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CHAPTER 163

Author: CagalieYula
last update Last Updated: 2025-06-04 16:12:31

I leaned back in my office chair, the final audit summary glowing from my screen. The numbers, once sources of deception, now told the truth—stark, cold, and undeniable. For weeks, I had buried myself in rebuilding what had crumbled under the weight of betrayal. And yet, even with progress in motion, the exhaustion seeped into my bones like a quiet poison.

A soft knock at my office door pulled me from the spiral of numbers.

“Come in,” I called, straightening.

Jeff stepped inside, carrying two steaming cups of coffee. His tie was loosened, sleeves rolled up, and his expression bore that familiar mix of concern and quiet encouragement.

“You’ve been in here since six. Again,” he said, placing one of the cups beside me. “You know you don’t get extra points for burnout.”

I managed a tired smile. “I know. But I need to finish this proposal for the summit. If we don’t secure that UN funding—”

“Then we pivot,” he interrupted gently. “But we’ll handle it together, Demi. You don’t have to do it
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  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 299

    The voice was a key turning in a lock we never knew existed. It wasn't just sound; it was a wave of pure, unadulterated context. The light from the bronze ship didn't push back the Archivists—it rewrote the rules of the space around us. The desaturated colors bled back into vibrant life. The unnerving silence was filled with the sudden, roaring chorus of the forest.The three Archivists recoiled as if struck by a physical force. The intricate sigils on their armour didn't just flash red; they cracked, sputtering with erratic energy. The lead one, its hand frozen inches from Lina, shuddered violently.ERROR. CORE NARRATIVE CONTAMINATION. SOURCE: UNREGISTERED CURATOR-CLASS SIGNATURE.Its synthesized voice was distorted, laced with static and something that sounded almost like… fear.Lyra. She wasn't just a memory, a ghost in the machine of the Ouroboros. She was a part of this ship. She had been waiting.The ship's hatch hissed open, not revealing the dim cockpit, but a swirling vortex

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 298

    The ticking was a clock counting down the last seconds of our freedom. It was the sound of a cage door sliding shut. The boy—his name was Elias—stared at the grey box as if it were a serpent, his earlier terror now eclipsed by a confused dread. He didn't understand what it was, only that it had come from the eviscerated remains of his brother's life."It was in his satchel," Elias whispered, his voice breaking. "He always carried his satchel…""The beast let him keep it," I said, the pieces clicking into a horrifying mosaic. "It let him run, with that thing in his bag. It was using him to find other survivors. To find… new specimens."Jeff was already moving. He snatched up the box. It was cool and unnervingly light. He turned it over in his hands, looking for a seam, a switch, anything."Can you disable it?" I asked, my voice tight."It's Archive tech. It might as well be magic," he muttered, frustration etching lines on his face. He raised it, ready to smash it against a rock."No!"

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 297

    The jump was different this time. It wasn't the violent, reality-wrenching tear of the Ouroboros. It was a glide, a descent into a warm, dark river. The bronze ship around us hummed a low, soothing frequency, a lullaby after the Archive's sterile scream. There was no bone-deep terror, only a profound, weary disorientation.The light outside the viewport resolved from streaks into a soft, predawn grey. We were descending through a calm, misty sky towards a landscape of rolling, forested hills. It was Earth. It felt like Earth. The scent of pine and damp earth filtered through the ship's ancient environmental systems, a familiar perfume after the alien loam of the Archive's exhibit.Jeff’s hands were white-knuckled on the controls, his face slack with exhaustion and disbelief. "We're… down. We're stable." He looked at the readouts, his brow furrowed. "The power core is almost depleted. That one jump… it took everything."It didn't matter. We were down. We were alive.The hatch hissed op

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 296

    The silence in the corridor was absolute, broken only by the faint, sinister hum of the Archivists' charged weapons. The purple light painted their featureless helmets in shifting, malevolent shades. There was no cover, no side passages, no hope of outrunning whatever energy bolt was about to vaporize us. We were a bug on a slide, pinned and ready for dissection.Jeff pushed Lina and me behind him, his body a final, futile shield. My mind screamed, scrambling for a solution that didn't exist. Lina’s trick with the wall had been a masterpiece of desperate improvisation, but it had also led us into a dead end. We were trapped in the belly of the beast.The lead Archivist took a step forward, its weapon unwavering. There was no synthesized voice this time, no declaration of quarantine. This was an execution.And then Lina spoke, her voice a small, clear chime in the tense silence. But the words were not her own. They were a stream of guttural, clicking phonemes, layered with a harmonic r

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 295

    The world narrowed to the fracture in the wall and the descending teardrop ship. The deep purple glow at its base intensified, humming with a power that made the fillings in my teeth ache. It was a sound of absolute finality. We were seconds from being expunged, our messy, biological story neatly deleted from the Archive's pristine records.But Lina's eyes were fixed on the crack, wide not with fear, but with a terrifying, dawning recognition."It's the same," she whispered, her voice almost lost in the building whine of the ship's weapon. "The song behind the wall… it's the same as the hungry nothing."My blood ran cold. The eraser. The void that consumed reality. It wasn't just a weapon of the Curators. It was a force the Archive was built to contain. And we had cracked the containment field.The teardrop ship hesitated. Its smooth, menacing descent faltered as its sensors undoubtedly registered the breach. The purple glow at its base flickered, its purpose shifting from exterminati

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 294

    My body moved before my mind could process the horror. I threw myself in front of Lina, a primal shield against the cold, logical violence of the Archivist. The beam of white light from its stylus didn't strike her. It hit me.Agony. Not a physical burning, but a deeper, more fundamental violation. It felt like every memory, every thought, every defining moment of my life was being flash-frozen and held up for inspection. I saw my childhood home, Jeff's face the first time he kissed me, Lina's birth, the screaming void of the eraser—all of it laid bare and labeled for deletion. A scream was torn from my throat, soundless in the mental onslaught.CONTAMINATION CONFIRMED. SECONDARY ANOMALY. QUARANTINE PROTOCOL EXPANDING.The Archivist adjusted its aim, the stylus now encompassing both of us. Jeff roared, a raw, desperate sound. He didn't have a weapon, nothing but his own two hands. He launched himself at the figure, not to attack, but to disrupt, to be a variable its cold programming c

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