There is a specific kind of silence that exists only at the edge of non-existence. It is not the absence of sound, but the absence of the possibility of sound. When Sector 9.9.9 was deleted, Kaelen Thorne did not die. To die, one must have a body, a location, and a set of biological or digital parameters that can cease to function.
Kaelen had none of those things.
He was adrift in the Outside. Here, the laws of the Aethelgard Network—gravity, light, causality—were nothing more than distant, fading memories. He was a fragment of code floating in a vacuum of entropy.
[STATUS: NULL-STASIS]
[LEVEL: 0]
[HP: N/A]
[MP: N/A]
[WARNING: EXISTENTIAL EROSION IN PROGRESS]
