The world pulses like a broken heartbeat.
Every breath I, Rei Kazuma takes inside this half-restored simulation feels like inhaling glass. The air stings with uncertainty— data and dream meshed together in ways not even I, with all the fragments I've seen, can fully decode anymore.
Jay is near. Both of them.
And I don't know which scares me more.
Null-Jay is stable in a terrifying way. Controlled. Pure. Like a weapon sharpened not for justice, but efficiency. He's everything the System wanted us to become. Everything I was once on track to be before... I remembered who I was.
Jay— the real Jay— he's messy. Inconsistent. Undisciplined. His logic wanders, his priorities shift, and his emotions— when they finally surface— burn with a weight I don't know how he carries.
But unlike Null, Jay isn't just following a function.
He's choosing his way through the chaos.
That terrifies people like the Observer. And if I'm being honest… it terrifies me too.
