Velora did not sleep that night.
Rain carved the city into rivers of reflection, and each current carried a whisper of static — the echo of a name the storm refused to forget. Somewhere beneath the shattered transit core, the Vein throbbed like a buried sun.
Lyra walked through the mist with a soldier's focus and a believer's exhaustion. The fragments of the System still followed her like ghosts, small flickers of text that hovered and died before she could read them.
Every now and then one word stayed long enough to hurt:
[AZEN … SEARCHING …]
She reached what remained of the Glass Chamber: a crater of silver dust and glass that hummed faintly under her boots. Kneeling, she pressed her palm to the ground. Warmth answered. Alive.
---
Somewhere else — nowhere the city could see — Azen opened his eyes to a horizon made of circuits and rainlight. Code rained like snow; the System's voice spoke not above him but through him.
[HOST CONSCIOUSNESS — RECONNECTED]
[REALITY LINK: FRAGMENTAL]
[WARNING: EMOTION OVERLOAD / MEMORY LOOPING]
He tried to breathe, and the world breathed with him.
"Lyra?" he whispered.
The name rippled through the lattice of light — and the storm over Velora shivered. For a heartbeat, both worlds aligned: her reflection glimmered across his digital sky.
The System hesitated, then spoke again, softer than before — almost human.
[SHE CALLS TO YOU. FOLLOW THE PULSE.]
---
Lyra felt the ground beneath her tremble. Lines of gold light began to crawl outward from the crater, forming a path that wound through the ruins like a living map. Without question, she followed.
Above, drones spiraled through the clouds — the Council's sentinels searching for the source of the interference. She kept her head down, hand on her weapon, but her heart was listening elsewhere.
[ALIGNMENT COUNTDOWN: 00 : 59 : 37]
---
Inside the digital storm, Azen was learning to move again. Each step rewrote the space beneath him. Memories folded into data: his mother's voice, Kane's warning, Lyra's trembling hand. The System mirrored them all, feeding him pieces of himself he had forgotten to protect.
He stopped at a fissure of white noise — a doorway between realities. Through it, faint and flickering, he saw her silhouette walking the golden path below.
[ACCESS POINT FOUND]
[CONNECTION STABILITY — 24%]
The air burned with the smell of ozone. "If you can hear me," he said, "I'm coming back."
The System pulsed once.
[ACKNOWLEDGED.]
[RECONSTRUCTION BEGINNING.]
---
Velora's skyline fractured. Towers bent inward as if listening. From every gutter and wire, veins of light crawled toward the sky, joining above the crater like a heartbeat given form.
Lyra stopped at the edge of the storm and looked up. The light was spelling his name again — not as code this time, but as something alive.
She smiled through the rain. "Then hurry."
---
Azen stepped forward — and the two worlds bled into one. The city gasped. The System roared. The alignment had begun.