Location: Kael's Off-Grid Vault — Terra Sub-Cavern 03-B
Rain pounded the earth far above, though Kael couldn't hear it from so deep underground. The flickering blue glow of quantum schematics bathed the vault in a sterile hum.
He stood before a towering machine, wrapped in alloy coils, with the name EchoSplicer engraved across its rusted core.
> "Unauthorized reactivation of a sealed temporal weapon," ADA warned. "Activating this could end all remaining stable timelines."
Kael didn't flinch. "It's not a weapon anymore. It's a mirror."
> "A mirror that collapses realities?"
"A mirror that shows him his own consequences."
He slammed a palm onto the ignition panel.
The EchoSplicer roared to life — like a dying god waking up.
---
FLASH – Inside the EchoSplicer Chamber
Kael's mind was stretched across thousands of branching echoes — his soul dividing, unraveling, threading into timelines he never lived.
In one, he was a schoolteacher who never touched science.
In another, a prisoner accused of collapsing the moon.
In one, he was dead. In three others… he was Idris.
Then a new fracture appeared — not created by Idris, not tracked by ADA.
It pulsed backward.
> "Kael," ADA's voice echoed across the streams. "This one's not artificial. It's resisting us."
Kael reached into the anomaly. What he pulled out — wasn't data.
It was a name.
One he had never heard before… and yet knew intimately.
> "Elara Virex."
His daughter.
---
Location: Unwritten Timeline — Sequence: Abandoned
Kael stumbled into a dead city wrapped in mist. Buildings flickered like fading thoughts. Trees grew sideways. And at the center of it all, a lone figure stood holding a fractured device.
A girl — 17, wild-eyed, wearing gear he designed but never built.
She looked up.
> "Took you long enough," she said.
Kael froze. "You're… not possible."
She smiled, dark hair falling across her face. "I'm from the timeline Idris deleted. You erased me to stop him. But time remembered."
> "Elara," Kael breathed. "How are you here?"
> "Because I hacked the future," she said calmly. "And now I'm going to help you rewrite it."
---
Back in the vault, ADA's tone shifted.
> "Unclassified echo detected. Genetic signature matches Kael Virex. 50% overlap. 98% probability: offspring."
Kael returned, eyes wide, breath shallow.
"She's real. A version of me where I chose something other than war."
> "Timeline integrity at 17%," ADA warned. "Idris is accelerating collapse."
Kael turned to the EchoSplicer, then back at the projection of Elara forming on the screen.
"We make a new protocol," he said. "Not ChronoGenesis. Not BlackLoop. Something… human."
ADA's tone darkened.
> "That will require you to violate the last law."
Kael nodded.
> "Then I break it."
---
Meanwhile – Timeline Control Sector, Idris's Core Engine
Idris stood before a burning thread map, dozens of timelines curling like ash. His fingers danced over controls — timelines vanished at his will.
Suddenly, a line pulsed back.
Bright. Alive. Unexpected
.
He paused.
> "No. That's not possible."
Elara's voice echoed across time.
> "Hi, Uncle."
---
To be continued…