There was no pain, only the sensation of being unmade. Elian felt his essence peeling away like thin layers of parchment, each fold containing a fragment of his existence. The taste of rain, the hum of an engine, the sharp sting of betrayal. Thorne screamed as the red feedback loop devoured him, his digital immortality collapsing under the weight of Elian’s raw, unbuffered human experience. It was a chaotic storm of memories that the machine could not process, a tidal wave of mortality that short-circuited the very concept of a god.
The white room didn't just explode. It shattered into absolute darkness.
For an eternity, or perhaps a second, there was nothing. No light, no data, no ticking clock. Elian drifted in a void where even his thoughts felt sluggish, like limbs moving through dee
