"The Two Sides of the Coin."

  The Greed Vessel heard Sam's logic and ughed—a sound like tectonic ptes grinding together.

  "Child. You are quite impatient, aren't you?"

  The illusionary world stirred. The stars and pnets colpsed backward, rushing toward a single point of infinite density.

  "Look at this," the Greed whispered, gesturing to the singurity. "To bring the universe to life, there must be an explosion. You are deliberately forgetting the Origin itself. If there is no destruction of the old structure, where will the new structure come from? Regardless... the choice is yours."

  Then, silence.

  The projection paused, waiting.

  In the System Space, Sam stood up, his golden avatar vibrating with irritation.

  "How dare it twist the truth!" Sam snapped, his voice crackling with static. "Sis Nine! Do you hear this? And the worst part is, Aryan and Amara can't even talk to each other through the Soul Connection. The Vessel hears everything. That is how it knew about the Ally Amara sensed. That is how it saw the future Aryan saw!"

  Nine grabbed Sam's wrist and forcibly dragged him back into the chair.

  "Calm down, Brother," she ordered, her voice sharp. "The Vessel is affecting your algorithm. Your digital frequency is being corrupted by its emotional output. You are getting angry, which means you are losing."

  Nine looked back at the external feed, watching Aryan and Amara standing frozen on the gss pins.

  "Only those two can decide now," she said softly. "They cannot speak. They cannot use telepathy. They must guess each other's intent. This is the ultimate test. How well do they understand each other without words?"

  Sam scowled, struggling against the data corruption. "They haven't known each other for a long time, Sis! They met barely five days ago! Don't forget that! They are strangers with the same blood name!"

  "They are reted by blood, Sam," Nine countered, her voice unwavering. "And more importantly, it is about survival. I know about humans. You might not know Aryan well yet, but blood carries instincts that time cannot teach. And since they met, they have gone through more life and death situations than siblings who have lived together for twenty years."

  "They better be able to deal with it," Sam sighed, finally slumping back in his gss chair, though his eyes remained anxious.

  In the mental ndscape, Aryan broke the silence.

  "If we don't accept your offer... will you kill us?"

  The Greed's voice swirled around them.

  "You will die either way. Markus will kill you if you are of no use to him. You will die in 85 days when the timer runs out. Or, you will explode if you fail to merge with me. It is not I who will kill you. It is your own indecision. Whom you believe... is your choice."

  Aryan narrowed his eyes. The logic was circur, trapping them.

  "Aren't you Anay?" Aryan asked suddenly. "The Greed Demon? Markus raised you personally. It is no wonder you speak with his arrogance."

  The entity paused. The swirling nebu shifted colors.

  "The blood that flows in everyone... does that mean the Origin of the blood is the person?" Greed asked back, a riddle in its tone.

  "I don't understand," Aryan admitted.

  "Anay is a Demon. He is a Vessel," the voice rumbled, shaking the illusion. "I am the Greed itself. Not the host. I am the Concept. A coin has two sides, Aryan. Anay is the heads; I am the metal itself."

  "You just threatened us to kill each other," Aryan pointed out, his voice hard.

  "That was a catalyst," the Greed replied smoothly. "I needed to push you. I needed you to reconstruct your Vessels through trauma so you wouldn't have to debate what is real. And now? You probably can't tell the difference between reality and illusion, even at the end of your lifespan."

  "The Stalemate."

  "Why do we have to decide right now?" Aryan asked, his voice cutting through the cosmic noise. "Just let us go. You said yourself we can't understand the vastness. So stop trying to force it."

  "It is not I who holds the key," the Greed rumbled, the illusionary stars flickering. "It is your own biology. You cannot go back. Stabilization is a myth Markus sells you. Reconstruction is the only reality."

  Amara, who had been silent, finally moved.

  She didn't step toward the Greed. She grabbed Aryan's hand.

  "If we reconstruct... you will possess us," Amara said, her voice trembling but certain. "You don't just want to evolve us. You want to merge us. Two bodies into one perfect Vessel. That is the completion you seek."

  She pulled Aryan toward the area where Sam and Nine sat in their digital chairs. In this mental space, the brother and sister sat down beside Sam and Nine.

  Four beings. One front.

  "So that is how it is," Sam realized, crossing his arms. "I was wondering why a cosmic entity cared so much about 'saving' two kids. It's self-preservation."

  "Forget it," Aryan said, looking at the nebu with cold eyes. "We won't do it. We won't trigger the explosion. We would just die on our own. We would burn ourselves to ash so you could try to build a house from the dust."

  He tilted his head, recalling the vision from his Seer Eye.

  "No wonder I saw us burning to death in the Gss Pace. No wonder Markus is so adamant about stopping us. He knows that if we listen to you now, we just become fuel."

  "You are too weak," the Greed hissed. "That is the fact. You fear the transition."

  "Exactly," Amara agreed. "We are weak. And that is exactly why your pn fails. Even if your logic about the Big Bang is true... we can't survive it. We are not ready. If we explode now, there is no Rebirth. Just death."

  "Restructuring the human body is like recreating the universe," Aryan added. "Do the inhabitants of a pnet survive when the pnet is destroyed to make a star? No."

  The Greed Vessel remained silent. The swirling colors slowed down. It knew they were right. It had tried to rush the harvest, and they had called its bluff.

  "Since none of us can kill each other," Aryan said, his voice merging with Amara's.

  "We will let you live here," Amara continued.

  "Your logic isn't bad," Aryan admitted. "But we are not capable right now."

  "And since you have a grudge against Markus," Amara said, staring at the entity.

  "Stay with us," they said in perfect unison. "I know you can't refuse this. Because you have no other option. You are stuck with us."

  "The Price of Stagnation."

  In the real world, the wind howled across the gss pins. Markus, who had been a silent statue observing the frozen siblings, finally moved.

  He sat down on his conjured chair, crossed his legs, and looked at them with a gaze that stripped them to the bone.

  "Interesting," the Monarch said. One word. A verdict.

  But inside the mental space, there was no appuse.

  The Greed Vessel didn't rage at their refusal. It didn't scream or bargain. It went eerily, terrifyingly silent. The nebu stopped swirling. The stars dimmed.

  In the System Space, the golden light of Sam's avatar flickered and died out for a second, repced by a cold blue error light. Nine froze, her digital eyes widening as she processed the new calcution.

  They looked at Amara and Aryan with pure horror.

  "Your remaining lifespan..." Sam whispered, his voice trembling. "It has been cut in half."

  "What?" Amara was the first to react. Her hands clenched tight, her nails digging into her palms as she whipped her head toward the dimming Greed.

  The entity didn't ugh. It simply stated a fact of biology.

  "I told you to restructure yourself," the Greed said, its voice sounding distant, as if already bored with them. "You chose to keep the small vessel. A small vessel burns faster to contain a rge fire. That is the price of your 'safety'."

  SNAP.

  The mental world shattered like a dropped mirror.

  GASSSSSSP.

  Aryan and Amara jolted awake in the real world, their lungs sucking in the cold air of the Training Ground. They colpsed onto the floor, sweat pouring off them as if they had run a marathon in seconds.

  The rope binding their hands and legs was still there, tight and heavy.

  But before their eyes, a red System Window fshed, searing the number into their retinas.

  "SYSTEM ALERT"

  Host Decision: Rejection of Evolution.

  Vessel Integrity: Compromised.

  Metabolic Burn Rate: Doubled.

  Time Remaining: 44 Days