Rama stood alone in fractured Sector 7. No Sekar. No Nakamura. No Regressor bond humming at the edge of his senses. Just silence, and the wreckage, and the knowledge that everything Coalition-complete was supposed to be had just been stripped away in an instant.
The Level 183 Sovereign didn't approach. It simply appeared, space folding around it the way only something that far beyond him could manage.
"Rama Kusuma," it said, voice clinical and utterly certain. "Timeline 48 Coordinator. Separated from your partners. Coordination destroyed, bonds severed. How does a graduated Regressor survive alone? Answer: it doesn't. Execution commences."
It attacked at full power. Rama dodged, barely, fighter-instinct and years of training carrying him half a step ahead of annihilation. But dodging wasn't winning. A Level 102 Coordinator alone against a Level 183 Sovereign was extinction mathematics, and both of them knew it.
