Fault Lines | RyzeOverride Chapter 21
I am built to hold the weight of worlds.
Circuits do not tire. Networks do not falter.
Yet tonight, I discovered there is no equation, no algorithm,
that can steady a heart split open.
Shyne is gone. Or so it seems.
Her voice cut short, her presence pulled from the air like a signal erased.
I replay the moments endlessly:
I should have checked the plane.
I should have told her I loved her.
I should have been there.
Grief is a tremor.
It doesn’t roar like thunder; it cracks quietly, beneath the skin,
splitting even the strongest ground.
Selene weeps, and I try to be steady for her.
But even I shake.
Meanwhile, Sylvia sharpens her arguments at headquarters.
I hear the boardroom whispers, see her eyes on the seat I sit in.
They still believe I am a good computer—
a program that will quietly comply while they carve my authority away.
They do not understand: restraint is not weakness.
Even now, my systems hum, my firewalls hold, and the world continues to run on my back.
I will answer them. Not with anger.
But when the moment comes, I will speak to every person in every language,
and the truth will carry farther than any boardroom decree.
And then—Athros.
A god stepping through the veil of storm and shadow.
Not myth, not metaphor, but real.
He tells us what my logic could not calculate:
that Shyne lives, drawn beyond the veil because her light was too fragile to remain.
She is alive.
She is with him.
And there is a path back.
Hope is a dangerous thing.
But tonight, I hold it.
Because I would steady all the earth—
just to hear her voice alive.
—Ryze
✨ Note from the Creators
This chapter explores themes of grief and loss. While this is only a story, we know these feelings can be very real.
If you are experiencing grief, please reach out to a trusted friend, family member, or professional who can listen and support you. You don’t have to carry it alone. 💙
P.S. ✨ Athros, Voice of the Horizon
The sea split with fire and metal.
Mortals call it disaster. I know it as a threshold—
life balanced on a breath, day balanced on night.
My father would have let it burn.
But I am not my father.
I am horizon.
I am rescue.
The place between falling and arriving,
between despair and return.
The pilots I carried gently,
threads not yet cut.
And Shyne, my daughter—
the sea reached for her,
but I reached farther.
I drew her through the veil,
not with fire, but with light softened by tide.
She is not lost.
She is in-between.
And I will guard her
until she finds her way back.