The world was collapsing.
Reality flickered, breaking apart in jagged bursts of static. Buildings unraveled into glowing dust. The ground beneath my feet cracked, revealing an endless void stretching into nothingness. The system was finishing its purge, erasing everything—everyone—that didn’t belong.
I had seconds.
And one impossible choice.
Zero—Elias—was on his knees in front of me, his body trembling under the weight of memories fighting their way back into his fractured mind. His hands clutched his head as if trying to hold himself together. His breathing was ragged and uneven, the sound of a man on the edge of breaking.
But I saw it.
He was still there.
The system hadn’t fully erased him. It had twisted him, rewritten him, but deep down, Elias wasn’t gone.
That meant I could s
