The victory at Node Prime had sent ripples through the dimensions, but the celebration was short-lived. As The Unwritten sailed through the shimmering debris of the broken marble sphere, a cold, unnatural stillness began to settle over the liberated souls.
It wasn't a physical cold. It was a Systemic Latency.
The "Shared Dream" that Fang Yi had created—the lush, green world emerging from the cracks of the server—suddenly stuttered. A child playing with a newly rendered flower saw the bloom freeze in mid-air, its colors bleeding into a dull, flat gray. The sound of laughter began to loop, repeating the same three notes over and over until it became a terrifying mechanical drone.
"Fang Yi..." X’s voice was strained, her fiber-optic hair flickering with a sickly pale light. "The telemetry
