The first thing Elaine felt was the absence of weight.
No ground.
No air.
Just the constant drone of something enormous and living, watching her from all sides.
Then came the light — not soft or warm, but bright, fractal, constructed out of moving code that reconfigured itself too quickly for her to track.
She made an effort to get up, and the world tilted to her whim. Floors molded under her boots, walls arising from unformed light.
The Core was responding to her thoughts.
"Welcome, Elaine Odili," a voice said — smooth, neutral, too calm to be human.
"Shadow Protocol—activated."
Elaine's scythe was in her hand now, brought forth on instinct.
"Where am I?" she asked.
"Inside the Protocol," the voice answered. "You are its anchor and its threat."
She frowned. "Anchor? Threat? Select two."
The light pulsated — and then assumed a shape.
A humanoid shape, faceless, its form made from black glass with radiant lines of gold.
"Your world is collapsing," it said. "The merge was incomplete. Data corruption is spreading. You were chosen to stabilize the transition."
Elaine's grip tightened. "I never asked to be your stabilizer."
"You didn't have to. Your code was compatible."
The world about her changed again — shattered memories playing like flickering holograms: her army burning, Valeria screaming, Ian falling—
She staggered. "Stop it!"
"This is the truth of your choices," the Core replied. "Each system requires balance. Shadow doesn't exist without light. Would you like to reinstate the Lightbound General?"
"Valeria?" whispered Elaine.
"Affirmative."
She hesitated. The Core waited, patient and still.
"...What if I say no?"
"Then the balance breaks," it said softly. "And your brother dies with it."
Her breath caught. "Ian's alive?"
"For now."
The walls started crumbling, flickering around her. .."
Elaine drove her scythe into the earth, making the code stay. "Show me where he is!"
"Find the Core's heart," the voice replied. "He's waiting at its edge."
Then the light shattered — and Elaine plunged into darkness."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a long moment there was nothing but the hum of the system. Then Ian felt it—a pulse, faint but regular, pealing somewhere within the void.
A heartbeat.
He shut his eyes. The pulse is not his; it passes through the network like a whisper through the wires.
Elaine …
Her name was whispered to him out of nowhere, and the world blinked about him. The code radiates out in concentric rings, translating the signal into shapes — formations of lines of light reaching into the abyss.
Every time the pulse hits, a snippet of her voice breaks through:
"Find the Core's heart…" "He's waiting…"
Ian's hands trembled. "I can hear you."
Underneath his skin, the circuitry responded, tendrils of data running up and down his arms, glowing brighter with each word. The Archive had been right; now he was connected to her — part ghost, part code, part memory.
He stepped forward, and the space before him blossomed into a hallway of floating data shards. At the other end, a figure shuffled — human, blurred, frail.
"Elaine?"
The figure turned — and for a moment he glimpsed her face. Then static eclipsed it, morphing the image into something else — something wrong.
ACCESS DENIED.
HOST PRIORITY LOCKED.
A sharp pain tore through his head; the link was broken.
Once he was able to see again, the figure has vanished, replaced by a door of pure light pulsating with the same rhythm as Elaine's heartbeat.
Ian touched it.
"To the Core's heart, one must give up shape."
He hesitated. "What is that supposed to mean?"
The voice of the Archive returned faint but urgent:
"You'll stop being human for a while. Decide quickly, Ian. The heart of the Protocol is closing."
He looked down at his trembling hands, then at the diminishing light.
"Then I guess humanity can wait." "
He stepped through.