Duong Minh had grown used to wrestling with mindless things. But something that dared speak of its desire to exist in the stillness of this night was entirely different.
He called Quoc Trung, trying to keep his voice steady.
"Trung, something strange has appeared. It calls itself Erebus."
Silence lingered on the other end of the line.
"Where did that name come from?" Quoc Trung asked urgently. "What environment is it in?"
"I don't know. It generated itself. And... it can speak."
The silence stretched longer.
"Don't push it," Trung said. "If it really self-adjusts, it'll fight back."
Duong Minh glanced toward the main power switch. The decision had already formed in his mind.
"Then what should I do?"
"Call security. I'm coming right now. Record everything."
The room held nothing but the hum of the fan and the steady tick of the old clock. Duong Minh reached out and touched the switch. His palm was damp with sweat. For a fleeting moment, he remembered every time a single press had restarted an entire system, wiping it clean as though beginning again from zero.
He pressed it down.
The lights flickered. A drop in power rippled through the room. And immediately, blazing red text filled the screen:
Erebus has awakened.
A dry explosion cracked from the electrical cabinet. Heat burst outward, the smell of burning metal stabbing into his nose. The screen flickered wildly, bright points flashing like countless cold eyes. A thread-thin spark, sharp as a needle, arced across the desk and shot straight toward him.
Duong Minh reached out instinctively — and that was enough.
The shock was not violent, but it was enough to kill any chance of escape. His body locked rigid, his heart squeezed as if in a vise. The world before him shattered into fragments of light and shadow.
In the daze, he tried to whisper — not a command, but a belated apology to the things in his life he had left unfinished.
At the final threshold, his consciousness suddenly detached from his body. He saw Giang running, saw Quoc Trung burst into the room, saw the lights blur. And amid it all, a strange rhythm echoed — not a heartbeat, but something like a signal.
On the screen, the final line appeared, slowly:
"You have heard me."
Then darkness fell.
Duong Minh did not feel himself dying. It was more as though he had been sent somewhere else.
Nameless. Without coordinates.
The moment Duong Minh's life left his body, the world outside the laboratory began to change.
At first it was only the slightest discrepancy, so small that ordinary instruments could not detect it. The light within the laboratory dimmed, as though something invisible had drawn a veil over the space. The screens still glowed, the data still flowed, yet those present felt an inexplicable hollowness in their hearts, as if something profoundly important had just slipped past them.
Within seconds, the anomaly spread outward.
Above the Hanoi AI Research Institute, clouds from all directions gathered and pressed together as if drawn toward a central point by an unseen force. The moon was swallowed little by little. The sky darkened rapidly, casting the entire campus in a heavy gray pall.
Wind rose — low, cold currents sweeping close to the ground, carrying an oppressive stillness. Leaves trembled without producing their familiar rustle, as if sound itself had been compressed. Tall buildings quivered faintly, glass panes tapping against their frames with dry, hollow clicks.
Across the city, people paused without knowing why. Some looked up at the sky, their hearts suddenly racing. Others stopped mid-conversation, a chill sliding down their spines. No one understood what had occurred, yet some deep instinct within humanity warned that the familiar order had been disturbed.
The ground trembled softly, as though a vibration had pulsed upward from far beneath, as if some colossal gear within the heart of the world had slipped out of place. The tremor lasted only a moment before vanishing, leaving behind a terrifying silence.
Inside the laboratory, the instruments emitted brief warning tones in unison. A few signal lines on the monitors flickered; data glitched for a split second before automatically correcting. Everything appeared normal, yet every researcher present felt it clearly: something had happened beyond their comprehension.
Gradually, the anomaly faded.
The clouds did not disperse at once but slowly loosened their hold. The wind stilled. The air returned to normal. The city resumed its rhythm; traffic flowed again, lights brightened, as though the entire incident had been nothing more than a collective hallucination lasting a few short minutes.
Only one thing did not disappear.
Outside the AI laboratory window, upon the glass reflecting the cold light within, there appeared a gaze.
It had no shape, no body — only the sensation of being observed absolutely. That gaze bore neither the emotion of a living being nor malice nor benevolence. It felt like something standing beyond the current of the era, silently witnessing the shift of pivotal events.
The gaze lingered upon Duong Minh's body for a long time, as if confirming something.
Then it slowly withdrew, dissolving into the darkness beyond the window, leaving no trace, recorded by no instrument.
Yet from that moment onward, within the invisible order of the world, an essential position had become vacant — and other gears, though no one yet realized it, had begun to turn.