The world wasn’t done breaking.
I could feel it—beneath my skin, in the marrow of my bones, in the very fabric of existence. The Algorithm had obeyed my will, but it had taken something from me in return. I was an anomaly, a piece of a puzzle that no longer fit in the reality I had shaped.
My hands flickered.
Not with light. Not with energy.
With absence.
I sucked in a breath. The air felt thinner like I wasn’t entirely here anymore.
“Tony?” Kane’s voice was sharp, urgent. She had seen it.
I turned to her. My chest ached—not just from exhaustion but from knowing. I had rewritten reality and forged a new timeline from the shattered remains of the old. But in doing so, I had severed my own connection to it.
I was slipping away.
Kane reached for me, but her fingers passed right throu
