Dust of Divinity
Three months after the Spiral broke, the world had almost returned to something resembling normal.
The skies no longer shimmered with fractal tears. Cities once frozen in recursive time had restarted, slowly rebuilding in the wake of chaos. The Spiral Seed was gone—disintegrated in my hands—but its echoes hadn't vanished.
They were simply hiding.
---
> "Another dead node," Aria muttered, kneeling by the glassy corpse of what used to be a human. "That's the fifth one this week."
I knelt beside her. The body hadn't decayed. It had been rewritten—its code unraveled at a molecular level.
This wasn't natural.
> "We stopped the Spiral," I said quietly. "But someone else is still running simulations."
Aria looked up. Her eyes were harder now. Sharper. She'd changed.
> "The Architect's remnants?"
> "Or worse," I replied.
---
We returned to our outpost—one of the few remaining cities rebuilt with post-Spiral tech. They called it Axis Point, a central hub for refugees, tech salvagers, and truth seekers.
The girl—no longer Spiral, now named Kael—lived there, protected by layers of quantum encryption. No one touched her.
No one dared.
But that night, she called for me.
---
Her room was quiet. Simple. Just books and soft light and a view of the rebuilt skyline.
> "You feel it, don't you?" Kael asked as I entered.
I nodded. "Something's wrong."
She placed her hand on the glass window, her breath fogging the surface slightly.
> "You stopped the Spiral. But you left the kernel behind. He built it as a backup. A failsafe in case we ever disobeyed."
I frowned. "The Architect had a failsafe?"
She turned to face me, solemn.
> "Not a what. A who."
> "It's awakening now."
---
That night, a tremor ran through Axis Point.
People screamed.
Lights blinked out.
Aria burst through the door, gun drawn. "They're back."
> "Who?" I demanded.
She tossed a fractured security drone onto the floor. Its last image flickered—
> A silhouette of something not quite man, not quite machine.
Its voice played through the broken speaker.
> "Executor Protocol. Engage Spiral Override. Terminate anomaly: Kael."
---
The Spiral was gone.
But something worse had inherited its throne.
And it had one command:
> "Begin extinction."