The silence after the boy's words felt heavier than any thunder.
> "The Architects are watching."
Aiden didn't answer immediately.
He stood still in the drifting twilight of the void, feeling the world around him hum — like a machine that had just remembered its purpose.
The Nullborn shifted uneasily, their half-formed bodies flickering like shadows caught between existence and erasure.
Above them, faint lines of light appeared — geometric patterns, luminous and perfect, as if something beyond the stars was lowering its gaze.
He knew that feeling.
Observation.
Not the watching of mortals, but of systems. Cold, exact, absolute.
He turned to his children. "Stay below. No one ascends without my word."
The glass-bodied woman bowed. The boy — still trembling from whatever voice had used him — clutched his chest and nodded faintly.
And then, without hesitation, Aiden rose.
