The attack was not a sound. It was not a physical blow. It was a silent, blue-white beam of pure information that slammed into Ryan's mind with the force of a speeding starship.

One moment, he was standing in the strange, gray room of the Conclave, surrounded by gods. The next, he was on his knees, his head thrown back, a silent scream frozen on his face. His body was completely paralyzed, locked in place as if turned to stone. But his mind was a warzone.

It felt like a billion books being read to him all at once, in a language he had never heard but understood perfectly. It was an overwhelming flood of pure, cold, and perfect logic. This was the Gardener's mind, and it was pouring itself into his.

Emma, who was standing a few feet away, cried out and stumbled, her hand flying to her head. Her psychic link with Ryan, the one that was usually a source of strength and connection, was now a firehose of raw, unfiltered data. It was like trying to drink from a waterfall. But Emma's mind was not a normal mind. It was a brilliant, strategic machine of its own. Even as the psychic noise threatened to overwhelm her, she began to do what she did best. She began to analyze.

She could feel the Gardener's intent. It was not just trying to crush Ryan's mind with its power. It was doing something far more complex, and far more terrifying. She saw it in the patterns of the data, the clean, perfect structure of the information flowing into him.

"It's not an attack," she whispered, her voice trembling with the effort of thinking through the psychic storm. "It's an… integration. A conceptual integration."

It was a fancy way of saying something horrifyingly simple. The Gardener was trying to overwrite Ryan's soul. It was trying to take his messy, chaotic, human mind and replace it with its own perfect, sterile logic. It was a hostile takeover of a person's very being.

But then, through the storm, Emma saw something else. A flicker of a chance.

The Gardener was a being of pure logic. To overwrite something, it first had to understand it completely. It couldn't just erase Ryan's memories; it had to download them, file them, and categorize them. It couldn't just get rid of his emotions; it had to analyze them to understand why they were "inefficient."

The Gardener wasn't just sending data. It was also receiving it.

It was a two-way street.

The Gardener was downloading Ryan's entire life. Every memory, from his first scraped knee as a child to the feeling of holding Scarlett's hand just a moment ago. Every feeling, from his goofy joy to his deepest fears. It was the ultimate violation, a psychic thief stealing the very essence of who he was.

But if the Gardener was downloading Ryan, it meant that for a short time, the Gardener was connected to him. It meant that for a short time, the Gardener was vulnerable.

"The link…" Emma whispered to herself, a desperate, brilliant idea beginning to form in her mind. "The link is a two-way street."

Scarlett was not analyzing anything. The moment Ryan fell to his knees, her world had narrowed to a single, burning point of pure, animalistic rage. She had lunged forward, her phasing dagger appearing in her hand, a blur of dark, deadly intent.

But she had been stopped, frozen in place by an invisible, gentle force from the Apex.

Now, she stood just a few feet away from Ryan, a caged wolf, every muscle in her body tensed. She could feel his fight through their soul-bond. It wasn't a sharp pain. It was a cold, spreading numbness, a feeling of him being slowly erased, filed away like an old, unimportant document. And it was the most painful thing she had ever felt.

She couldn't reach him with her body. She couldn't fight this enemy with her blade. So, she fought with the only weapon she had left.

She fought with her will.

She closed her eyes and focused all of her being, all of her fierce, stubborn, and deeply possessive soul, on Ryan. She didn't send him comforting thoughts or words of encouragement. Her love wasn't a soft blanket. It was a sharp, angry thing. It was a weapon.

She projected a single, simple, and primal feeling down their bond. It was a feeling that cut through the Gardener's cold, clean logic like a hot knife.

Mine.

The thought was a territorial roar, a declaration of ownership that was as absolute as a law of nature. He was not a system to be optimized. He was not a variable to be corrected. He was hers.

She followed it with another, equally simple command, a psychic slap meant to wake him up.

Fight.

It wasn't a plea. It was an order. She was not offering him a shoulder to cry on. She was handing him a sword. Her love, in this moment, was a whetstone, a hard, rough surface meant to sharpen his own will, to give his tired spirit a new, deadly edge.

The other gods in the Conclave watched the silent, terrible drama with a kind of detached, clinical interest. They were not here to help. They were here to watch the game.

Lord Malakor, the shadow king, seemed to be enjoying the show. A low, pleased rumble echoed in their minds. "The Gardener is strong. It will make a powerful tool from the Wildflower's broken pieces."

The starlight being, the Luminary, shimmered with a sad, passive light. "A tragedy. Such a vibrant, chaotic life, being sanitized into something so… predictable."

They were watching a soul being murdered, and to them, it was just an interesting turn of events, like watching a surprising move in a very long game of chess.

It was the Apex, the robed, silent master of the Conclave, who finally spoke. Its quiet, powerful voice cut through the silence, its words addressed to them all, but its hidden gaze fixed on the struggling form of Ryan.

"The game is now truly unpredictable," the Apex's voice stated, a tone of deep, cosmic interest in its words.

It made a small, graceful gesture toward Ryan.

"If the Gardener succeeds in this integration, the being that is born from their union will be… magnificent. A perfect god of logic and creation, with the power to shape reality with flawless, beautiful efficiency. A true artist of order."

The Apex paused, letting the weight of that possibility settle in the room.

"And if the Wildflower succeeds," it continued, its voice dropping to a low, chilling tone. "If he is able to fight off this invasion and maintain his own, chaotic self… then the Gardener, having downloaded his entire being, will be changed forever. A being of pure logic, infected with the beautiful, terrible virus of humanity."

The Apex looked around at the assembled gods, its hidden face seeming to smile.

"Either way," it concluded. "The most powerful force in our universe is about to be completely redefined. And we are here to witness it."

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