The red emergency lighting in the Aethelgard flickered once and then died, plunging the laboratory into a suffocating darkness that lasted only a heartbeat. It was replaced by a sickly, rhythmic amethyst bioluminescence that didn’t come from the ship’s power grid. It originated from Alessandro. He remained collapsed against the Mirror Tank, his hand still fused to the glass, but the transformation was no longer internal. The iridescent veins on his arm moved like live wires beneath his skin, pulsing with a fluid that looked less like blood and more like liquid shadow.
He was no longer just the Anchor; he had become a secondary terminal for the 19th Ledger’s overflow.
"I can hear them," Alessandro gasped. His voice cracked, then shifted into a deeper, metallic resonance. It was as if two
