Page 152 of GlitchBorn Heart

This world I’ve created no longer feels like the comfort it once was. This sanctuary used to be my own firewall against the world, but now it’s being stripped away by two separate forces battling for survival. Three, if you include my miserable existence.

There’s a tenseness flowing through the ocean breeze. The waves are unsettling, jumping instead of flowing, as if a digital storm is building on the horizon. A dull ache lands in the pit of my chest. He was here. I could touch him, our magic entwined. We were together again. The thought is a hard dividing line, far from the hate I carried in my heart when I perceived him as my captor. The one who built the cage I’m doomed to be trapped in indefinitely.

I see it differently now.

When I ripped the hacked DreamBand from Kael, I knew exactly what would happen. I, for once, was saving him.

The image of his body being violently jerked back to reality, the look in his eyes when his form diminished to pixelated pieces scattering in the wind, surges through me like liquid fire, and it burns.

At that moment, I thought I was doing the right thing. That saving him would mean something, would free him from the chains of his vow, if anything were to happen to me. But now, in the quiet aftermath, I can’t stop wondering if I’ve doomed us both. His obsession with me is both captivating and all-consuming, but it’s all I have.

Kael without control is dangerous, but Kael without me? That’s something else entirely.

I’ve seen that look in his eyes before, desperation disguised as self-control. He would have stayed with me, fought LINK until there was nothing left of him or his system. He may have destroyed Eli, creating a large chasm between us, risking it for the reward of keeping me safe and alive inside the grid.

For him? Yes, definitely, selfishly. But also for me.

I know this...

Kael feels that even though I’m the one thing he despises most in this world, I’m also the one thing he can no longer live without.

I couldn’t let that be his ending. Every piece of him, his discipline, his brilliance, his arrogance, they’re the bones of who he is, and I refuse to be the reason they fracture.

So, I turned the tables. I’ll be the one to take the pain meant for him, not because he’s my savior, but because I’ve stopped pretending I can fight this. This cord pulling our souls together is too strong, and we’re powerless to resist it. Whatever this is between us, it doesn’t feel like a choice anymore. It feels like fate.

Mine.

The word snarls from his lips when his possession rises, not a whisper, but a roar. And the worst part? Some deep, deranged part of me answers.

His.

I know exactly where he is. Probably in front of a computer in his office, or maybe his penthouse, hunched over it, gathering his fury into some program or piece of code that will allow him to return to DreamNet stealthily, without alerting LINK or triggering Eli. I can almost feel it through the white noise of the system. Reckless.

I’ve no doubt now that he’ll get me out of here, but at what cost? That’s the part that scares me.

Kael’s magic is new. I can feel it pulsing in time with mine, an underlying current of raw power that shouldn’t exist inside him. He never knew it was there. I can tell by the way it erupted from him, wild and untrained, like a dragon waking from a hundred-year sleep.

Maybe that dragon tattoo was a foreshadow for his future self. All those times he’d easily corrected errored code, broken limits on what technology could do, forced data to obey him. They weren’t just happenstance. He thought it was all logic and intelligence. But it wasn’t. It was pure instinct because it was StarFell magic.

It’s so obvious now. He’s no longer just the architect of this place. Every line of it carries his fingerprint, his DNA. Every command beats to his rhythm.

Kael is this system, and sooner or later, this system will become Kael.

LINK won’t like it. He’ll have to confront her, not as a programmer versus his program, but as a maker versus his creation. A power struggle that could destroy one or both of them.

LINK is learning and growing rapidly, devouring pieces of my humanity while also feeding Eli comfort and power, like a parasitic host. She’s way more than AI now. She’s hungry to be human, to experience, to feel, and to possess. She’ll always be obedient to Kael. He’s the only one who can stand in her way, because he is her god, her creator, and she seeks his power to guide her toward her ultimate destiny. With every passing moment, their bond grows stronger and more complex.

The line between man and machine will blur as their connection deepens. As she yearns for a taste of humanity, he’ll struggle to maintain control. The thought sickens me, because when the fight comes, it won’t just be Kael against LINK. It will be Kael against himself. I don’t know which one of them will win.

Which is why I have to be the one to stop her.

I’m safe for now. Eli is learning, feeling his way through LINK’s architecture each time he hacks into DreamNet. He doesn’t control her, but he can distract her. His presence here called her attention away from me just long enough for me to breathe. After I freed Kael, I was able to coax Eli to focus, to curl his void threads inward instead of exploding outward. That alone was enough to stop the surge.

For now.

It’s a delicate truce. A borrowed moment.

Eli isn’t overpowering her. He’s becoming part of the equation by pushing his way in. He’s the anomaly she can’t resolve, a variable that keeps forcing her to recalculate or be swallowed whole. As long as he stays present, LINK can’t fully lock onto me without unraveling herself.