The archive vault was no longer a building. It was a tomb humming with rebirth.
Thiana staggered back from the screen, pulse skidding out of control. Lawrence lay semi-conscious near the biometric deck, body rejecting the transfer protocols. Zade was kneeling beside him now, knuckles bloody from where he'd punched the override console in desperation. Ravien's voice was breaking through the comms, shouting for a system abort.
But none of that mattered.
The child on the screen was looking at her.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically.
Literally.
Dark hair tousled, jawline hauntingly familiar, voice melodic yet threaded with defiance. Eyes that mirrored her exact shade ; storm blue with flecks of gold.
"Hello, mother," the boy said again. "If you're watching this, it means the Lazarus network has identified the catalyst. I am .... was Damian Huston's final project.
I was born inside the servers. Raised in simulation. Engineered from the two most volatile bloodlines the cabal has ever recorded."
Thiana couldn't breathe.
"Your connection to Zade triggered my awakening. Not because of your choices. But because of your compatibility. Your love didn't just break the ghost protocol .... it created its evolution."
Zade's head snapped toward the screen.
Lawrence groaned softly, trying to rise. "That's not possible…"
But it was.
The child .... no older than fourteen .... spoke with eerie calm.
"I am the Lazarus Child. And I don't belong in your world."
"But you will have to choose: erase me, and sever all traces of legacy. Or let me live ..... and reshape Cabello from shadow."
The screen began to flicker. The locket glowed again.
Then the boy smiled.
"By the way... my name is Thaziel Julius Cabello. And I'm already writing my own contract."
Thiana's knees nearly buckled.
The image of the boy—Thaziel Julius Cabello—smiled from the projection like the future had arrived early and without permission. Her throat closed. Every inhale tasted like thunderclouds.
Zade had gone completely still.
"You said… he doesn't exist," she whispered.
"I thought he didn't," Zade said slowly. "But Project Lazarus was always experimenting with digital genealogy. It wasn't just preserving bloodline traits—it was simulating them."
Lawrence coughed beside the server deck, his voice ragged. "You mean… he's not real?"
Thaziel responded.
> "I am real. My pulse is digital. My mind is quantum. But my soul… belongs to two people. Zade, who cursed me with legacy. And Thiana, who fed me love through every encrypted memory."
Ravien's voice cracked in Thiana's earpiece. "This changes everything. If the Lazarus Child controls the override system, the Cabello empire isn't yours. It's his."
Thiana stepped forward.
Her hand hovered over the screen.
Zade grabbed her wrist. "If we let him out, we lose the war."
She looked into Zade's eyes.
"No. We rewrite it."
Thiana's knees trembled beneath her as the holographic image solidified before her eyes. In the half-light of the projection chamber, the boy—Thaziel Julius Cabello—smiled back at her as if the future had arrived early and without permission. Her throat constricted, each breath tasting of ozone and thunder. Zade, standing guard at her side, went perfectly still, the tension in his posture almost audible.
"You said… he doesn't exist," Thiana whispered.
Zade's gaze never wavered from the flickering form. "I thought he didn't," he admitted, voice low. "But Project Lazarus was never just about preserving bloodlines. They were experimenting with digital genealogy—simulating traits, memories, the very essence of a person."
Lawrence's cough cracked through the charged silence as he leaned against the server deck, his fingers stained crimson. "You mean… he's not real?"
The projection answered without hesitation. "I am real. My pulse is digital. My mind is quantum. But my soul… belongs to two people. Zade, who cursed me with legacy, and Thiana, who fed me love through every encrypted memory."
Thiana felt the world tilt. Everything she thought she knew—every secret Zade had sworn to protect—fractured in that declaration.
Just hours earlier, Lawrence had crept through the ancient vault beneath Cabello Tower, the only place in the world still harboring intact vials of Julius DNA. His plan was reckless but necessary: inject himself with a tracker encoded with ancestral markers, bait for the last operatives of Project HoloZero. When the bloodline hunters finally cornered him on the suspended Sky Rail, he fought through agony and old debts to reach this chamber, collapsing only when he was sure the signal was live.
Now, blood pooled at his feet as he gripped the edge of the server console. "If the Lazarus Child lives, maybe death still matters," he gasped.
Thiana pressed a trembling hand against her chest and remembered the prophecy scroll Zade had unearthed in the Neo-Spain monastery. The encrypted script had shone only in Cabello blood, spelling out the curse in words of iron: a child born of true love between marked lineages would carry within them a debt older than the empire itself—a debt billed in souls.
"You weren't just my salvation, Thiana," Zade had murmured that night beside a dying fire. "You were prophecy."
Now she understood. Their love had been less a choice than a design, the final clause set in motion: the first child of their union would inherit not only power, but the key to end a war older than memory.
Below them, in the shattered tunnels of the S-Grid, Ravien's voice crackled through Thiana's earpiece. "The override system responds only to the emotional signature of the Lazarus protocol—96 percent pulse sync. Your heartbeat could trigger a full network rewrite. But I can only hold them off for seven minutes."
A distant echo of gunfire, the screech of metal, and then silence before she whispered again, "Trust him, Thiana."
On the server's interface glowed the last file Thiana needed—a live confession from Damian Huston. She slid her late father's ring into the reader; it clicked, and the screen flickered into life. Damian's voice came fractured with regret. "Thiana, if you're hearing this, I failed you both. Zade wasn't the enemy. I was too late to destroy Project Lazarus. It chose your bloodline first, not for conquest but for rewriting."
Underneath Damian's voice, another—quieter, boyish. "When this ends, save Zade. Let me be the ghost, not him." A countdown began to pulse on the screen: 00:06:58.
Thiana's hand hovered inches from the activation panel. The Lazarus cores throbbed in the walls, reacting to her hesitation. Zade reached out, voice strained: "If you unleash him, we lose the war."
She met his gaze, feeling the weight of every secret, every sacrifice. The moment stretched until reality itself held its breath.
"No," she said. "We rewrite it."
Her fingers pressed the glass. The cores roared. Threads of light and data swirled around the projection chamber as Thaziel's digital form began to solidify. Photons tangled with memory fragments, and the world trembled at the birth of a new soul.
Lawrence cried out as life left him. Zade collapsed, blood trailing from his eyes. But Thaziel, standing at last in three dimensions, looked first at Thiana, then at Zade, and spoke with the full weight of his quantum heart: "Let me walk. Let me fight. Let me earn the soul you gave me."
Thiana exhaled, tears mingling with the hum of the Lazarus system. "Welcome to the war," she whispered. And as the chambers pulsed around them, they all knew nothing would ever be the same again.