Screams from the Abyss

Perpetual Humanity

Consciousness ebbed and flowed like cosmic tides. Jaden, or what remained of him, drifted through an ocean of quantum probabilities. Fragments of memory flickered through his awareness – the taste of his mother's apple pie, the thrill of his first kiss, the weight of responsibility when he first discovered his powers. But these memories felt distant, as if they belonged to someone else.

"Jaden?" Zoe's thoughts rippled through the quantum foam. "Are you still... you?"

The question gave him pause. Was he still Jaden Craig? Or had he become something else entirely?

"I... I think so," he responded, his thoughts coalescing into something resembling coherence. "But it's hard to tell where I end and the Resonance Engine begins."

Marcus's presence pulsed nearby, a swirling vortex of calculations and probabilities. "We need to find a way to anchor ourselves. If we lose our sense of self completely, we won't be able to guide the node's energies effectively."

As if in response to Marcus's words