and the Theta Protocol disarmed—but something lingered beneath the surface. Ethan felt it like a shadow at the edge of his thoughts. The Dominion didn’t vanish with Aetherion’s collapse. It had gone underground, coiled in waiting.Mira joined him at the railing, her breath forming small clouds in the chill. “There’s chatter on the surface. Governments think we stopped another solar flare. No mention of what really happened. No one knows.”“Good,” Ethan said, eyes fixed. “They don’t need to. The trut
