The morning after the pulse stabilized, the world did something it had never done before.
It held its breath.
There were no light storms, no distortions in the sky, no random echoes whispering from empty streets. Even the neon veins running along the buildings dimmed, as if waiting. As if listening. The city felt like a giant organism pausing between heartbeats.
Seo Jin woke with a start.
For the first time in days, he hadn't been forced awake by convulsions or Core pulses ripping through his nerves like lightning. Instead, he'd simply… opened his eyes. Quietly. Normally.
But something was wrong.
The room around him shifted at the edges — walls gently blurring for half a second before solidifying again. The light pouring through the window carried color gradients that didn't exist before: violet bleeding into green, the shadows bending delicately around the curve of the air.
Reality itself felt… pliable.
Not unstable. Just new.
