The world was breathing.
Every network, every current of air, every faint vibration carried a resonance that wasn't there before. The hum of electricity, the sigh of the wind, even the static between radio frequencies — all of it now moved to a sound that mirrored the Core's pulse.
It wasn't chaos.
It was harmony.
And it terrified Li Ran more than anything else.
He stood in the command chamber long after the others had gone, the screens before him flickering with impossible data — sound waves merging with brainwave patterns, weather systems echoing emotional frequencies, ocean tides subtly synchronized with the Core's energy field.
He should've been asleep hours ago. But how could he sleep, knowing that the air itself might be listening?
"System," he said quietly, voice hoarse. "Run a correlation analysis between Core resonance and global anomalies."
The fox's hologram shimmered into existence, tail curling as it processed.
