Kael's words cut like ice against my back.
"You," he whispered. "The readings correlate with you."
I gazed at the Null Heart. The rings whirled around it in silence, every movement a whisper of shattered time. I hadn't touched it. I hadn't looked at it before.
And yet.
Something deep inside me responded. A thrum. A muted pulse. Not recognition — but guilt.
I didn't trigger it," I explained.
"Perhaps not now," Kael whispered. "But maybe. a you did. A Kevin who chose differently in an earlier Loop. One who cracked the seal."
"So why am I here? Why recall what he did?"
"Because this ruin is unstable. You might be bled memories between selves."
His eyes sharpened half fear, half awe.
Or perhaps. you're the version who did it. And the Loop is repairing the truth to your head."
I backed up, thudding heart.
Not in fear in resistance.
"I don't accept that."
"Then prove it." Kael spun around, cloak billowing. "We drop it here. We don't take the Null Heart. If you were going to use it, then this is your test."
"And if I fail?"
"Then perhaps you weren't ever you in the first place."
We exited the room.
We didn't glance back.
----------
The halls aged as we progressed further. Dust coated the borders of old murals: towers falling, men marching backward through flames, skies broken like mirrors. These were not metaphors used in art.
They were Loop records.
They depicted various stages of deterioration. Flawed resets. Shattered timelines. Deserted tests.".
"Kael," I said after a long silence. "How do you sleep knowing how many times we've failed?"
"No."
He didn't even blink when he said it.
"..."
"..."
As we went down to the lower levels, the temperature changed again.
Not colder. Hollow.
The walls no longer felt like stone. They sucked up light rather than bouncing it back. Footsteps no longer rang out. The air became thick like sound itself was muffled.
We had entered a Time-Dead Zone.
"This area was sealed," Kael muttered. "Loopwatchers closed it off six iterations ago. The timeline deterioration was too great."
"So why is it open now?"
"Someone opened it."
"To trap us?"
"Or to bring us here."
---
The corridor terminated in a vault not of rock, but of memory. Literally.
The whole room was constructed out of floating strands of memory strings of shimmering, white, changing light, like silk caught in mid-air. They all glowed softly when we approached them, and pieces of sound seeped in:
Screams. Laughter. Gunfire. Whispers. A lullaby.
Thousands of moments. Chopped up. Real.
I tried to reach out.
Kael caught my arm. "Don't touch them."
"Why not?"
"They're raw pieces. Unattached. If you take one in, it'll overwrite part of your memory with someone else's."
"Whose memories are these?"
Kael was grim.
"Yours. All of them."
I froze.
My hand hovered over a strand that glowed pale red. pulsing like it recalled blood.
I heard a voice.
"Run, Kevin. Please. Don't look back."
I snatched my hand away.
"What is this place?"
"A breachpoint," Kael replied. "When someone resets too many times without clearance, they tear the temporal lining. Memories get stuck here. Half-real. Half-lost."
"And I did this."
"You. or someone using your name."
I took a breath. The silence in this place wasn't just lack of sound.
It was the weight of all the forgotten.
Suddenly, Kael stopped.
His gaze settled on a corner of the vault — a darkness where no light fell. There, suspended in the emptiness, hung a figure. Standing. Still. Enshrouded in memory strands like silk webbing.
A boy.
Same age as me. Same build. Same face.
Another Kevin.
"Heartbeat detected. Temporal lock active. No decay. He's not an Echo," Kael reported, advancing.
"Then what is he?"
Kael's voice grew strained. "He's a Loop Orphan."
A what?"
"As in, a lost anchor in their timeline. They exist, but they don't belong anywhere."
"Then what becomes of him?"
Kael gazed at me.
"That is up to you."
The figure's eyes fluttered open.
Not open. Not afraid.
Just. hollow.
Like the expression of someone who had been by themselves too long to be afraid of anything anymore.
He breathed softly.
"Which one. are you?
I moved closer. The strands moved, and some swept against my flesh
visions flared at the back of my mind:
Me, kneeling at Nima's side while fire rained down upon us.
Me, holding a shattered blade to Veyne's neck.
Me, screaming as Kael hemorrhaged beside a shattered console.
"I don't know anymore," I said.
"..."
Suddenly, the vault trembled.
Lights faded. The strands spasmed.
From the rear of the room came the scrape of metal on metal .slow, slow. A tension filled the air.
Not like gravity.
Like attention.
Kael's eyes flashed to me.
"Something's entering the vault."
"..."
"A guardian?"
"..."
"No," he said. "Worse. A Loop Editor."
The strands curled in upon themselves like cowed animals.
I gazed at the trapped boy. the other Kevin. His head canted.
"Don't let it find me again."
Then he was gone. not gone like disappearing . but like being taken back by the Loop. Like time erased him from the spot.
Suddenly
Something entered the room.
I could not see its face.
Only a cloak of falling ink, sewn with pieces of timelines. Its limbs were off — too long, too slow, too knowing. The air surrounding it pulsed like a thousand clocks ticking out of rhythm.
Kael breathed only one word:
"Solryn."