Part Three
The sky roared.
The barrier fractured.
Lea coughed blood.
The eye intensified its assault.
Wen De felt useless.
Helpless.
Just like the night his father collapsed and he couldn't do anything except call for help.
Something inside him refused that feeling.
He crawled toward her.
"Lea…"
"Stay down."
"I'm done staying down."
He placed his palm against the broken rooftop again.
The network was weak.
Dim.
But not gone.
He closed his eyes.
Not forcing.
Listening.
The city wasn't just circuits and cables.
It was people.
Emotion.
Noise.
Life.
Even unconscious, their existence hummed faintly.
Energy wasn't only spiritual.
It was collective.
He reached differently this time.
Not grabbing.
Asking.
The response was faint.
But present.
Streetlights flickered again.
Subway lines sparked.
Emergency generators activated in hospitals.
The city responded.
A low resonance built beneath them.
The eye noticed.
"Unauthorized synchronization detected."
Lea glanced at him.
"You're burning yourself."
"Probably."
His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin.
The network surged upward again—
But instead of attacking the eye—
It flowed into Lea's barrier.
Reinforcing it.
Her eyes widened.
"You're routing it through me."
"Is it working?"
"For now!"
The barrier stabilized.
The array trembled.
The eye pulsed violently.
"Deviation increasing."
The pressure spiked suddenly.
Lea screamed.
Her wings fractured along their edges.
The eye focused fully on Wen De now.
The suppression hit him directly.
He felt bones splinter.
The connection collapsed.
Everything went dark for a second.
When his vision returned—
He was on his back.
Lea lay several meters away.
The barrier shattered.
The array resumed descending.
They had delayed it.
Nothing more.