The Price of Salvation

The voice that had promised a third option delivered it with surgical precision.

The Consciousness Bomb detonated—but not as Alexia had intended. Instead of burning out in a single moment of defiant creation, the trillion volunteered souls transformed into something unprecedented: a living barrier between existence and the Dark. They became the Reality Firewall, their combined awareness forming an impenetrable membrane that contained the Dark's advance while preserving what remained of consciousness beyond.

The cost was immediate and absolute.