Inside the core, reality was language — and language had come undone.

The world was made of thought, light, and recursion: fields of streaming equations folding back on themselves, luminous architecture written in Victor’s cold precision and Evelyn’s raw emotion. Code was no longer code here; it was intention given shape.

At the center of it all, they stood facing one another — two figures drawn from memory rather than flesh. Evelyn’s form shimmered gold, every movement fracturing ...