[POV: Sofia Lanka]

"You didn't think I’d actually let you walk away with the keys to the kingdom, did you, Sofia? You’re so focused on being the savior, the mother, the martyr, that you forgot one very basic rule of the game. When a throne sits empty, someone is going to sit in it. And since you’re so intent on being 'normal,' I figured I’d take those ten billion ghosts off your hands. They’re much better company than a ghost in a machine anyway."

Emerald’s voice, projected through the Archive’s surviving speakers, was a jagged shard of glass in the silence. Sofia stood in the center of the Genesis Root...