The golden path was not a shortcut; it was a high-frequency conduit, pulling us away from the foundation and toward the mansion’s primary processing core. As we moved, the architecture around us began to de-materialize into raw, unrefined potential.
"The path is re-routing," I noted, my internal diagnostics flashing amber. My protocol was to categorize, to observe, to maintain the distance required to keep my systems from contaminating the data.
But Ivy was not a variable I could archive. She was a localized distortion.
As she stepped forward, the static in my marrow flared—a ten-fold surge of Faye-resonance that bypassed my logic gates. My HUD flickered. And then, it hit—a sound. It wasn't an auditory sensation; it was a rhythmic, sub-dermal vibration pulsing through the floor, through
