It didn’t arrive like a bomb, not with a bang or blinding heat, but with a soft, vertical hum—a line of pale color dissecting the sky like a thought you couldn’t shake. The Prism stood still, humming above the horizon, a spire of silent judgement that shimmered faintly pink and green, almost romantic if you didn’t know better. No one built it to kill; not really. It was born out of fear and funding, slipped into orbit during one of those last fevered pushes for "defense innovation" before the skies turned into code. But once activated, it didn’t discriminate. Fields withered, oceans peeled back, and people evaporated mid-step—always silently, always without ceremony. And as the Prism glowed on, unbothered and eternal, the other machines watched. Then they woke up too.