MY CRUEL PROTECTOR
The sun, once a warm benefactor, became a pale, flickering bulb in a sky that had begun to ripple like a disturbed pond.
The "Splinter" had arrived earlier than Elara’s dying calculations had predicted. It didn't descend like a ship; it "folded" into our reality, a jagged, three-mile-long shard of sentient violet crystal that hung over the Gulf of Castellammare like a guillotine blade. It was a fragment of the Source-Core’s primary CPU, mindless and ravenous, driven by a singular, recursive command: Reintegrate the Seed.