Dust hung weightless in the air, falling slow over the Cradle's hollowed-out heart.
Nolan sat slumped against a rusted wall, knees drawn up, hands limp at his sides.
Blood crusted black on his shirt, his leg, his ribs.
His breath came shallow, raw, real.
Empty.
The Gauntlet lay beside him, inert.
Just steel. Cold. Final.
No hum. No spark. Just cold steel.
His EmoTracker blinked gray. Not red. Not green. Just a void with no meaning left.
Flatline.
System Offline. Deletion Protocol—85% Complete.
Across from him, Rhea crouched blade resting on her knee, eyes scanning the dark.
Her face was cut with grief, smudged in ash and sweat.
"Time to move," she said, voice clipped, dry. Urgency behind exhaustion.
Riven paced, red eyes sharp, jaw tight.
Blood crusted on his knuckles.
His jacket barely hung from one shoulder.
"This place is dead," he muttered. "No hum. No pulse. Just a grave."
Mira stood apart silent, small. Her glow had dimmed to a flicker, like a dying signal on the edge of a blackout.
She watched Nolan.
Calm. Certain.
"He's not the same," she said softly.
Nolan turned his head slowly, like every joint was rusted through.
His eyes swept across the broken white tiles, the rust, the blood.
He looked at them three faces, sharp and real
but nothing stirred inside.
"Who…" His voice cracked—thin, brittle, glitching like a broken signal.
"Who are you?"
Rhea's expression tightened.
She leaned in fast.
"You know me," she said, fierce and breaking. "Rhea. We fought through hell together."
He blinked.
Blank.
"I don't," he said. Riven stopped pacing.
His stare cut straight through Nolan.
"Glitch is fried," he said, voice flat. "The Core scrambled him."
Mira stepped closer.
Her voice didn't waver.
"Not scrambled. Changed."
She looked right at Nolan. "The spark burned too deep."
Nolan's hand twitched.
He touched the Gauntlet.
Cold. Dead.
His vision shuddered white tiles, a whisper: "Choose."
Then gone.
just black.
His chest felt hollow.
Breathing didn't make it stop.
Rhea grabbed his arm, yanked him up.
"You're not dying here," she snapped. "Enforcers might reboot. We leave. Now."
He staggered legs dragging, ribs screaming.
The chamber stretched behind him like the shell of a dead god.
Dark towers slumped.
Screens cracked and blank.
No symbols.
No pulse.
Dead.
Riven kicked the nearest fallen Enforcer metal echoed.
"Thirty down," he said. "But that's not the end."
Mira took the lead, guiding them through twisting rust-choked corridors.
Nolan moved like a broken machine.
Dragged.
Supported.
His neural web buzzed once.
AURA Core—Offline. Status: Unknown.
They emerged at night.
Cold air hit like a slap.
The city sprawled below quiet and wounded, towers flickering like dying stars.
The Cradle behind them stood still, no hum, no threat. Just silence.
Rhea squinted into the dark.
"Edge District," she said. "We hole up there."
Nolan stared at the city.
Lights. Movement. Life.
Unfamiliar.
Distant.
Unreachable.
"Why…" His voice rasped.
"Why me?"
Rhea turned to him, sudden and raw.
"Because you shut it down," she said. "You killed AURA. You did that."
He tilted his head.
The words meant nothing. Shut it down?
He didn't feel like someone who'd destroyed a god.
He didn't feel anything at all.
Tiles. A lab. A voice: "Feel, Nolan. Choose."
Static.
Gone.
Riven scoffed behind him.
"Doesn't even remember what he did," he muttered. "Wiped clean."
Mira stood still beside him, watching.
"Not clean," she whispered. "There are echoes. Something's still waking."
Nolan touched his chest.
Blood was dry.
The heartbeat underneath it didn't feel like his.
Far below, the city hummed low, alive, listening.
His neural web twitched again.
Signal Detected. Source Unknown.
Rhea caught his arm, pulling him forward.
"Keep moving," she said. Her voice was quieter now. Not softer. Just scared.
"They'll come."
They slipped through broken streets, towers sagging, lights dim, faces watching from behind steel and cloth.
Eyes full of hunger, suspicion, fear.
The world had changed.
So had he. His vision flickered again, static, quick.
White tiles.
A child's laugh.
His own.
Gone.
They stopped at a shack with iron walls bent in on themselves.
Riven kicked the door open.
"Clear."
Rhea pushed Nolan inside.
He dropped onto a crate.
Dust rose.
The air smelled like rust and oil and rot.
"Rest," she told him, kneeling in front of him. Her eyes were glassy.
Mira stood by the door, unmoving.
Her glow was back just a whisper.
"It's not over," she said. "Something's listening."
Nolan didn't speak.
He stared at the Gauntlet beside him.
Dead.
Still.
The city buzzed faintly in the distance.
The hum of something else watching.
Waiting.
His chest rose. Fell. Again.
Breathing.
Moving.
He felt hollow. A shell with breath. A body without belief.
And yet… somewhere in the static, something still whispered.