Location: Memory Rift Alpha-19 – "Non-Space" Layered Zone
The Rift wasn't a place, not really.
It was a mistake in time—a bleed-point where Kael had once hidden something too dangerous to destroy, and too personal to face.
Now it pulsed with light again.
He and Yanis stood at the edge of a flickering lake made entirely of thought. Reflections drifted like ghosts across its surface—Kael's voice, Yanis's screams, laughter they didn't remember.
> "This is it," Kael whispered. "Where I left it."
Yanis clenched her fist.
> "I feel it calling me."
> "I know."
> "But I don't want it."
Kael nodded.
> "Neither did I."
---
They step in
Every footstep through the rift shifted their thoughts. Kael remembered being fifteen again, before he ever touched the Seed. Yanis saw her own birth, but… not through her eyes. Through someone else's. Someone older.
The fragment was playing tricks.
And then they reached it.
Suspended in the middle of a shattered tower of memory: a crimson-black fragment, humming with chaos.
Kael dropped to a knee as pain ripped through his head.
> [Memory Override Attempt Detected – Anchor Breach Level 3]
[Fragment Identity: CLASSIFIED / DESIGNATION: "REJECTED CORE"]
> "It's not just another Seed fragment," Kael gasped.
> "It's the one we made by accident."
---
The Truth of the 14th
Yanis approached it. Her eyes widened.
> "It's… like a scar."
Kael nodded.
> "It wasn't formed in a Gate."
> "Then how?"
> "It was born the moment I turned against Aeyra. When I lied to her. When I tried to erase part of my own memory…"
He looked at the fragment with dread.
> "This is that lie. The memory I refused to carry."
The girl in red whispered softly:
> "This one wasn't rejected by the Seed."
"It was rejected by you."
---
The Fragment Reacts
Yanis stepped closer.
The fragment pulsed—twice.
Then split.
A shard of it pierced her chest.
Kael shouted.
Yanis didn't fall.
She stood straight—eyes burning bright crimson and black.
> [New Fragment Claimed: Heretic Class // Name: "The Lie That Lives"]
[Trait: "Self-Forking Consciousness" – Host now contains two active timelines]
She looked at Kael—and both versions of her spoke at once:
> "She remembers."
"She denies."
Kael backed away.
> "Yanis…"
But the girl in red was silent.
Because now something deeper was stirring.
And it wasn't the girl anymore.
---
Final Scene – Elsewhere
The Choir watched the fragment spark to life on their chronomap.
One of them stood.
> "He found it."
Another replied.
> "No. She did."
> "Then the Heresy has begun."
The eldest Choir member, a voice not heard in years, finally spoke:
> "Prepare the Sealbreaker Protocol."
"We end the Reclaimer bloodline."
"For good."