Elian sat cross-legged on the stone floor of the Architect's tomb, the obsidian shard resting in his open palm.
It pulsed like a restrained heartbeat. Slow. Heavy. Waiting.
The girl and the rotborne woman stood several paces behind him, both silent — not from fear, but from the shared understanding that whatever happened next wasn't meant to be witnessed.
Even the Seed floated lower in the air, as though bowing in the presence of something older than itself.
"You're going to connect to it?" the girl asked.
Elian didn't look up.
"No."
"I'm going to make it remember how to speak."
He closed his eyes, pressed his hand against the shard—
And everything shattered.
[Attempting Interface…]
[Core Shard Identified: Architect Sarn]
[Security Protocol: Hostile]
[Thread Compatibility: Denied]
[Override Detected – Irretrievable Signature Confirmed]
[Forced Sync Initiated]
The world didn't go dark.
It went deep.
Elian plunged through threadspace like a body falling through memory. Layer after layer of buried protocol and logic screamed past him, each one trying to repulse or reassign his presence.
He didn't stop.
He collided.
He was standing in a void.
Not empty — structured. Cold. A space built from raw, echoing code. Screens hovered in every direction, displaying fractured system logs, corrupted thought trees, and memories the system had tried to forget.
And in the center stood a tower.
No walls. No top. Just a shimmering monolith of mirrored threads, reflecting his past choices, every action, every violation — stacked and spinning in recursive sequence.
It was watching him.
And it was afraid.
"Soulfrail," the tower whispered.
"You do not belong in this layer."
The voice wasn't mechanical.
It was human.
Too human.
That alone made it worse.
"You were not meant to see the architects."
"You were never meant to exist."
Elian stepped forward.
His footsteps made no sound.
"And yet, here I am."
The monolith rippled.
"You are fracturing root structures. You are corrupting threadlines not meant to flex. You are rewriting designations. Why?"
Elian tilted his head.
"Because your gods stopped asking questions. And I haven't."
The tower surged.
Hundreds of mirrored lines lashed out, trying to wrap him — not to destroy, but to rewrite. To change the memory of his choices. To label him something safe.
Elian's fingers closed around the shard.
And the system flinched.
[Core Shard Interface Achieved]
[Hidden Traitline Accessed: Cognitive Isolation Thread – Sarn Echo]
[Effect Activated: Mindlock Surge – Memory rewrite immunity for 2 minutes]
[Warning: Internal System Violation Confirmed. Retaliation pending.]
The void cracked.
A scream tore through the code, voiceless and wide.
The mirrored tower folded inward. Its own logic turned against itself.
And Elian?
He remained standing.
Unbent.
Unwritten.
He was expelled.
Thrown back into his body like a snapped rubber band. He gasped, lungs raw, vision burning — but he was whole.
Barely.
He opened his eyes.
The girl flinched.
The rotborne woman lowered her head.
Elian's body trembled.
But his voice was calm.
"It tried to erase me."
"Tried to rewrite me into something less… difficult."
"But it couldn't."
He looked down at the shard in his hand, now dim, quiet, but still warm.
"The system is no longer sure what I am."
He stood.
"And that means it's starting to lose control."