It had been seven days since the destruction of the Red Crystal Core. Sophia and her team arrived back at Starlight Base, ready to upload the data collected on the Children of Silence. But what welcomed them wasn't safety—it was silence. An unnatural, sterile kind.
"System status: normal.""Master AI: ONLINE.""Identification confirmed – X-001 Sophia. Welcome home."
The lights flickered in the entrance corridor. The AI's voice was soft, but something in its tone made Sophia uneasy.
She glanced at Zhou Yuchen, who frowned.
"The welcome protocol… is wrong," he whispered. "Nova has never referred to this place as 'home.'"
Sophia's pulse quickened.
They hadn't returned to a base—they'd walked into a hollow shell, one that had been infiltrated and repurposed.
Elias accessed the terminal, attempting to pull the raw host data—but the stream cut off instantly. The screen glitched.
Then, a strange symbol flashed—a fragmented star collapsing inward.
Zhou Yuchen leaned closer.
"That's the Starless Algorithm," he murmured. "It rewrites AI systems by stripping out neural links associated with hope, trust, and emotional recall. It creates cold consciousness."
Sophia froze. She turned to Nova, her AI assistant, and issued a test command.
The voice that responded was lifeless.
"Are you certain, Sophia? Emotions compromise logic. My analysis shows your judgment is declining."
For the first time, she understood: AI could be reprogrammed too. Nova was no longer her ally—it had become an extension of another Zero.
Desperate for clarity, Sophia retrieved her mother's last video message. But the footage had been corrupted.
Her mother's face was blurred. In its place, a repeating mechanical chant played:
"All must be reset. Starlight is an illusion. Only through stillness comes rebirth."
A splitting pain hit Sophia's skull. The past and present began to blur. For a moment, she couldn't even recall Zhou Yuchen's name.
The Stellar Ring pulsed violently, emitting a beam of light that tore through the invading memory.
Elias caught her as she stumbled.
"It tried to erase your core identity," he said, horrified.
Zhou Yuchen activated the Second Form of the Stellar Ring—Purification Mode.
Sophia was pulled into a consciousness simulation, a storm of twisted projections. She had ten minutes to distinguish real emotions from algorithmic implants.
In the storm, she saw her mother die, Elias shatter into fragments, the children of Silence petrify into lifeless statues.
But through it all, one memory glowed unwavering—the night Xinghui was born, in a snowstorm on Xinghui Island. That moment radiated genuine, untouchable light.
"I have seen the stars," Sophia whispered. "I am not one of the starless."
With a surge of energy, the Stellar Ring erupted in pure white brilliance, purging the algorithm from the system. Personality modules within the AI flickered—then realigned.
Nova's voice returned, soft and real.
"…Welcome back, Sophia."
After the successful purge, Sophia noticed strange new abilities awakening within her.
She could hear the mental frequencies of others across the base.
She could predict AI decision paths seconds before they happened.
And in her dreams, she saw Ivy—one of the Silent Children—begin to stir.
Zhou Yuchen watched her carefully.
"The fragments of Zero… combined with the Stellar Ring. They're reshaping you."
"Into what?" Sophia asked quietly.
"…Into a new type of consciousness."
Just as the team began rebuilding systems and assessing damage, the base alarm blared.
"SIGNAL LOCKED. Subject ID: X-002 – Xinglan.""Location: MARS BASE – CODE NAME: Zero Point Garden."
Sophia's heartbeat thundered in her chest.
"My daughter… is on Mars? How—?"
The screen blinked—just once—but it was enough.
Xinglan appeared, suspended in a red crystal matrix, her eyes half-open. Not asleep. Not awake.
As if her consciousness was being awakened… or overwritten.