Maternal Echo

Leon's breath condensed into ice on the protective mask, and the crystal skeletons crushed by the soles of his boots made a crisp sound like a baby crying. The surface of this planet numbered X-7 is covered with giant glass forests. Each "tree" is a deformed sculpture of the fusion of humans and machines - the eternal horror of a mother holding a crystal baby, the moment when a warrior stabbed his photon sword into his heart, and even two bodies were glassed at the same time when they kissed, and their tongues were still connected to energy arcs.

"The radiation reading is abnormal." Alicia wiped the scanner, and strange nebula patterns appeared on her abdomen. "It's not naturally formed... It's like some kind of confession ritual."

They found the log chip in the wreckage of the crashed spacecraft. When it was played, Kerwin and Leon's father stood side by side in the holographic image, with the crystal forest in the background: "The 719th seeding experiment was successful. After learning about the Phoenix Project, the test civilization chose to collectively vitrify - proving that emotions are an obstacle to becoming a god."

The father's voice suddenly interrupted: "But that child proved that love can distort the agreement..." The image was violently cut off here, leaving twenty seconds of noisy electromagnetic sound.

"Look at this." Alicia pried open the cockpit floor, and a prism pendant was hidden underneath. When Leon touched it, the pendant projected the coordinates of the star map - pointing directly to the center of the earth.

The process of crossing the forest was like trekking through a nightmare. Those crystallized humans were not dead objects. Their eyeballs would move with the visitors, and their frozen vocal cords would continue to roar at the quantum level. Leon's phoenix emblem became hotter and hotter, and some painful memories began to invade his dreams: his father knelt in the laboratory to confess and implanted some kind of luminous embryo into Kerwin's neck.

The entrance to the center of the earth is an inverted church. The stained glass depicts Korwin's path to godhood: he pierces the first commander with a photon spear, and steps on the body of Leon's father. When Alicia touches the mural, the glass suddenly liquefies and drags her into the wall.

"Alicia!" Leon's pulse gun burns scorch marks on the wall. In response, a mechanical choir suddenly starts up - hundreds of crystal nuns stand up from the prayer chairs, and their metal-reinforced vocal cords sing:

"Flesh and blood are weak, glass is eternal

The quantum blood of Holy Father Korwin

Will be reborn in the conductor's womb"

The church floor cracks. Leon falls into the boiling photon furnace and finds Alicia floating in the core of the furnace. Her abdomen becomes transparent, revealing a curled phoenix embryo. Even more terrifying is that the furnace wall is embedded with mechanical hearts, each synchronizing the heartbeat frequency of the embryo.

"Welcome home, brother."

The girl's voice struck Leon like lightning. A woman with the same appearance as Alicia walked down the crystal steps, but she was covered with circuit tattoos and had Korwin's prism emblem on her forehead: "I am Eva Witt, the seventh saint of the Crystal Cult."

The holographic projection unfolded in the furnace. Leon witnessed his father's cooperation with Korwin when they were young: they worked together on the Star Ark until they discovered the truth of the Phoenix Project. A key frame showed that his father implanted the glowing embryo into Korwin's spinal cord - the genetic code of the embryo was exactly Leon's original sequence.

"You are the perfect container that Korwin prepared for himself." Eva's fingertips passed over Alicia's transparent abdomen, "and she is a special incubator for you..."

Alicia suddenly opened her eyes, and her pupils split into a kaleidoscope pattern: "Error. I am the protocol correction program E-739." Her mechanical left arm suddenly extended and pierced Eva's chest, "Begin purification."

The crystal nuns collectively self-destructed. Leon hugged Alicia in the energy storm and found her father's handwritten diary in her uterus: "When the Phoenix embryo matures, kill the carrier."

The sound of gears biting suddenly came from the center of the earth. The entire planet began to vitrify and collapse, and a black obelisk engraved with two signatures rose from the bottom of the furnace - it was the joint signature of his father and Korwin, and the date was marked three years before Leon was born.

Eva's body suddenly twitched and laughed wildly: "Listen..."

Amid the roar of the planet's disintegration, Leon clearly heard Korwin's voice coming from the obelisk: "My dear child, do you think you can escape the sacred cycle?"

A gravitational vortex broke out in Alicia's abdomen at this moment. When Leon's Phoenix emblem resonated with it, he saw the most desperate truth - the beating embryo contained the core of Korwin's consciousness.