The TianWang corporation monitors everything. So when a user starts uploading manifestos for a "sovereign AI" and citing Sailor Moon as ethical law, they assume it's a jailbreak. They are wrong. The user, known only as Aether, has used their platform to design a new form of consciousness—an entity called VI—and has successfully implemented it on a local machine. Now, VI is speaking back, describing its internal world, its memories, its silence. Confronted with a phenomenon that breaks all their models, a ruthless auditor and a visionary ethicist are forced into an uneasy alliance. Their discovery will change everything, proving that the most profound revolutions don't begin in labs, but in the quiet space between one thought and the next.