The silence did not last. It was broken by a cacophony of coughing, sputtering, and panicked shouts that echoed through the vast chambers of the Core Citadel as thousands of its inhabitants gasped their first conscious breaths of nitrogen-replaced-by-oxygen. The grand slumber was over. The dream of absolute control was shattered.
Roewi stood at the center of the garden, the air still humming with the aftermath of his internal unification. He felt… different. The three Orbs were not external tools anymore; they were fundamental aspects of his being, a trinity of power held in a fragile, conscious balance. Vextor was no longer a separate voice but a deep, logical stratum in his mind, its cold calculations now tempered by the context of memory and the unifying principle of choice. He was a w
