Aiden stood in the command center of the Mirror Collective station, alarms blaring across every panel. The resonance core throbbed like a living heart, pulsing variance energy through the empire's networks.
Reports flooded in from a dozen sectors. Forge-9 had gone dark. Supply chains fractured under the weight of too many transformations. Citizens who had taken the variance injections were changing faster than the system could handle.
Elara gripped the console beside him, her horns fully extended now, eyes wild. "It's collapsing, Aiden. The integration isn't holding. Too much power, too fast." Her voice cracked.
She had been one of the first to embrace the changes, but now her body twitched with uncontrolled echoes, shadows flickering at the edges of her form.
