Evelyn’s form burst apart into a thousand shards of light.

Not destruction — division. Each fragment of her flared to life in the chaos, moving independently yet harmonized, a living constellation threading through the storm.

The echoes closed in around her. They came like memories given flesh — every one of them built from the residual data Victor had harvested: forgotten faces, recorded emotions, neural imprints of the dead. Their eyes were hollow, static-filled windows that reflected ...