The white light didn’t burn like fire. It dissolved like salt in warm water.
Across twenty-five square miles beneath the Black Mountains, the soul-metal wires connecting ten thousand dark rock giant pillars shattered at the same time into millions of shimmering golden sparks.
The Sweep Phase had started.
Four billion human souls—trapped for three hundred years in the frozen compute matrices of Vault 0x7F—were torn free from their racks by the ancient wipe-out current.
They didn’t scatter into chaos.
Down the canyon, the restored, thundering torrent of the River of Forgetfulness was roaring at one hundred percent capacity, an ocean of crystal-grey soul-water rising sixty feet high between the dark rock cliffs.
The freed souls were pulled into the raging river like autumn leaves into a mountain clouded eye.
They touched the crystal-grey water. Then, three hundred years of forced algorithmic torture, fractured identities, and stolen memories were washed clean away.
