Chapter 92

• The first collapse happened without warning.
• Delta's monitoring array, installed across the most vulnerable Nexus threads after the loss of the Fractured Verge, lit up across every console in the war room simultaneously. Not one thread. Not two. Seven — seven dimensions at once, each experiencing what the system classified with chilling understatement as "localized reality fragmentations."
• Varian was at his station in seconds, his dimensional stabilizer already running analysis. What he saw on the readout made his breath go shallow. "This isn't chaos energy," he said. "This is the First. They're not attacking the threads from outside — they're reaching through the Lock itself. The eight percent that's left is letting them push fingers through."