The Shepherd's Call

The man didn't flinch at Eli's readiness. He merely observed, as though every motion had already been predicted. Calculated. Karnak's presence didn't intimidate him—it validated him.

"I had hoped this day would come in clearer skies," the man said, stepping forward with the poise of someone unburdened by time. "But evolution… is always born in chaos."

Karnak's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

"I am the last surviving architect of the Codex Protocol," he replied with a slow bow. "Doctor Veyrus Albrecht. Though some, these days, call me Shepherd."

The name carried weight—not just title, but ideology. Albrecht's voice hummed with strange frequencies, barely perceptible vibrations that tickled the edge of thought. Karnak felt them tug at him. Resonance.

"You were one of them," Eli muttered. "Codex scientists. You helped build all this—what happened to you?"

"I did not fall," Albrecht said softly. "I saw the truth. The Codex wasn't a failure. It was incomplete. Until now."

He turned his gaze fully onto Karnak.

"You, Karnak, are not simply a weapon or a relic. You are the Pattern. The living glyph. Every aberration, every ruin, every cult—they were echoes of a humanity trying to make sense of divinity they could feel but not wield. I intend to correct that."

Karnak stepped between Eli and Albrecht, instinct sharpening. "And how do you plan to do that?"

Albrecht smiled.

"I don't need to control you, Karnak. I need only to interface with you. You are the gate, yes—but the gate can be opened from both sides."

He raised a hand. Instantly, the obelisk pulsed. Glyphs restructured. The resonance in the room amplified.

"You think this place was built to hide you? No. It was built to attune you. And while the others saw you as a hazard—I see you as liturgy. Through you, I will distribute the seed. I will awaken the world to its higher form."

He gestured behind him. Silhouettes moved. Figures stepped into the light—elegant, deliberate. Not Aberrant. Not quite human. The Ascended. Codebound who had survived. Who had adapted.

"I've already begun," Albrecht said. "The serum refined. The template perfected. Your pulse, your genome—it carries command. And now, with your return, I can bind every evolved vessel to one frequency. One mind."

Eli spat, "You want to rewrite free will."

Albrecht's expression remained peaceful. "No. I want to replace it."

The resonance grew louder, like thunder in reverse—pulling instead of pushing.

"You could stop me, Karnak. You could fight. But the moment you activated the Phantom Trail, you reawakened the Codex Core—and with it, the Binding Pulse. You've already started the process."

Karnak's breath slowed. The air shimmered. He felt it—millions of signals latching onto him. Around the world, sleepers stirred. The flawed. The infected. The willing. And the ones yet to know they'd been chosen.

Albrecht stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper only Karnak could hear:

"Be more than human. Be the shepherd with me."

Silence fell.

Eli drew both blades.

Karnak didn't move.

He was still calculating—because part of him, deep in that storm of rewired memory, understood something terrifying.

He wasn't just the gate.

He might already be the key.

Karnak didn't answer. Not with words.

The obelisk's glow dimmed, flickering like a pulse flatlining. But the resonance didn't stop. It only changed direction—slipping inside him.

Albrecht didn't flinch. "There it is. Your system's accepting the sync. Deny it if you wish, but your architecture was designed to connect. This is your nature, Karnak."

Eli's voice cut through the tension like a blade. "We need to go. Now."

But Karnak didn't move. He couldn't—not because of fear, but because of familiarity. Albrecht's words were wrong in all the right ways. Lies, buried in half-truths that echoed things Karnak wasn't ready to remember. Things he might have agreed with, once.

"You say I'm the key," Karnak finally said. "But to what?"

"To harmony," Albrecht said without hesitation. "To order. You've seen what humanity becomes when left to chaos. We tried gods, we tried science, we tried ideology. Each failed. But you—you—are the first truth born from all three. The Codex didn't fail you. It prepared you."

Albrecht raised his hand—and the Ascended behind him knelt in unison.

"I don't want to enslave the world, Karnak. I want to upgrade it."

He reached into his coat and withdrew something small—a thin glass orb filled with liquid silver, pulsing faintly.

"The Resonant Core," he said. "Encoded with your original genetic song. Not the weakened variant the Codebound used. This is you, before the failsafes, before the chains. I recovered it from Site Theta before the world burned it down."

Karnak's breath caught.

He knew that orb. It wasn't just data. It was the missing strand—the unstable thread that had been severed after the first collapse. The one that made him human enough to be controlled.

Albrecht's voice softened.

"I can restore you, Karnak. Not just as a weapon. As the origin. With this, we can make a world where pain, disease, and disobedience no longer exist. Where chaos doesn't devour innocence. You feel it already, don't you? The Aberrant? They don't attack you. They recognize you."

Eli moved beside him, blades drawn. "Don't listen to this freak."

But Karnak's voice was quiet. "He's not wrong."

Albrecht smiled. "I never needed your permission. Only your presence."

And that's when the trap sprung.

The walls behind the obelisk cracked—not from age, but from design. Hidden circuits came alive. The chamber itself began reconfiguring, warping into something new. A pulse chamber.

Albrecht stepped back, palms raised.

"You entered the Phantom Trail willingly. That was the handshake. Now the system can begin uploading your signature across every sleeper on the grid."

A shudder ran through the ground like a heartbeat awakening.

"Welcome," Albrecht whispered, "to Version 0.0.1."

Eli lunged. But he never reached Albrecht.

One of the Ascended intercepted, flesh warping mid-motion, forming a glistening carapace shield that rippled like obsidian glass. Eli's blades sparked uselessly off it.

More figures poured from shadowed corridors. Controlled. Modified. Devout.

Karnak could feel their minds.

Tethered to him.

And deeper still… tethered to Albrecht's signal.

He didn't fight. He didn't need to. He just walked—calmly—into the center of the reconfigured chamber as data spiraled around him.

"You'll hunt me, Karnak. You'll try to stop me. But every step you take will only refine the network. Your resistance will sculpt the perfect final build. The more you fight, the closer we come to transcendence."

And with that, Albrecht stepped into a translocator ring carved into the chamber's center—a technology Karnak hadn't seen since before the Collapse.

He vanished in a burst of white-gold light.

But his voice remained, trailing on frequencies no human should hear:

"There is no end. Only Update."