The hum of the Core had faded into something softer now—a slow sound that echoed beneath the floor, almost like a heartbeat syncing with his own.
For the first time in what felt like forever, Seo Jin could feel the air again. Cool, steady, real. He drew in a breath, and it didn't taste like static. It tasted like dust and metal and the faint trace of Li Ran's scent—faintly wild, grounding him in a world that still obeyed gravity.
He was alive.
But that word—alive—felt too small for what had just happened.
He opened his eyes.
The chamber was dim, its light no longer the blinding silver of raw code but something gentler—pale threads of luminescence weaving across the walls like veins beneath translucent skin. The Core's hum had become a pulse, faint but steady. The reflection was gone—or maybe not gone, but watching from somewhere deeper, folded into the system's rhythm.
And Li Ran was still holding him.
