The Zero Point Rite — A Soul For A Soul

Jul 2026

It starts with six cities, all at once. In London, Tokyo, Lagos, São Paulo, Chicago and Sydney, throughout the world, time and place become irrelevant. The Atom Eater's clones don't announce themselves, they simply appear and begin: no demands, no warnings, just destruction. In mere hours, they rampage through thousands - infrastructure and emergency systems collapsing from city to city. Each feeds back worse data than the last. Both factions receive alerts at the same time, causing Vane to call a full assembly for the first time in 4 years. Mordred accepts. At first, neither speaks to the other. In a safehouse on the outskirts of East London, Liam sits with Lilith's head in his lap and watches the clone signal spread across his network's global map. He planned for this. He planned for all of it. He watches it happen and says nothing.

Jul 2026

Both factions and the global weaving society as a whole scrambles to contain the threat. Groups of high-ranked faction operatives across major outposts in 4 cities deploy simultaneously. It goes badly almost immediately. A 7.0 WP weaver - elite, experienced - lasts 4 minutes against a single, still weak clone before having to retreat. The reason soon becomes clear; the moment one clone defeats a weaver, it learns their technique, but so does every clone on the planet. By only the 3rd engagement, the factions' best strategies are already countermeasured. Arden fights one herself and barely escapes, burning her store down in ways that leave her hands shaking. She reports back to Mordred in one sentence: "We cannot fight these conventionally." Liam moves through London with catatonic Lilith, shifting safehouses, monitoring progress with his crew. The civilian numbers are climbing faster than he thought. He had modelled for casualties. He didn't model for what seeing them would feel like.

Jul 2026

After re-grouping and communicating the little they knew of the threat to each other, the factions shift their strategy. Vane deploys 3 of his highest-ranked members, all above 9.0WP, in one of the 4 core weaving cities - Tokyo. For 12 minutes it looks containable. Then the clone scales its EU budget and the fight ends in 90 seconds. All 3 survive, barely. One won't weave again. Back at the consolidated compound - both factions sharing Mordred's base out of necessity - Mordred and Nico sit down with the Tokyo data together for the first time, 2 men who spent years trying to destroy each other now at the same table because there is no other option. The conclusion lands simply; the clones grow stronger with every engagement, absorbing techniques from anyone they defeat and redistributing the knowledge globally. Every fight makes the next one harder. Across the compound, Elias and Iris sit at the same briefing table for the first time since the orphanage. They focus very hard on the data.

Jul 2026

After only 9 hours, all but the groups in London and New York, the 2 core weaving cities of the world, have gone into retreat and damage control. Shortly after, the global death toll crosses one million. It appears in a report Arden is reading. She stops for a moment, then continues. A government briefing intercepted by Vane's intelligence division uses the phrase "acceptable losses" in reference to projected civilian casualties. Vane reads it twice. Juno moves through the compound surrounded by people preparing for a war they might not survive and understands, maybe for the first time with full clarity, exactly what her technique means to all of them. She finds Iris and asks: "If it came to it - would you want me to do it?" Iris doesn't answer immediately. Then: "I want you to want to." Liam is in his safehouse. He used the phrase "acceptable losses" in his own planning documents. He remembers writing it, but even then something feels off. For now, he shrugs it off as nerves.

Jul 2026

Intelligence from 3 separate sources arrives at the same conclusion: the clone dispersal isn't random. They are eliminating military and weaver response capacity, but it doesn't end there. The patterns are pointing toward a final convergence point. Were it true, it wouldn't just be weavers and the military at risk - it would be everyone. Arden maps it and brings it to Mordred. Neither says out loud what the convergence point appears to be. Vane, given the same data independently, sits with it before saying quietly: "He's coming here." Liam reviews the same pattern from his own monitoring systems. This was always the plan - weaken everyone first, then the main body arrives and finishes it. What he doesn't know is The Atom Eater won't stop there. He watches it resolve toward London and feels it again. Not triumph, not regret, but... anxiety. Across the city, Juno has started carrying a small notebook everywhere. She hasn't written anything in it yet.

Jul 2026

A news feed plays in the background of Liam's safehouse. He isn't watching until a reporter makes him look up - She's outside a primary school in Lagos. 14 children, ages 6 to 9, killed by a clone in a fight with one of Mordred's elite. He stands very still. He had modelled for civilian casualties, even large ones, and had decided they were worth it. They took his peoples freedom, so he'll take theirs. An eye for an eye. But as he stands there listening, he can't help but think about a 7-yr-old girl on her birthday who had everything taken from her and still chose peace, watering his seeds of doubt further still. Across London, Juno meets with Mordred and Vane too, for the first time, discuss her technique. In the event it becomes life or death for potentially the whole world, it is vital she's ready. Despite knowing that putting it off was a bad move, nothing would have prepared her for this. After they finish, she goes home and writes in her notebook while watching the sunset.

Jul 2026

12 hours in and something strange has settled over the compound - 2 factions that spent years trying to destroy each other, under enough pressure, have begun functioning as one. Arden and Nico run joint briefings with the awareness of people who once tried to kill each other and have quietly set it aside. Elias and Iris have stopped pretending their rapport is professional. The whole compound has noticed and both faction leaders have independently decided not to address it, for different reasons. Juno wanders through it all with newfound responsibility of someone holding the deciding card who would genuinely prefer not to. Late one night she finds Mordred in the compound's small outdoor space and they talk for a long time about nothing - her cat, what rain felt like in a body he was born into, London before dawn. In the morning she walks toward Vane across the briefing room and says: "Tell me about your brother."

Jul 2026

The clone attacks accelerate. The alliance run continuous operations across London, burning through their stores at rates that simply aren't sustainable, all to keep it the only city to have not yet abandoned the effort and gone into retreat. Still, every weaver deployed comes back depleted, and the soul degradation costs are accumulating across the alliance. Forgotten Birthday's and first dates may seem harmless, but each day lost makes you less of you. In the chaos, Juno makes her mind up. She doesn't announce it, and instead finds Vane and Mordred together in the briefing room, puts her notebook on the table, and says: "I'll do it. 3 conditions. I understand the full process before it starts. No deception about what gets created. And whoever is left tells people my name." Both men agree without hesitation. Meanwhile, Liam has started driving toward London. Not because the plan demands it, but because something else is pulling him there that he doesn't have a name for yet.

Jul 2026

Vane and Mordred each go out alone - no coordination, different targets - to test the full ceiling of what they're facing. Vane wins his engagement, but for the first time since his clash with Mordred, it wasn't easy. It's written in how he holds himself afterward. Mordred wins more cleanly but comes back shaken that the strength of their foe is far worse than he first thought, and he too is reminded of what anxiety feels like. They share their data without commentary. Back at the compound: Nico and Arden have settled into a working rhythm neither planned; Elias and Iris occupy the same spaces without pretense, the compound having quietly stopped expecting them not to; while Juno moves through the building saying goodbyes that she doesn't mean as goodbyes. She finds Elias in the evening and gives him something small - we don't see what. He looks at it, then at her. Neither speaks. Two streets from the compound perimeter, a van parks. Liam cuts the engine and waits in the dark.

Jul 2026

Day 2. Juno video-calls her two closest friends, talks for an hour about nothing, laughs twice, and says goodbye in a roundabout way, though at least she means it this time. She feeds Gerald on camera - a neighbour has him now - and watches him eat. She reads her notebook cover to cover. Then she finds Iris and asks her to sit for a while. Iris does, so they talk. About small things, large things and then nothing at all. Elias knocks at some point. Juno tells him to come in. The three of them sit together until Vane sends for her. On the other side of the compound, both leaders sit alone with what they're about to give up. Mordred runs a small defensive weave from a body he occupied in 1887. Just once more. Vane stands at a window looking at London and thinks about his brother. They both know that only one of them will make it out of this.

Jul 2026

With the situation growing worse, it's clear. Ready or not, Juno must decide who she will choose to stop The Atom Eater, and become the strongest. Unable to decide and out of time, Juno has no choice but her last resort. She requests the apprentices fight - winner merges with their master. Vane, Mordred, and their now allied factions gather to watch as Elias and Iris, who grew up together, split, reconnected again, and always knowing exactly how the other thinks - finally go head to head. It is extraordinary. Every technique met with a perfect counter, every opening closed before it fully exists. Elias's Singular Bastion seals the plaza and Iris counts her breath inside it, patient, waiting. The Grand Intersection fires and for a moment it looks decisive. Then the air pressure drops. A clone appears in the centre of the plaza - bigger than the Tokyo ones, 2 days worth of absorbed techniques and intent to kill. It ignores both fighters entirely, and walks straight toward Juno.

Jul 2026

No pause. The clone moves toward Juno. Elias and Iris, both running on fumes, make the same decision without a word. The Kinetic Lattice Shield goes up. The Vector Redirection Loom throws the clone sideways. It isn't enough and they both know it, but it buys seconds. Then Vane teleports in. What follows is the three of them working together for the first time - Elias anchoring, Iris redirecting, Vane operating at a register neither of them has ever fought beside. The clone is the strongest they've encountered. Vane burns past his store's ceiling and the soul degradation shows in his face as he pushes through it. The clone falls. Elias and Iris are on the ground next to each other, breathing hard, neither pretending they don't need to be close right now. Nobody says anything. Vane looks at them - something behind his eyes that isn't tactical - then turns to Mordred: "We need to talk."

Jul 2026

They sit with the data. An hour ago Elias and Iris working in near-perfect complement could barely hold one clone. Vane needed to burn past his ceiling to finish it. The clones grow stronger every day. There are thousands of them. The main body is, by any rational projection, significantly more powerful than any clone they've faced. Neither of them individually is confident of defeating it, even if they merged with their apprentice. The arithmetic arrives at one answer, and both know it before either says it. Mordred says it first: "We'd need to merge." Vane doesn't respond for a long time. Then: "I know." Juno is told. She goes to a room alone, opens her notebook to a blank page, and writes one sentence. We see her write but not what it says. She closes the notebook, unsure how to feel. Outside the perimeter, Liam has been parked in his mission control van for nearly a day. He hasn't gone in. He isn't sure yet if he's going to.

Jul 2026

Vane can't sleep. His memory moves through his past the way memory does in the dark - without order, without mercy. A summer afternoon in 2003, his brother laughing at something he said. The lab. The blueprints. His brother's face in the moment before. The silence after, alone with 217 dead and a power he never asked for. The years of building the faction framed now not as conviction but as penance - the shape his guilt took when it needed somewhere to go. A compound in suburban London. A child left alone in the wreckage. He has never told anyone: that she died in his war, and he carries her. As dawn comes up he holds one thought - he has spent years building toward peace and is about to surrender every version of himself that could ever feel it. He goes to find Mordred. They stand in a corridor. "Are you ready?" Mordred, after a long moment: "I've been ready for three hundred years. I just didn't know what I was ready for."

Jul 2026

Mordred can't sleep either. Where Vane's memories arrive unbidden, Mordred's are deliberate - he moves through them like a man who has been the sole keeper of his own history for centuries, because no one else has lived long enough to remember it with him. France, 1347: the first body that wasn't his, the vertigo of waking behind a stranger's eyes. A house in Florence - a dozen weavers sharing techniques, arguments and wine, briefly something approaching a family, before someone talked and the Inquisition came. Mordred survived only because he was wearing someone else when they came for his name. That pattern, repeated every century: community found, community lost, surviving in the wrong skin. WW2 witnessed from inside a weaving community that believed, this time, the world had finally grown past it. What snapped in 1946 wasn't rage - it was acceptance that the world would never meet him where he was. When he reaches the corridor, Vane is already there. He is ready.

Jul 2026

Day 3. Morning. The compound gathers. Juno stands in the centre, Vane and Mordred either side of her. She opens her notebook one last time and reads what she wrote. This time, we hear it. It is a simple list of things that made her happy. Gerald. Friday dinner. Ceramics class. Her balcony view at sunset. She closes the notebook and gives it to Iris, finally at peace with her fate. Gently, she grabs their hands, and begins the ritual. Floating just above the ground, the men once at odds slowly become one. When it's all over, Juno goes slack and falls. Elias catches her, and just like that, she is gone. For a moment, silence. Then, every EBand in the building pings in unison. Where 3 once stood only moments ago, now is only 1. Being-A opens its eyes. It looks around - not with hostility, or warmth, but with a calm regret. It sees it's old students over Juno's body, the desperate hope on everyone's faces, the general chaos around, and say's one thing; "I understand."

Jul 2026

Being-A doesn't wait. The clones begin falling immediately - city by city, continent by continent, as the compound watches and monitors. Everything Liam built gets dismantled in minutes. Clone after clone, regardless of speed or absorbed techniques, regardless of whether they're built from 5,000 EU or 50,000 - Being-A moves through them like they simply aren't there. The Atom Eater, watching through its distributed consciousness, reaches a conclusion; to defeat this threat, deploying more clones is a waste of energy it cannot afford. One by one it recalls them. Liam and the compound watch as the energy signals stop collapsing and start consolidating, pulling back from every corner of the globe toward a single point above London. For a moment the world goes still. News helicopters circle at a cautious distance. Below, burning cities. Above, Being-A, waiting. Rising toward it, the Atom Eater main body - everything it has left, compressed into one final position.

Jul 2026

They meet above London - frictionless perfection against refined destruction. For a while it's even, both using moves that would destroy buildings as casually as breathing. But slowly, the EU count dwindles. After already burning through 500k of clones, the Eater is running out. Sensing this, Being-A never lets up - keeping the pace as the count drops. 900k. 750k. 500k. The Eater tries shifting strategy, but too late. Being-A never even lets it think, grinding it down till it simply runs dry and fades away. Being-A goes still, as news helicopters whir above. Then, it speaks: Alistair and Aymen were as human as us all. Not evil, just misguided; never realising that it wasn't power they sought, but connection. Family. Love. Things that, in it's immortality, it will never find. To Being-A, life without those things is not life, but a cage. A cage it refuses to stay in any longer. And with that, it fades into its own technique, tearing itself apart till only the chaos remains. Cut to black

Jul 2026

The world is quiet in the way that follows catastrophe - not peaceful, just exhausted. Governments scramble for explanations that don't exist. Nico and Arden build a cover story neither believes will hold, but there is no alternative. The compound exists in a leaderless space nobody has named yet - both leaders gone, the lieutenants in charge by default, and saying it out loud would require deciding what it means, so nobody does. Elias sits alone with Juno's notebook for a long time before he opens it. He reads it twice, closes it and puts it in his jacket. Iris finds him there. He gives it to her without a word. She reads it too. They sit together, in each others arms and a deafening silence, until it gets dark. Across the city, in the back of a van, Lilith breathes. Her eyes open, but see nothing. She isn't dead, but she is gone. In the moment, Liam can't decide which is worse. He sits beside her and tells her what happened, knowing she can't hear him. He needs to say it anyway.

Jul 2026

Liam arrives at the compound perimeter in the early evening. He doesn't come through the gate. He stands in the dark outside the walls just like the ones he grew up inside. Same concrete, different wreckage. After a while, Elias comes out. They face each other without speaking - two people who understand everything about each other and ended up in completely different places because of it. Elias says: "You can't stay." Liam says: "I know." Elias says: "Don't disappear." Liam nods and goes back to the van, and sits with Lilith in the dark. He takes her hand and tells her he's going to find someone who can help her. Tells her he doesn't know what he is yet, but he knows what he isn't anymore. He starts the engine, and drives away. Post-credits: a small room in London. Liam's wall map - but the nuclear facilities list is gone. Pinned to the centre in its place, a photograph. Four children on a park bench in South London. Maya is laughing. Liam is looking at her with a long-gone smile.