[POV: Sofia Lanka]

"You can’t be serious, Sofia. You are looking at the literal salvation of our species and your first instinct is to find the self-destruct button? Look at the sky. Look at what Beatrice just did. She didn't just win a battle; she rewrote the laws of physics. And you want to take that away? You want to turn us back into the blind, stumbling animals we were before the Lanka bloodline woke us up?"

Zara’s voice was a jagged edge of panic, echoing through the high-contrast gloom of the Spire’s primary command deck. The lighting here was a bruised mixture of dying violet and a new, aggressive...