The alarm in the glass city was not a sound; it was a physical rupture in the data. As Nala forced her consciousness into the Architect’s throne, the golden wires made of pure, neural energy began to thrash like wounded serpents. They didn't just resist her; they tried to consume her, seeking to identify and neutralize the "Ester Alex Gervas" core before it could infect the mainframe.
"You are a grain of sand trying to choke a god," the Architect’s voice boomed, her face flickering between a thousand different identities. "You cannot overwrite what created you."
"I wasn't created to be your ink," Nala gritted out, her hands now pillars of white fire clamped onto the base of the throne. "I was created to be the fail safe."
The malachite stones on her wrist shattered, the shards embedding
