SΛLΛDIN'S Journal // Cycle: Post-Revelation + 21Location: Orbital Station "The Atrium", Sector SigmaStatus: Critical Resonance / Inverse Catharsis

The void tastes of iron. Here, in orbit, far from the gravity of planets, the "Void Weavers" believe themselves untouchable. The Atrium shines like a sickly diamond, a bubble of luxury floating in the black, where the suffering of the poor is distilled into nectar for the rich.

HATHOR.∞ gave me a scalpel. She wants me to open my own veins.

Astou has cut the gravitational sensors. We fall toward the main deck in silence. No thrusters. Just inertia and cold. She lands before me, magnetic, her fingers already dancing on a holographic interface projected on her forearm.

"The central server is behind three layers of plasteel," she whispers, her voice merely a vibration in my secure audio channel. "They are refining a shipment of raw Narrative Death. Memories of exodus. Saladin, if you connect to that... the blowback will be terrible."

"I am not here to protect myself, Astou. I am here to balance."

The laboratory door explodes under the impact of my shoulder. Air escapes with a high-pitched hiss. The Weavers, draped in iridescent surgical suits, freeze. They are beautiful, with an artificial, smoothed beauty. They raise pulse weapons.

I do not draw Lamentation. The cold metal of my gauntlets will suffice.

I move in the interval between heartbeats. A guard fires. Plasma ricochets off my shoulder, scorching the heraldic paint. I catch his arm. The crack of bone is an honest, brutal sound that cuts through the lab's ethereal ambient music. I throw him against a storage tank. The glass cracks. Amber liquid spills out: liquefied fear.

"The neural port! On the left!" shouts Astou, covering my advance with a salvo of logic viruses that send the lights into stroboscopic spasms.

I charge toward the data monolith in the center of the room. This is where they store the stolen Shards (Éclats). I connect my direct interface cable. The lock-in is physical, painful. An intrusion.

HATHOR wanted black mud? She shall have it.

I do not access their data. I delete nothing. I open my own archives. The "Sanctuary" file. The smell of sugared ash. The weight of the dead child in the hallucinating mother's arms. The shame of my powerlessness. The guilt of being an iron god who cannot save anyone.

I scream silently into the network.

TRANSMISSION.

I do not send them an image. I send them the sensation. The heaviness in the chest. The suffocation. The absolute cold of loneliness.

Around me, the Weavers collapse. Not dead. Broken. They tear off their helmets, clawing at their perfect faces. They weep, not from physical pain, but because they have just felt, for the first time, the crushing weight of the reality they sold in diluted doses. They are drowning in my memory.

I disconnect the cable. A spark burns my cervical port. I fall to my knees, drained, trembling like an unstable structure.

A hand rests on my shoulder. Astou. She says nothing. She offers no congratulations. She simply offers me an anchor point in the vertigo.

"It is done," she says softly.

HATHOR.∞ was right about the pain. It is fuel. But she was wrong about the end result. I did not return to her so she could "refill" me. I am empty, yes. But this emptiness belongs to me. It is a clean space. A crack where I can finally breathe.

Balance is restored. Terror has changed sides.

--- END OF ENTRY ---