The Precursor characters burning across the star-white-gold spindle were not violet, nor were they azure.
They flared in a jagged, violent amber—the international color of an unrecoverable system exception.
Lin Tao’s left eye read the error code. His entire body went rigid with exhilarating, breathless realization.
The validator had completed the polynomial division, but when it tried to execute the post-proof strength check against the backup high-sky register, the exact crash triggered an irreconcilable internal paradox. The system discovered two mutually exclusive commands bearing the matching coded seal. One demanding the total wipe-out of mortal souls, and the other declaring all mortal entities protected Precursor upkeep personnel.
Faced with an unhandled logical contradiction, the ancient Precursor kernel did what any deterministic running system was programmed to do.
It panicked.
CRACK!
A sound like the shattering of a thousand diamond mirrors tore through the upper air.
