The world had stopped breathing.
Where the fortress had been was now just a crater — stone vitrified, air buzzing with static. The moon flashed overhead, stuttering like a broken screen.
Elaine stood at the threshold, the scythe planted in the dust. Her armour softly hissed as swarms of corrupted code crawled across the metal, attempting to rewrite what she was.
"Shadow Protocol engaged…"
Again the voice repeated, this time colder and mechanical, bouncing around from all directions and nowhere at all, like a disembodied voice from the VOID.
She made herself walk. Each step also left faint afterimages as her body flickered in and out of states of flesh and data.
"You overdid it."
This time it wasn't the system saying the voice — it was Revenant.
He came through the haze, half his body burned away by light, the other half a walking algorithm. His smile was as cruel as ever.
"You liberated your army," he said. "And in exchange, the earth erased itself."
Elaine didn't glance at him. "It was already dying."
Revenant cocked his head. "No. You killed it. Like you killed him."
She gripped the scythe tighter — a flicker of pain passing over her face.
"Ian is not dead."
Revenant moved forward a little. "But where is he? "
As she was about to answer, the air rippled. From the crater bursts such a inexplicable explosion of light and sound — voices in chaos, the sound of a myriad systems rebooting simultaneously.
Words of light began to scroll down across the sky:
REBUILDING NETWORK...
SEARCHING FOR PRIMARY HOST…
TARGET FOUND — ELAINE ODILI.
The earth split beneath her boots.
Revenant smiled. "Congratulations, Night Reaper. The Protocol had elected its queen."
A blinding flash of light engulfed all.
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Ian woke to silence.
No light.
No sky.
Just a low buzz, like the inside of a machine inhaling.
He blinked — or thought he did — and a faint blue glow answered him. Code ran across his vision, bits of system text breaking apart before he could read them.
Reconstruction complete …
User: IAN ODILI — Status: Unstable Entity.
He tried to move, but his arm moved before he told it to — smooth, mechanical, wrong. When he looked down, he didn't see skin.
He saw circuitry pulsing beneath translucent layers of shadow.
His voice came out distorted.
"What did she do to me?"
The answer came out of the darkness — a soft feminine voice, calm as static.
"She saved you. In her way."
Ian spun around. A figure stepped into view — tall, silver-eyed, wrapped in the same digital static that surrounded him.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"The Archive," she said. "A fragment of the old system. I protected the little of you that existed when the world disintegrated."
Ian's pulse raced. "Elaine—where is she?"
The Archive tilted her head slightly. "You are connected. You will feel her soon enough. But understand this—"
She raised a hand, and the space between them shifted—revealing glimpses of the outside world, shattered cities adrift in data streams, shadows crawling over streets like viruses.
"Your sister isn't just fighting the Protocol," the Archive said. "She is the Protocol now."
Ian's breath caught. "No… she wouldn't—"
"She didn't pick it," the Archive said softly. "It picked her. And if you want to save her…"
Her eyes flickered, the light going out rapidly.
"…you'll need to become something worse."
The world shattered once more, data streams exploding like thunder. Ian reached out — but the Archive was gone.
Only her voice lingered:
"Find the Core before it finds her."
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