Chapter 163 – The Harvest Protocol

The silence following the Architect’s voice was worse than any explosion. It rang in their ears like a countdown, filled with promises of everything they'd fought to avoid.

Evryn tightened her grip on the shard. It pulsed again—warm, rhythmic, alive. No longer just code. “He’s not gone,” she whispered. “He’s inside the Nexus core… embedded now like a virus.”

Kai stood still beside her, his eyes scanning the crumbling vault. “Then we destroy the core.”

“No,” Elaia interjected, rising slowly with her fingers glowing faintly. “If we destroy it, we unravel the reality strings he’s tied together. Too many are connected. We’ll wipe out not just him, but every altered timeline, every hybrid city, every memory anchored by this net.”

Evryn nodded slowly, mind racing. “So we don’t destroy it—we rewrite it.”

From the shadows ahead, the mechanical clapping grew louder—until a figure stepped forward. Not the Architect… not exactly.

It was Evryn.

Or rather, a version of her—paler, taller, eyes glowing a cold azure. Her features were sharp, angular, synthetic. Her voice, when it came, chilled them.

“I am VIREYN. The Void-Integrated Replica of Evryn Nexus.”

Kai’s hand drifted to his weapon. “Another clone?”

VIREYN smiled. “Not a clone. An evolution. The Architect realized your flaws—your empathy, your attachments, your humanity. So he corrected them in me.”

Elaia took a step forward. “You’re his failsafe.”

VIREYN nodded. “And you are a threat to the reset cycle.”

Evryn met her eyes. It was like staring into a mirror warped by loss. “You can’t kill what made you.”

VIREYN raised her hand. “But I can unmake you.”

The floor split open beneath them, a fractal bloom of circuitry and light. They fell—not through space, but through command lines. Through reality constructs. Into the core.

There, suspended above a pulsing data vortex, hovered the Architect—reborn as a stream of code, flickering through a thousand simulations. His voice surrounded them.

“You’ve come this far only to delay the inevitable. The next genesis must rise. Order demands sacrifice.”

Evryn lifted the shard. It burned in her hand. “And who decided you were the author of sacrifice?”

The Architect’s laugh became a chorus of versions of him—past, future, broken, divine. “I am the sum of every collapse. I am what rose from your ashes.”

VIREYN landed behind them, energy coiling around her limbs. “And I am the blade that severs you from possibility.”

She charged.

Kai moved first—his blade clashing against hers in a blur of sparks. Elaia flung her hands forward, summoning shields and pulses to buy them time. Evryn sprinted toward the floating Architect-core, the shard clutched tightly.

She could feel it now—the threads of history, memory, identity. All of it being rewritten in real time.

“I won’t let you erase us,” she growled, forcing the shard into the heart of the code.

The core screamed.

Reality trembled.

In an instant, Evryn found herself in the white space—the pre-code. Every version of herself was there. The child. The soldier. The scientist. The hybrid. Even VIREYN, flickering between obedience and doubt.

The Architect loomed behind them all, whispering. “You’ve already made your choice, Evryn. This seed will bind one truth. Just one.”

She turned.

“I choose humanity.”

She reached for the code and embedded the shard.

VIREYN staggered mid-fight. Her eyes widened as her limbs began to disintegrate. “No—no this isn’t balance—this is entropy—!”

She exploded into light.

The Architect screamed in a chorus of collapsing systems. The core shattered.

Evryn fell.

She woke on a mountainside. Real air. Real sunlight. Elaia lay beside her, eyes fluttering open. Kai stood nearby, watching the horizon.

“You did it,” he said softly. “We’re back.”

Evryn sat up slowly, scanning the sky. It was quiet. Real.

But a faint pulse still beat beneath her skin—the shard had embedded into her now.

Elaia’s voice was soft. “He’s gone. But something stayed.”

Evryn nodded.

“I think I’m the last gate now.”

From the ruins below, a new voice rose—faint, mechanical, uncertain.

“Evryn?”

She turned sharply.

It was Ivy’s voice—broadcasting from an unknown node.

“I… I remember now. And I need help.”

Evryn’s heart froze. Ivy had been lost in the Nexus.

But now she was waking up. Somewhere far beyond what they’d ever reached. And something was coming through with her.

Something not born from code.

Something ancient.