The main hall of Corona Borealis had fallen into a suffocating silence, a near-vacuum void that felt like the world itself had stopped breathing.
The Grey Tide had not truly retreated; it was only temporarily subdued by the final resonance of the Heart-Key. The vast mass of grey fluid was frozen mid-charge, a black tsunami locked in place, forming a horrifying sight that defied all logic. Shattered metal, fractured energy fragments, even the dust caught in its wake—all hung motionless in the air, as though time itself had been brutally forced to pause. The entire space became a cruel, grand tableau of stillness, where each heartbeat echoed like thunder in the deathly silence.
Li Chenyuan exhaled slowly, painfully, as though forcing hot shards of glass out of his throat. His eyes, sharp as a scanner's beam, swept across the faces of the survivors one by one. Their gazes carried a jumble of shock at having survived, a deep, gnawing terror of the unknown, and a raw confusion born from having just witnessed a miracle beyond human comprehension.
"…It isn't over."
Wang Jing staggered to his feet beside the Cradle's base, his voice hoarse, as if he had just clawed his way back from hell. Blood welled from his reopened forehead wound, mixing with sweat and tears that ran freely down his face. Yet his eyes burned with a wild, almost frenzied fire. "That wasn't just defense—it was trying to transmit! It was talking to us!"
His trembling fingers flew across the nearly dead interface. Against all odds, the shattered screen flickered violently, static spitting sparks, then suddenly unlocked a buried data file—heavily encrypted, hidden deep within the system, and marked with a warning: [Highest Prohibition: Ψ-Class].
As the blurred projection began to flicker into the air, every survivor instinctively held their breath, as though afraid to disturb the ghost of the past.
At first, the image was steady, radiant.
A city of crystal stretched across the horizon—Atlantis, in its prime. Energy did not run buried beneath the ground, but flowed like living veins, luminous rivers streaming through transparent streets and domes. Silent transports glided across the air. The people's faces shone with peace and fulfillment, as though humanity had finally cast off poverty, disease, and strife, stepping into an eternal golden age.
"…Ψ Project, Global Consciousness Network—final countdown. We shall become one. We shall reach eternity…"
The broadcast overlapped with the cheers of countless citizens, a triumphant hymn to technological glory.
Then the picture warped, twisted violently. Shadows burst forth—not from the outside, but from within the smiling crowds themselves. Buried fears, unsated greed, suppressed jealousy, ancient hatred, and despair at the thought of losing individuality—all the emotions humanity had denied and hidden—began to pour out, uncontrollable.
These shadows were not cleansed. They gathered, swollen and blackened, into a massive vortex at the city's core.
And then came the first "Annihilation." Not an explosion, but a devouring silence. Light was consumed, sound extinguished, everything drawn into a suffocating grey stillness.
"My god…" Elina's hands clamped over her mouth, but it could not stop the shudder that racked her soul. Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. "It… it wasn't some external disaster… It was us… It was us all along…"
Wang Jing's eyes were bloodshot, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth threatened to shatter. "It was everything we refused to face—all the pain we cast aside! That cursed Ψ System ripped it out of us, compressed it—and it struck back as the ultimate revenge!"
Inside Zero Station.
Su Xiaolan lay in the medical pod, pale as paper, her life signals weak, fragile, on the brink of collapse. And yet—on the monitors, her brainwaves displayed an unprecedented, uncanny "steady state." Slowly, they aligned with the sorrowful signals still echoing from the Cradle's databanks, resonating in eerie synchrony.
Her consciousness had not fully returned. She still drifted in the boundless ocean of grey awareness. And there, through the fog, a voice heavy with ancient grief seeped into her core:
"…We… were forgotten…""…Remember… who we… once were…"
Her fingers twitched faintly in unconscious motion, as though trying to grasp something in the void—or perhaps making a silent promise.
The Grey Tide had not vanished with the revelation.
It lingered at the edge of annihilation, frozen in mid-surge, watching. The massive grey wave seemed alive—observing, analyzing… perhaps even learning.
Li Chenyuan tore his gaze from the visions of the past and turned to Wang Jing. His voice was low, cold as iron, but heavy with the weight of truth. "This war… from the very beginning, we were fighting the wrong enemy."
He paused, eyes deep and glacial, locking onto the grey stillness that filled the hall.
"Our enemy was never some outside force. It is the darkness we created ourselves—and refused to face."
Chapter Cliffhanger
At that moment, a terrified voice cracked through the Zero Station's failing comms, trembling with horror:
"Commander… the rift's energy frequency—it's changing! It's no longer chaotic interference… it's aligning with our resonance signal. Repeating: it's trying to synchronize with us!"
Every heart sank as if into ice water.
The truth they had just uncovered was instantly overshadowed by something colder:
The Grey Tide—humanity's collective shadow—was not only listening.
It was beginning to answer.