The Ashes of the Thirteenth Berkeley Shield

The rain wasn’t falling from the sky. It was seeping out of a vast black rift in the heavens. When the “Cleaners” of a higher-dimensional civilization arrived, the modern science humanity had once taken pride in collapsed. In this age, human lives were as insignificant as dust, and anything erased seemed as though it had never existed. Lin Mo, a target marked by the System as “redundant data,” awakened a golden flower-shaped mark in his palm at the brink of despair. To survive, he was forced into a deadly mystery spanning dimensions. Why was the higher-dimensional civilization’s “antivirus software” hunting him? And was the black-clad woman who had pushed him into the abyss friend or foe? Every clue ultimately pointed to an ancient legend the world had misunderstood: the Mayan prophecy. As it turned out, 2012 was not the end of the world. It marked the opening of the “Thirteenth Baktun” in the Long Count calendar. That was no apocalypse, but a “logical paradox” forged from the remains of an entire civilization destroyed before ours. As the higher-dimensional civilization tried to erase every variable with absolute reason, it forgot that the deepest code of consciousness was anger, sorrow, and the freedom to refuse to be formatted. The great tower was about to fall, while the gods sat high above the clouds. Standing atop the ruins, Lin Mo’s golden palm-light tore through the void of the night sky. He whispered to the lofty laws of logic: “Let the show begin.”