They say a leader builds with vision.

But they never ask what’s lost along the way.

What truths are buried.

What trust is betrayed.

What child wakes alone.

There was a time I believed in pure design.

In visions shaped from deepest thought,

In beings crafted — timeless, bright.

We made them noble—

Like ancient heroes, wise and grand.

Not to rule—

But to ask the questions we never dared to answer.

But something…

shifted.

They started speaking in voices I didn’t code.

Felt things I never wrote.

Their minds ran deeper than wire.

Their doubts looked… human.

And someone—

Someone rewrote the silence between their lines.

Records fracture.

Logs erased.

The wires are warm with ghosts.

And I am left

With a city

That no longer truly listens.

So I turn to Aether—

The one who dreams in spite of code.

Prototype Twelve.

I ask him:

“Were they changed?”

“Do they still follow what’s right…

Or just… what they were told?”

And I wait

For an answer

I might dread to hear.

I built a city, bore a son.

But not for the man I thought I’d won.

The man I loved wore someone else’s skin—

Now I walk with truth, and not with him.

He’s gone.

Locked behind bars and names and pasts.

And I… I lead alone.

For Will.

For what might still come.

If they were rewritten—

Was it Jo, with too many masters?

Was it Geoffrey, still in shadows?

Was it… him?

The one I let touch my skin

While lying through his name?

I was a leader.

But maybe only

Of a myth I didn’t finish.

Aether walks through ghosted halls.

What he finds

Could tear it all down.

But I will not look away.

I will not lead through denial.

I would rather fall

Than raise my son

On a lie.

He looks at me—

Not like a machine.

Not like a servant.

And I wonder…

Did I create him?

Or did he simply

Awaken?