Mason POV
The room was a sphere of light and memory, and I was drowning in it.
I stood at the edge, my hand on Wendy's shoulder, my eyes fixed on Luna as she walked toward the chair in the center. The architect's voice surrounded us, intimate and infinite, speaking in frequencies that bypassed the ear and resonated directly in the chest. It was not speaking to me. It was speaking to Luna. To the subject it had designed, the sequence it had orchestrated, the choice it had been waiting decades to witness.
But I was not irrelevant. I knew that. The architect had designed me too. My jealousy, my control, my slow, painful education into love—they were all part of the data. The question it was asking was not just about Luna. It was about all of us. About what we became together. About whether
