[Ava's POV]
The crucible of knowledge from the Archives had not brought the clarifying fire of understanding. It had brought the slow, pervasive heat of an industrial furnace, baking the mystery out of Ava’s existence and leaving behind a cold, hard, and terrifyingly precise shape: the blueprint of Chimera-2.
The humming in her veins was no longer the whisper of a strange, new sense; it was the operational thrum of a system booting to its designed parameters. It made the ache in her soul—the longing for connection, the fear of dissolution—feel less like a personal tragedy and more like a pre-programmed diagnostic alert.
This awareness was a lodestone in her gut, distorting the emotional gravity of the entire Vault, pulling every stray thought and feeling into its dense, despairing orb
