The firestorm over Valis had quieted to an afterimage.
Ash drifted like snow through the ruined city, glowing faintly with the data signature of what once was. Buildings still cracked and shimmered under corrupted geometry; walls bent at unnatural angles, refusing to remember what shape they'd been coded to hold. The skyline was broken — a once-living server now hollowed out, its logic burnt away.
And at its center, surrounded by a crater of molten glass and memory, he stood.
Not Aiden. Not the man who had once dreamed, laughed, and raided beside mortals. Something else entirely.
Something that the world had to name to survive.
