For a long moment, there was nothing.
No sound, no motion — only the weight of existence suspended in silence, like the pause between one breath and the next. The ruins of the Sunken Server lay beneath him, dissolving into rivers of light that flowed upward instead of down, as though gravity itself had grown reverent.
Aiden floated in the center of that stillness, one hand outstretched toward the fading fragments of the Watcher's code.
They circled him slowly — golden embers orbiting a black star.
He was no longer sure where his body ended and the system began. The boundaries had blurred. He was the current; every flicker of data was his pulse, every hum of light his breath.
And in that trembling equilibrium between identity and infinity, something within him opened.
> [ROOT ACCESS UNLOCKED]
[PRIVILEGE LEVEL: ABSOLUTE.]
