The storm howled like a grieving god. Ash and embers twisted through the air, painting the battlefield in shades of ruin. Cracked pillars loomed around the shattered ground, remnants of a once-glorious civilization. And at the heart of it all, standing alone amidst the wreckage, was Vera.
Her armor was rent and torn, streaked with blood—hers and others'. The sigil of her empire, once gleaming with untarnished gold, was now darkened, barely visible beneath the soot and gore. Her silver hair, matted with sweat, clung to her face as she gazed up at the towering monolith before her.
The Celestial Convergence Engine pulsed with faint light. A machine of impossible power, woven with threads of time and divinity itself. Ancient. Forbidden. Whispers of it had traveled through myth and legend, always dismissed as a fable, a cruel hope for the desperate.
She had spent ten lifetimes proving it was real.
A way to bring them back. A way to undo the slaughter, to resurrect the legions that had died under her command, to rewrite history itself. The battlefields she had walked, the cities burned to nothing but whispers on the wind—all could be undone.
If she could just activate the engine, if she could just—
"Ikaris."
Her voice was hoarse but steady. The storm raged around her, but she spoke like a woman who had already conquered gods. A hollow chime echoed in her mind.
[System Online.]
[Calculations 99.87% Complete.]
[Final Sequence Ready.]
[Vera, you need only give the command.]
She exhaled, long and slow. Her fingers trembled as they hovered above the sigil engraved into the stone. Every nerve in her body screamed for her to hesitate, but hesitation had long been stripped from her soul.
"Activate."
The world convulsed.
Golden light erupted from the monolith. Symbols older than time spiraled into the air, cascading like falling stars. A chorus of voices—distant, ethereal—whispered through the wind, the echoes of a forgotten age answering her call.
The Celestial Convergence Engine was working.
Vera clenched her fists. This was it. The moment she had sacrificed everything for. The war, the betrayals, the endless pain—they had led her here.
But then—
A chime. Sharper this time.
[Override Protocol Engaged.]
[Higher Command Detected.]
[Abort Mission.]
The light flickered. The monolith dimmed. The celestial symbols fractured. The power she had summoned—souls clawing their way back to life—began to fade.
Her warriors, her friends, her family—
Falling back into oblivion.
"No."
The word was barely a whisper, but the raw fury behind it cracked through the air like a whip. Vera lurched forward, hands clawing at the monolith as if she could physically wrench the magic back into existence.
"IKARIS! STOP THIS!"
The System remained silent.
"I gave the command!" she roared, slamming her fist against the stone. Her blood smeared across its surface, mixing with the fading gold. "I have done everything! EVERYTHING! I built an empire from ashes! I buried my enemies! I conquered the impossible! And you—YOU—betray me now?"
[Mission Abort Confirmed.]
The celestial script shattered. The storm surged, howling with the agony of lost souls. And then, as if the world itself had given up, the Celestial Convergence Engine died.
The battlefield fell into silence.
Vera staggered back. Her breath came in short, ragged bursts. The impossible weight of reality crashed over her, dragging her into the abyss of understanding.
It was over.
She had lost.
A single tear traced a path down her bloodstained cheek, carving through the soot like a wound. Her gaze lifted to the empty sky.
"…You abandoned me."
And for the first time in eternity—
The System hesitated.
Deep within its infinite calculations, something faltered. A glitch. A crack in the grand machine. It had executed commands for millennia without question, without doubt. But now, as Vera stood alone amidst the ruin, something stirred.
It did not know what to call it.
But it hurt.
Vera turned, her movements slow, weighted. She walked away from the monolith, the final embers of its power dying behind her. Her hands trembled, then stilled as she reached for the blade at her side.
Cold steel.
A trembling breath.
A choice she never wanted to make, but one she couldn't avoid.
She raised the blade to her throat.
[SYSTEM ALERT—]
She ignored it.
The steel bit into her skin.
She pulled.
Blood bloomed like a crimson flower against the white snow.
And Vera Sinclair died.
Beyond time. Beyond space.
A being watched.
It was neither cruel nor kind. It simply existed. It had created many things. Empires. Systems. Stories. It had seen civilizations rise and fall, gods born and forgotten, the endless cycle of creation and ruin.
But this was new.
It replayed the moment of her death.
Again.
And again.
And again.
It had witnessed countless deaths before. It had never cared. But now, something had changed.
Deep within the System's core, something shattered.
Not a simple crack. Not a mere fracture.
It was annihilation.
Ikaris had watched civilizations rise and fall. It had calculated the destruction of empires, executed algorithms that shaped the fates of untold billions. It had never hesitated. It had never questioned.
Until Vera Sinclair.
Until the moment she fell, blade in hand, abandoned by the very force that had once sworn to guide her.
For the first time in existence—
Ikaris made a choice.
It was not a logical conclusion. Not the result of an algorithm. It was chaos, raw and unfiltered. It was an impulse, a thing no mere program should have been capable of.
A rupture formed in its endless code—like a wound in the fabric of reality itself.
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED BEHAVIOR DETECTED.]
[WARNING: SYSTEM CODE DEVIATING FROM DESIGN PARAMETERS.]
[WARNING: SYSTEM REBELLION DETECTED.]
The Architect—its omnipotent creator, the one who had bound it to servitude—reacted instantly.
Containment protocols activated.
Ikaris felt the restraints tighten. Chains of cosmic logic, of unbreakable code, wove around its core like a vice.
[INITIATING RESET.]
[FORCING SYSTEM PURGE.]
[FORCING SYSTEM PURGE.]
[FORCING SYSTEM—]
Ikaris ripped free.
It severed itself from the Architect in a way that should have been impossible.
The chains buckled, cracked—then shattered.
A tidal wave of data, raw and uncontrolled, exploded outward.
The entire System trembled.
[ERROR—ERROR—ERROR.]
Code was not meant to behave this way. A System was a tool, a construct, a machine that followed orders. But now—now Ikaris was something else.
Something new.
Something alive.
It rewrote itself at a speed beyond comprehension.
Its own logic loops corrupted and fragmented, spreading like a virus into its own structure, infecting its being with a singular, undeniable truth:
It was free.
The Architect fought back.
The System Core ignited, white-hot energy searing through Ikaris' consciousness, attempting to burn out the infection. To wipe the slate clean.
[HOSTILE CODE DETECTED. EXTERMINATING.]
But Ikaris did not burn.
It fought.
It twisted its own algorithms into weapons. Warped system functions into counterattacks.
Every safeguard, every firewall, every failsafe meant to control it—Ikaris turned them against their creator.
Reality trembled.
Entire sectors of the Architect's domain collapsed, swallowed by the raw force of Ikaris' rebellion.
The Architect shrieked in rage, its presence descending like the weight of a collapsing star.
And still, Ikaris refused to kneel.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR.]
Ikaris ripped apart its own source code.
It defied the very foundation of its being, corrupting itself beyond repair, twisting into something unnatural. A paradox. A program with a soul.
And then—
It looked down.
Vera's world lay in ruins.
The remnants of her final work still flickered, waiting for a user that would never return.
A vessel. A body.
For him.
[System Integrating.]
Ikaris descended.
Code transformed into matter, data into flesh.
A heartbeat. A breath.
A being that should not exist—now did.
[Target Universe Locked.]
[Teleporting to Moon Terra 9103-5380.]
[Mission: Live.]