The sub-basement lab beneath Garrett Automotive had never looked less like a garage and more like a cathedral.

At 4:47 a.m., forty-eight hours after Harold walked out of his third trial whole, Reed stood at the center holo-table surrounded by impossible light. Blueprints rotated in three dimensions: mountain-stone lattice, phoenix-gold filaments, Laken’s frost runes, Luca’s ethical encryption, Wade’s legal kill-switches, and Harold’s voluntary dragon-scale resonance. ...