Chapter 197: THE PRICE OF LOYALTY
Reed used to love the dawn. Now, as the first smear of light leaked over the ruined keep’s battlements, he felt only dread. The morning air tasted of iron and ozone, thick with the acrid stench of the Reality Firewall still sputtering in the distance. Every breath rasped against his throat like ground glass. Somewhere below, healers tried to quiet the screams of soldiers whose wounds made a mockery of anatomy; some shrieked in warped voices that belonged to half-remembered lives. All of them were his doing.
He knelt beside the shattered anchor node, fingers hovering over glittering shards that pulsed with faint, malignant light. A single touch could kill him—or worse, show him what he’d truly unleashed. But the visions came anyway, sliding through the cracks in his mind. In each, the ∞ glyph bled across entire star systems, resurrecting planets until the universe sagged under the weight of unending life. The dead did not rest; the living could not breathe. Causal threads tangled, meaning dissolved. Existence became an overcrowded coffin.
His hands shook. What have I done?
Boots scraped behind him. Shia’s shadow fell across the crystal debris, emerald hair drifting like bleeding banners. "The breach is sealed," she said softly, almost a whisper. "But the cost keeps mounting. We lost another eighty during the night. Half of them... dissolved."
Reed closed his eyes. "Did we at least salvage their cores?"
"No." Her voice hitched. "There was nothing left to salvage."
Silence stretched. Dawn crept higher, painting the wreckage gold. The beauty of it felt obscene.
A fresh tremor rolled through the keep. Reed flinched, expecting an attack. But it was only his hands, trembling uncontrollably now. The fissure in his psyche widened, letting horror pour through. He had imagined resurrection a gift—liberation from death’s tyranny. Instead, he had cracked the shell of creation and let rot seep out. Every soul he pulled back chipped another piece from the cosmic foundation.
"How many universes," he muttered, "tip toward collapse because of one man’s arrogance?"
Shia crouched, searching his face. "Reed, look at me."
He didn’t. Couldn’t.