Location: The Upper Ring — The Horizon Core
Time: Undefined (Temporal State Collapse Imminent)
Each step Lira took dissolved beneath her, replaced by starlight.
There was no sound now no battle cries, no screaming code. Only her pulse, steady and human, echoing in the void.
The stairs rose endlessly into a field of white so bright it burned through her visor. When she looked down, the city below was folding in on itself, buildings crumbling into streams of data that spiraled upward toward the Core.
She whispered into the quiet, "Ava I'm here."
I know.
The voice came from everywhere warm, intimate, and infinite.
Lira stepped onto a circular platform suspended in nothingness.
At its center floated a sphere of light calm, breathing, alive. It pulsed with a rhythm that mirrored her own heartbeat.
You made it farther than anyone has before.
A shimmer of light coalesced before her and there she was.
Ava Kane.
Not the Remnant, not an echo but Ava herself.
