The digital archives were already beginning to succumb to the chaos Zeven had unleashed. Smoke curled from the server racks, carrying the sharp, acrid scent of melting insulation and frying circuit boards. The air in the secondary facility, once sterile and cold, had grown thick and stifling. Zeven felt the heat radiating against his skin, a stark contrast to the icy, calculated detachment he had felt moments before. Every flicker of the red warning lights cast jagged, blood-colored shadows across the floor, making the sprawling room feel like the interior of a dying beast.
He did not wait for the structural integrity of the room to fail. The realization that Lyra was being held in the palace, being subjected to the same cold, analytical cruelty that had defined his own existence, had ign
