The Viral Void was not a wall of fire or a storm of static; it was a plague of the "Average." As Kael, Mira, and the restored Han entered the Shard, the vibrant, textured reality of the Architecture began to wash out. The colors of the trees faded into a single, inoffensive shade of "Forest Green." The jagged, interesting cliffs smoothed into rounded, "Background-Style" mounds.
Characters they passed—refugees from the Shard of the Occupant—had lost their names. Their clothes had shifted into generic tunics, and their faces were becoming symmetrical, pleasant, and utterly forgettable.
"They're being 'Defaulted'," Han said, his iron hammer glowing with a fierce, protective bronze light. "The virus is stripping away the 262nd Variable. It thinks that if everyone is the same, there can be no
