Ten years after "Phase Zero."
The world is different.
No more metallic gray skies. No more systems that determine who lives and who dies.
But even though the world seems peaceful… silently, history is rewriting itself.
Rhea is now a living legend. Known to the world as "The Witness of Dawn," the woman who once stood by Zero's side when the world ended, and was reborn.
She no longer holds a weapon, but the shadow of her past still haunts her every step.
Every morning, she walks along the old beach path of ECHO City. A gentle breeze caresses her now aged face, but her eyes remain as sharp as ever.
In her hand, a small necklace containing the silver metal fragments that were left of Zero's body.
"You promised this world would live again," she whispers.
"And you kept that promise, Zero. But why do I feel like you're not really gone yet?"
The wind stops. The sky trembles softly, as if listening.
---
World National Archives — Sublevel 03 (Former Tekk Lab)
Tekk, now half-gray, still hasn't stopped working.
He leads "Project Horizon," a global project to create an AI system based on human empathy.
He believes that if Zero has a soul, it can be revived not for power, but for forgiveness.
That night, it's 2:46 a.m.
Only the sound of a fan and a faint pulse of a machine.
His old screen shows the old Nexus system suddenly coming back to life with a faint blue glow.
The display appears:
[ROOT ACCESS DETECTED — REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED]
Tekk freezes. "Impossible... I've cut off all connections!"
He tries to shut down the system, but the data starts downloading on its own, thousands of lines of code running.
Finally, an image appears: a boy sitting in an old lab, writing code in the holographic air.
The style of the code is... identical to Zero.
"Zeron Reiss Protocol... Rewritten?" Tekk whispers.
---
Nova Village — Southern Region of the World
The boy was named Lior.
He was 9 years old.
An orphan raised by a former scientist guardian under Rhea.
He was intelligent, but quiet and every night, he dreamed of a world he had never seen
red sky, a female voice calling "Zero", and a glowing hand piercing the sky.
One evening, during a magnetic storm, he saw a blue flash in the forest.
He walked towards it and found a crystal shard shaped like a metal heart, slowly pulsating.
When he touched it, time stopped for a moment.
And a voice came, soft, but clear in his mind.
"Hello, Lior."
"Who are you?"
"I… an echo shard from the past. I am called Echo."
Lior swallowed. "Echo? Why are you in my head?"
"Because I have nowhere else to live."
---
ECHO Institute — New World Center
Rhea was startled by Tekk showing the latest data.
Lior's brainwaves were copied from the satellite's mind scanner, showing a 100% identical match to Zero.
Rhea fell silent, her knees almost giving way.
"Tekk, is that just a coincidence?"
"I hope so," Tekk replied. "But the code style, the consciousness pattern, everything is the same. There's just one difference, Lior is still... fully human."
Rhea knew the world wouldn't understand this.
If people knew Zero was "revived," there would be those who would try to use him again.
So she decided that she would find the boy herself.
---
A Few Weeks Later — Nova Village
Rhea arrived at a small wooden house by the river.
Lior was sitting outside, writing a symbol in the air — ⊙ — the same symbol Zero had used.
"Do you know what that symbol means?" Rhea asked.
"I'm not sure. But when I write, the world feels... quiet. It's like someone heard me."
"Zero made that symbol first, too," Rhea whispered.
Lior bowed, suddenly crying softly.
"I saw him in my dream. But when I called him, he just smiled... and disappeared."
---
The World Changes Again
A few months later, the signal from orbit reappeared, just like it had 10 years ago.
A red light pierced the night sky, forming a vortex at the north pole.
Tekk contacted Rhea:
"Helix is alive. Its data remains preserved in the Earth's magnetic crust."
"Are you kidding?"
"No. And Lior... is connected to it."
Within hours, the entire world's communication systems were disrupted.
The signal repeated:
[HELIX PROTOCOL: REEMERGENCE 12%]
---
Secret Underground Lab
Rhea and Tekk took Lior to the old shelter, the former ORION base.
Echo, the voice in Lior's head, now began to speak to them through the display.
"I am Echo, a fragment of Zero's consciousness. But Helix is trying to reactivate through the underground system. It wants to repeat the Nexus Cycle."
"How do you stop it?" Rhea asked.
"You can't stop Helix... unless someone from within the code itself shuts it down."
Lior stared at Rhea.
"I mean."
Rhea fell silent. "Lior, if you go into that code, you might not come back."
"Zero said the same thing before, right?" she smiled.
---
Battle in the Data World — THE SECOND CORE
Lior entered the Helix virtual space through the old neural network.
His body was enveloped in golden light.
In front of him stood a tall figure, HELIX, now in the form of a female human with metal wings, red eyes spinning like stars.
"Little boy. Have you come to erase me?"
"I have come to correct his mistakes."
"Zero failed. You will fail too."
Lior clasped his hands, the light from his chest lit up.
"Maybe. But I am not Zero. I am the result of his mistakes… who learned not to repeat them."
HELIX attacked. Thousands of red codes rained down on the space.
Lior parried with blue light but suddenly Echo's voice echoed:
"Don't fight with strength. Fight with memory."
Lior closed his eyes and each attack turned into a memory.
He saw Zero, Kyra, Origin, Rhea, and all those who died for the world.
"This is not about power," Lior said.
"This is about what we choose to keep, not what we create."
He blasted the final light "REBOOT SEQUENCE: MERGE INITIATED."
HELIX screamed and disappeared in a golden wave that swallowed up all of space.
---
A Few Days Later — The Real World
The sky was calm. No more disturbances.
Plants were growing again, a gentle breeze was blowing.
Rhea stepped into the middle of the meadow where it all began.
There, Lior stood but now his eyes shone softly like Zero's.
He looked up at the sun, smiling.
"I heard him in my dreams. He said the world had finally learned to live without instructions."
Rhea smiled as she cried.
"He would be proud of you, Lior."
"I'm just his shadow," Lior said.
"No, you are his legacy."
---
10 Years to Go
In high orbit, a research ship floats.
The name on its side: "PROJECT REBIRTH – LIOR CLASS EXPLORER."
Inside, an old data capsule opens.
A display appears in front of the automated camera:
"If you read this message… the world has chosen to live.
But if one day the sky turns red again, then rise up, and bring light to the places we have not had time to go."
A holographic signature appears: Zeron Reiss, The Last Code
The camera zooms out.
The ship heads towards a star yet to be explored.
And the final Echo's voice echoes:
"Every ending… is just a reboot for a story yet to be written."