My Infinite System.

The silence that followed Reia’s words was thick and heavy, broken only by the hum of the Vault’s ancient life support.

Then Evelyn stood up, the legs of her chair scraping sharply against the stone floor. ”No.”

The word was flat, absolute.

All eyes turned to her. Her arms were crossed, her knuckles white where she gripped her sleeves. The usual playful light in her eyes was gone, replaced by a hard, protective fire.

”Evelyn—” Reia began, her tone weary.

”I said no,” Evelyn repeated, her voice low but cutting. ”We are not having a conversation about fighting Lucian. Or Lucy. That’s not on the table.”

”You heard what she said,” Reia countered, her own frustration starting to show. ”If Alistair gains control of their will—”

”Then we find a way to break his control! We don’t turn on our own people. Lucian is the reason Zero exists. He’s our friend. And Lucy... she’s his sister. You think for one second he would ever agree to a plan that involved hurting her? He’d burn the universe down himself to protect her, and you want us to be the ones to threaten her?”

”This isn’t about what he’d want!” Reia shot back, standing to face her. ”This is about the survival of every living thing in existence! Your sentimentality is a luxury we cannot afford!”

”It’s not sentimentality, it’s loyalty!” Evelyn’s voice rose, echoing in the vast space. ”We don’t throw our friends to the wolves because the math got hard. We find another way. There’s always another way.”

”Like what?” Reia challenged, throwing her hands up. ”You want to reason with Alistair? A being who has nursed a grudge for longer than human civilization has existed? Or perhaps you have a plan to survive the universal reset? Let me be very clear, Evelyn. You cannot. Nothing survives. Nothing. The very concept of ’you’ ceases to be. There is no ’surviving’ that.”

”Then we stop Alistair without hurting Lucian or Lucy,” Evelyn insisted, her jaw set. ”That’s the only mission I’m signing up for.”

A new, calm voice cut through the tension. ”There is a third option.”

Kaela had been watching the exchange silently, her fingers steepled. She looked from Reia’s grim resolve to Evelyn’s defiant anger.

”The original genocide happened because the younger races united against a common threat,” she said slowly. ”That threat has returned. Not one Aethel, but four. An ancient, powerful survivor and three of his direct descendants, two of whom are not yet fully awakened to their potential.”

A cold understanding dawned on Reia’s face. ”You want to tell them. You want to rally the galaxy against Alistair... and his children.”

”It is the most logical course of action,” Kaela said, though her voice held a trace of regret. ”We disseminate the intelligence we’ve found here. We reveal the existence and location of the Aethel bloodline. The combined military might of a thousand species, focused on a single, preemptive strike... it is the only force I can conceive of that might stand a chance against what is coming. It is how it was done before.”

The library went dead quiet. The idea hung in the air, monstrous in its simplicity. They wouldn’t have to fight Lucian themselves. They would just have to point the entire universe at him and his family.

Then, a new sound broke the silence. A harsh, humorless laugh.

Silas was shaking his head, a dark, furious frown etched on his face. He pushed himself off the table he’d been leaning against, his movements uncharacteristically sharp.

”Kill my friends,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. ”That’s your brilliant, logical plan? You want to start another goddamn witch hunt?” He looked at Kaela, his eyes blazing. ”You even think about sending that signal, about painting a target on Lucian and Lucy’s backs, and we’re done. You hear me? We are done. I’ll scuttle this whole operation myself.”

”Silas, be reasonable—” Kaela started.

”Reasonable?” he snapped, taking a step forward. ”You’re talking about signing their death warrants! Lucian isn’t some monster waiting to happen. He’s the guy who stood with me and Reia when my own family left us for dead. Lucy... she’s just a girl who got dealt a crap hand and is trying to figure it out. She’s in her twenties, for star’s sake, not some ancient horror. And you want to throw them to the mob?” He shook his head again, a look of pure disgust on his face. ”Don’t. Even. Think about it.”

The four of them stood in a tense standoff, the grand library feeling like a cage. Four different paths, each more terrible than the last.

Reia, the pragmatist, ready to make the horrific choice to save the many.

Evelyn, the heart, refusing to betray their own, no matter the cost.

Kaela, the strategist, seeing the pieces on the board and moving them for the optimal outcome.

And Silas, the loyalist, ready to burn it all down before he let his friends get hurt.

Evelyn looked from Reia’s cold logic to Kaela’s clinical proposal, finally settling on Silas’s raw, protective fury. She gave him a small, grateful nod.

”Silas is right,” she said, her voice firming. ”We are not the judges of who lives and dies. And we are certainly not going to be the ones to hand that judgment to a galaxy that’s already proven it’s all too happy to commit genocide.” She turned to Reia. ”There has to be another way. Something the Diva and Ashura missed. Something Alistair himself doesn’t know.”

Reia sighed, the fight draining out of her. She ran a hand over her face, looking exhausted. ”What do you suggest? We’re running out of time.”

”We do what Lucian would do,” Evelyn said, a new determination in her eyes. ”We don’t play defense. We don’t wait for the end. We go on the offensive. We find Alistair. Not to rally a galaxy against him, but to stop him ourselves. We cut the head off the snake before he can even think about using Lucian or Lucy.”

”That’s a suicide mission,” Reia stated.

”It’s a Zero mission,” Evelyn corrected her. ”It’s what we do. We handle the problems no one else can or will. And we do it without sacrificing our own.”

She looked around at the endless shelves. ”The answer is here. Not to how we can kill our friends, but to how we can save them. There must be a record, a weakness, a flaw in the Convergence process. Alistair isn’t a god. He’s a survivor. And survivors can be beaten.”

A slow, grim smile spread across Silas’s face. ”Now you’re talking. Find the bastard’s off-switch. I like that a whole lot better.”

Kaela watched the dynamic shift, the unity reforming around Evelyn’s defiant hope. She gave a slow, reluctant nod. ”A surgical strike against the primary target... it is a cleaner solution. And it avoids... collateral damage on a galactic scale.” She avoided saying their names, but they all knew what she meant.

Reia was silent for a long moment, then let out a slow breath. ”Fine. We do it your way.” She fixed Evelyn with a hard look. ”But understand this—if we fail, if we face Lucian and he is already under Alistair’s control, and the choice is between him and everything else... I won’t hesitate. And I hope you won’t either.”

Evelyn met her gaze without flinching. ”We won’t fail.”

It was a promise she had no right to make, but one she had to believe in. The alternative was unthinkable.

”Then let’s stop looking at how the universe ends,” Evelyn said, turning back to the table piled high with ancient texts. ”And start looking for how to save it without losing our souls in the process.”