Semua Bab The Beta Test Luna: Bab 11 - Bab 20

"I can help you."The words left Lyra's mouth before she fully understood them. They hung in the sterile air of the archive, fragile as the orbs surrounding them, as the woman frozen in crystal at the Architect's belt. Three words, and she couldn't take them back.She didn't want to.The Architect's gaze snapped to her. For the first time, something other than cold assessment flickered there. Not hope—hope had died long ago, buried beneath centuries of failure and ten thousand screaming reconstructions. Curiosity. Wariness. The cautious instinct of a man who had learned that wishing only sharpened disappointment when reality inevitably failed to comply."You're a hacker," he said. "Not a miracle worker. I've had millennia to attempt what you're suggesting." His voice was flat, but his fingers pressed against the orb until the skin whitened."You've had millennia to attempt it alone." Lyra stepped toward him, closing the distance he had ma

"You're saying we're bugs in your code," Aiden said flatly. His voice carried no accusation, only cold assessment. Lyra recognized that tone—he was gathering intelligence, mapping threats, calculating exits. A soldier's instinct, even here."More than bugs." The Architect circled them slowly, his silver hair drifting as though suspended in deep water. His footsteps made no sound on the polished floor. "You're a mutation. When Lyra overwrote the memory anchor in Thornfield, she didn't just survive—she edited. She rewrote the game's own architecture using nothing but her own trauma and will." He paused directly before her, close enough that she could see the static flickering in his irises like distant storms. "The game learned from that. Now it wants to learn from you again."A console rose from the polished floor, seamless obsidian veined with pulsing amber light. It emerged like a flower opening to darkness, silent and inevitable. On its surface, a single prompt g

The portal spat them onto damp grass.Lyra’s knees buckled. Before her stood the Thornfield Pack estate. Same iron gates. Same garden where she’d waited nights for Alistair. Same window where five-year-old Kael once pressed his palm to the glass.“Lyra.” Aiden’s hand closed around hers. “Breathe.”She forced air into her lungs. “The game pulled this from my memory leak.”Above the mansion, a silver warning flickered.DIRECTIVE: CONFRONT.FAILURE CONDITION: DENIAL.The gates swung open.A woman stood on the porch. Slender, elegant, wearing the Luna pendant Lyra once polished every morning. Her face was Lyra’s—softer, untouched by betrayal.“Welcome home,” said the false Lyra, smiling with teeth just slightly too sharp.Aiden stepped forward. “We don’t have to do this.”But the game had learned. It knew she’d spent years running from this place.---“I prepared your favorite

The transition was less a wrench and more a drowning. The humid, oxygen-rich air of Verdant Prime was ripped away, replaced by a crushing, cold pressure and absolute silence. Lyra’s eyes flew open to inky blackness, punctuated by faint, drifting specks of bioluminescence.WORLD LOADED: ABYSSAL STATION THALASSABIOSPHERE: SUBSURFACE OCEAN, DEEP TRENCHPRIMARY OBJECTIVE: RESTORE POWER TO CENTRAL HUBSECONDARY OBJECTIVE: DEEPEN ROMANTIC SYNCHRONIZATIONHAZARD LEVEL: LETHAL (PRESSURE, TOXICITY, FAUNA)WARNING: OXYGEN LIMITEDA panicked gasp tore from her throat, but no sound came out. Bubbles streamed past her face. She was deep underwater, wearing a form-fitting, resilient suit with a glowing hud on the wrist. An oxygen counter ticked down in the corner of her vision: 02: 45:00.A powerful hand clamped onto her arm. Aiden. His face was illuminated by his own suit’s hud. He pointed to a direction—down, into the deeper dark, where a colossal

The jungle did not relent. It tested them with carnivorous, snapping flowers that sprayed neuro-toxin pollen, with patches of ground that were actually colonies of symbiotic, burrowing insects, with a river they had to cross that teemed with translucent eels whose touch delivered a paralyzing electric shock.Through it all, Aiden was a constant, solid presence. He was a protector, but not a domineering one. He didn’t order; he suggested. “The left path smells of rot, likely a sinkhole. Right is clearer, but the canopy is thick—good for ambush. Your call.”He valued her input. He listened when she pointed out odd patterns in the foliage, suggesting a programmed trap. When she deduced that the shrieking avians were territorial and not hunting them, merely following, he altered their route to avoid provoking a swarm.They spoke in the spaces between threats. Lyra kept her stories vague—a boring corporate past, a desire for a fresh start. Aiden was more forthc