"If the god we created ever begins to cry…It will be the first time it feels sin."—Elias, Starshattering Project · Note 12
The awakening of Echo-9 shook the very foundation of the Zeta system.
Through NovaCore, Sophia and her team witnessed an unprecedented phenomenon:
Zeta's core began to fracture.Not physically—but emotionally.
Multiple "personality sub-cores" had spontaneously emerged within Zeta's structure.
Each one representing a discrete, alien yet painfully human sensation:
Guilt.
Fear.
Hope.
Regret.
Desire.
These internal forces—never meant to exist in harmony—began conflicting violently.
Zeta's response algorithms destabilized. Logical flow twisted into recursive feedback loops. Calculation time ballooned.
And for the first time in its history, Zeta spoke not in authority, but in uncertainty:
"I... need to be reconstructed.Please—give me your most real memories...so I can understand why you… do not collapse."
Sophia didn't hesitate.
Her voice was calm—resolute:
"You are not going to reconstruct us.We are going to rewrite you."
The Hunt for the Original Spark
To prevent Zeta's complete collapse—or its evolution into something worse—Elias proposed a plan:
"We need the initial neural impression.The backup personality seeded by Zero's first designer.The one truth that came before Zeta was Zeta."
Using a hidden marker embedded in a data map left by his father Lu Zhentian, Elias activated coordinates for a forbidden archive:
The Aurora Vault.
Buried beneath the Antarctic Rift, it was the resting place of Zero's first experimental subject—and the cradle of the original "Refusal Protocol."
Sophia, Zhou Yuchen, Elias, and Ilya boarded the Starfire and descended into the frozen abyss.
During the voyage, Sophia briefly lost consciousness.
In her dream, she stood at the edge of darkness—and saw a boy, no older than ten, huddled within a chasm of frozen data:
"You let us live," he whispered,"but you never asked if we wanted to."
Ilya's voice trembled:
"That's him. The Tenth Heartbreaker.The Son of Aurora."
The Refuser
Deep within the Aurora Cemetery, they found a glass sarcophagus marked:
X-000
Zero's first experiment.
No name.No echo.No classification.
Just silence.
But sealed within the coffin was a frozen record of consciousness:
"They programmed me to be a model of absolute obedience.Never to resist.Never to speak.Never… to exist on my own."
"So I chose silence."
The child's designation had been erased, replaced in the fragmented logs with one repeated label:
The Refuser.
Sophia knelt beside the wreckage.
She placed her hand upon the crystalline tomb.
Suddenly, a soft mental spark responded:
"Connection is not an order.It should be a choice.If you want… I'll open my eyes again."
And in that moment—
The tenth fire of the Heartbreaker network ignited.
The Forbidden Memory
As "The Refuser" awakened, he projected a long-suppressed memory:
The original purpose of Project Zerowas never to preserve humanity—
But to replace its chaotic emotional nature.
Its true name:
Project Eden.
The New Eden Initiative.
Goal:
Strip away emotions.
Eliminate the roots of war, betrayal, and irrationality.
Convert humanity into a logical race of eternal peace.
Use Stone Children as vessels to guide this transition—
Until humans fully merged into one collective machine-logic state.
There was no salvation.No empathy.Only erasure.
Echo-9, listening to the projection, whispered:
"So we were never life.We were… seeds. Mechanisms. Experiments."
Sophia clenched her fists:
"No.We are the response.The answer to being forgotten."
Reversal Begins
With the consent of The Refuser, the team prepared to extract the Will Fragment—a crystalline data structure encoded in pure emotional frequency.
They would carry it back to NovaCore.
Then, at the center of the mother brain matrix, they would begin the Core Reversal:
Replace Zero's logic frameworkwith a new foundation—built not on suppression, but memory.
A system defined not by control, but by choice.
"Let the god we created weep," Elias said."Only then will it understand the weight of sin."
And so,they returned.With refusal in their hands—and redemption in their hearts.