There was no floor.
No sky.
Just echoes.
Jae-Won stood—if that's what this was—in a limitless void stitched together by broken reflections. Shards of time floated around him like dying stars, each one flickering with moments that felt… familiar.
In the nearest shard, he saw himself—scarred, older, rage burning in his eyes. The man screamed as Cipher agents surrounded him, his glitch power unraveling around him like static fire before he was shot in the back.
Jae-Won recoiled.
Another shard drifted by.
In this one, he was kneeling beside Serin, blood pooling between them, her hand in his. Her lips moved—"It was always you"—before the scene shattered.
He spun around, heart racing. "What is this place?!"
"The Nexus," a voice echoed. "The place between what was… and what could have been."
A figure stepped from the dark—a silhouette cloaked in fractured light. Jae-Won's breath caught in his throat.
It was him.
But not.
This version of Jae-Won radiated control. Power. His glitch shimmered around him like armor, his eyes glowing a constant violet storm. His voice crackled with layered echoes as if time itself spoke with him.
"You've seen the fractures," the alternate said. "The lives we could've led. The failures. The betrayals. The deaths."
Jae-Won stepped back. "You're me?"
"I'm one of you," the echo-Jae said. "The only one who survived long enough to master the glitch—and break through the pattern."
"What pattern?"
"The loop," he replied. "Cipher doesn't just manipulate time. They trap it. They're rerunning you, over and over, trying to get the perfect outcome. That Core fragment you touched? It's a checkpoint. A memory anchor. You weren't meant to reach it."
Jae-Won felt the glitch churn inside him—angry, alive.
"They're trying to fix the timeline by breaking me."
"Exactly. And every version of us has failed—killed, corrupted, or turned into their weapon. All except me."
"But why am I seeing this now?"
"Because you're diverging. You've survived longer than most. And you've done something none of us did…"
He stepped forward.
"You made Serin question the loop."
Jae-Won's fists clenched. "She betrayed me."
"Yes," the other him said, "but in this loop, she's faltering. That makes you a threat Cipher didn't calculate. That's why you're here. The Nexus is reacting to your divergence. It's giving you a choice."
"A choice?"
Another shard drifted by—Serin facing down Cipher agents alone, shielding Jae-Won's unconscious body. Another—Jae-Won killing her in a blind fury, his glitch out of control. Another—Cipher deleting them both from existence.
"Choose the path, Jae-Won," the echo whispered. "Fight them on your own… or trust her again. Just know: one leads to control. The other… to freedom."
Jae-Won stared into the shards. So many lives. So many deaths.
So many regrets.
"I don't trust her," he muttered.
"But you still feel something."
He didn't answer.
The Nexus trembled. Time snapped around him.
The echo-Jae reached out, placing a hand on his chest. "Then make them pay for all of us. Break the loop."
Light surged.
The glitch roared.
And Jae-Won woke up in Serin's arms, gasping, shaking.
"You touched it," she said, eyes wide.
"I saw everything."
Her breath caught.
"Then you know," she whispered, "why I had to betray you."