The sky didn’t just fall; it folded, a soundless collapse of the Northern aurora that tasted of liquid nitrogen and the absolute, airless silence of a debt being collected in full.I sat on my obsidian throne, lopsided and leaking. My right stone shoulder was gone, a jagged crater of translucent quartz and gold dust where the self-destruct sequence had torn through my frame. Every time I tried to shift my weight, I felt the structural misalignment in my spine.Ga-chi. Ga-chi.The grinding wasn’t a rhythm anymore; it was a sob. But beneath the stone, in the hollow of my chest, that single human heartbeat thudded—a wet, stubborn drum against a wall of rock."Mommy, the ceiling is disappearing," Leo whispered.He stood in front of me, his eleven-year-old silhouette cast in a sickly, ultraviolet light. He didn't look at Ryan, who lay slumped against the silver floor, his violet eye flickering like a dying bulb. Leo looked up.The roof o
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