The Sanctuary was a place outside of time, a space where the System’s relentless clock became meaningless. Hours and seconds twisted in the fog, thick and heavy, stretching out like infinite thread before snapping back into nothing. Here, Carter stood atop a drifting shard of shattered obsidian, the weight of his own remade code sinking his feet into the stone. His skin shimmered with glitching silver, a map of scars and power. Across the chasm of mist, the Archivist regarded him with that implacable calm, blue eyes reflecting an endless corridor of lost worlds. Carter wondered, not for the first time, how much of reality those eyes had watched erased, and how much sorrow they’d come to bear.
A System prompt hovered in Carter’s vision, its words edged with static: “Training Status: Phase-
