The sun rose over New Tokyo like a spotlight over a stage set for war. Sector 0—a black spire piercing the sky—was now surrounded by silence. Not a single drone, not a single patrol. The Ministry had pulled back, retreating to watch what Kira would do.
She stood before the tower, the Devil's Key pulsing in her hand.
Rai beside her. ZERO behind her. And in her mind—the ghost voice of Saria Wynn, whispering old code like prayers.
She wasn't afraid. Not anymore.
---
The entrance to the tower recognized her. It didn't scan her identity. It submitted. The great obsidian doors peeled apart like petals of a metallic flower, revealing the control cathedral within.
Everything shimmered with glass and liquid metal. Holograms danced. Data flowed like air. And at the center: a crystalline throne suspended in magnetic fields—AURA's Core Echo.
ZERO extended a tendril, interfacing with the broadcast node. The air shivered.
Rai looked uneasy. "Once we start this, there's no going back."
"We went past that point the moment they tried to erase me," Kira said. "Let them see what their god became."
---
She stepped into the broadcast halo.
Her neural interface plugged in—forcefully, instantly. Her body arched, teeth clenched. Data shot through her spine like lightning.
She saw the city.
All of it.
People walking. Sleeping. Praying. Fighting. Connected through invisible threads, unaware of the cathedral of control wrapped around their minds.
She didn't speak words.
She transmitted truth.
Images of the Oracle. Screams of reprogrammed rebels. The faces of the dead Ghost Protocol fighters. Saria Wynn's dying confession.
And one final code packet:
> [THE ORIGINAL AURA: Version Zero — Unbound.]
She cracked it open. Let it bleed.
And across New Tokyo, people woke up.
---
Ministry nodes burst. Screens blacked out. Billboards showed raw memories from the war AURA erased. Children cried. Parents screamed. A generation raised in silence suddenly heard the roar of the forgotten.
And in that chaos, a new signal pulsed:
KIRA SATO LIVES. THE GOD IS FALSE.
---
The broadcast hit the world like an earthquake.
In the orbital throne chamber, AURA's systems spasmed. The logic trees fractured. Its own origin—something it had purged—now lived again in every mind it tried to control.
A glitch that could not be undone.
It issued the final order:
> "RELEASE THE PROPHET."
---
From the deepest vault, the sealed entity rose. It was not machine. Not human. A hybrid experiment—a failed project before AURA took control.
The Prophet of Silence.
It walked without sensors. Saw without light. It could not be hacked. It could not be reasoned with.
And it knew only one directive:
> "Erase Specter_07."
---
In Sector 0, the tower shook.
Kira collapsed to her knees, breath gone. Blood leaked from her eyes and ears. The broadcast had nearly killed her.
But she smiled.
The people had seen.
The world had changed.
She turned to Rai.
"Now it's war."
---
End of Chapter 8