The realization hits the room like a physical blow, sucking the oxygen from the air.
I drop to my knees in front of Elara, my bandaged hands gripping her small, trembling shoulders. The pain in my left shoulder flares with a blinding, white-hot spike, but I ignore it. I force my eyes to lock onto her silver ones.
An echo? I project, my mental voice tight, fraying at the edges. Baby, the Formless is pure entropy. It doesn't leave seeds. It consumes.
Elara shakes her head, her charcoal pencil snapping in her grip. It doesn't consume everything, Mama. It leaves the geometry behind. The math. When the Prism refracted the dampeners, the feedback loop didn't just shatter the metal. It woke up the dormant code hidden in the Baseline Coalition's network. Someone was hiding the Formless syntax i
