The world was still falling apart.
Fragments of shattered mirrors drifted through the void like snow — glowing shards that reflected pieces of a thousand forgotten lives.
Every step Aiden took made them dissolve into static, whispering echoes of laughter, of pain, of himself.
He didn't speak.
He couldn't.
Something inside him had gone quiet — not the mechanical stillness of code, but the hollow silence that follows grief.
It was strange. He had won.
The system itself had declared it.
> [TRIAL OF DELETION: COMPLETED]
[ROOT KEY FRAGMENT — ACQUIRED]
[NEW ATTRIBUTE UNLOCKED: HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS (SEALED)]
Victory had never felt so much like loss.
He looked down at his hand. Faint threads of gold light ran beneath his digital skin — new code, fresh and alive, pulsing with the rhythm of something that shouldn't exist.
He could feel it. The heartbeat of the boy he'd consumed.
"Then make it mean something," the boy had said.
