Kael stood at the edge of the Dominion Vault, staring up at a spire that twisted reality in subtle, wrong ways. Its surface didn't shimmer or glow not exactly. It shifted imperceptibly, like something just behind a dream, unreadable if stared at too directly. Every time Kael looked too long, he had the strange sensation of forgetting how to count.
There was no door.
But the vault was open.
The air around it pulsed in strange sync with the mark in his chest. He stepped forward, and the pulse intensified. Static crawled up his arms. The glyphs embedded in the stone rippled once then stilled.
Dominion Vault 9-A: Observation Resumed.
Unbound Core Signature: Contained.
Warning: Memory Integrity Unverified.
Kael exhaled, slow and controlled. He didn't know what that meant, but it didn't sound like a threat. Not yet. Just… interest. The system was watching again.
The entrance wasn't a door so much as a tear just wide enough for a man to walk through if he didn't question where it led. The edges glowed faintly, as though stitched together from distant lightning.
Kael stepped inside.
The world folded.
There was no corridor. No interior space. No architecture.
Just space.
Endless, horizonless dark, punctuated by spiraling clusters of glowing script bits of code, maybe, or language so old it had turned into itself. Each cluster spun slowly in silence, casting soft radial light like constellations.
Kael floated. Or maybe stood. His feet didn't touch ground, but neither did he fall.
In front of him, a circle formed—twelve orbs orbiting a central point. Each orb throbbed faintly. Each was a different color, a different temperature, a different emotion. Rage. Regret. Hunger. Emptiness.
He didn't understand what he was seeing.
Then one of the orbs stopped moving. The one that pulsed with something like recognition.
A voice not the system spoke. Soft. Female. Familiar.
"You were not supposed to be here."
Kael turned slowly.
There was no figure.
Just that voice. It wasn't hostile. It was… disappointed.
"This Vault was sealed. Fold-locked. But your mark sings to it. The same pattern. The same breach."
Kael didn't respond.
He couldn't. His throat felt sealed, his thoughts too loud.
The orb that had stopped drifting pulsed brighter.
A strand of light reached out from it slow, hesitant and touched his chest.
The spiral-brand ignited.
Kael gasped.
Then the world collapsed again.
He stood in a hallway.
Not Kael'theran.
Earth.
The light was blue-white, sterile. The walls were made of metal. He could hear the hum of servers, the beeping of machines. A window to his left showed the curve of a planet—Earth, definitely—but there was something off about the atmosphere. It glitched, flickering between day and night every few seconds.
A figure walked past him, clipboard in hand. Another adjusted settings on a console. They didn't see him.
He looked down at his hands.
They were his.
But younger Unscarred Whole.
A memory.
Not his, Not yet.
"Patient 117-A: Neural latency stable. Echo retention below threshold. Sequence remains locked."
The voice came from a tall man in a silver coat. His face was wrong. It shifted every few seconds. Not morphing skipping. Like a corrupted video.
Kael stepped forward. No one reacted.
In the next room, through a thin glass pane, a figure sat in a chair.
A child.
Eight, maybe nine years old.
Pale. Gaunt. Eyes fixed on something only he could see.
Kael stared. The boy looked…
No.
It wasn't him.
But it could have been.
His face. His posture. His hands, twitching slightly in time with unseen pulses.
"Sequence disordered," someone said.
"Again?"
"The fold signal won't hold. His core is interpreting too early."
Kael felt the brand on his chest burn hotter.
This wasn't a memory of the world.
This was a memory of a possibility.
A version of him that almost existed.
A world that tried to make him something else.
Failed.
And was erased.
The orb pulsed again.
Kael blinked.
Now the room was on fire.
Screams echoed from the hallway.
The child in the chair looked up.
Directly at him.
He mouthed something.
Kael stepped forward, pressed a hand to the glass
The memory cracked.
He was back in the Vault.
Floating. Shaking.
The orb had gone dark.
The other eleven turned slowly to face him.
They didn't move physically—but he knew they were looking.
Watching.
Evaluating.
The same voice whispered again.
"You were not the first, Kael. You will not be the last. But you are the only one who came back."
Kael swallowed. His mouth tasted of ash and copper.
"What… was that?"
His voice sounded small in the vastness.
"A false root. A severed branch of your own."
"It was real."
"So was the world that birthed it. Until it wasn't."
Kael clenched his fists.
"Why show me that?"
"Because your kind does not understand what it means to be unbound."
The orbs began to spin again.
The Vault folded.
Kael fell.
He landed hard, face-first into hot ash.
The air snapped back around him. The dunes were quiet again.
He was outside.
The Vault was gone.
Not closed—gone. The ground where it had stood had collapsed inward into a smooth spiral trench, like a thumbprint pressed into molten sand.
Kael pushed himself to his feet.
His chest burned again.
A message blinked just behind his eyes.
MEMORY CODE INGESTED: [FRACTURE ROOT -117A]
DOMAIN: INAPPLICABLE / CLASS: NULL CANDIDATE / PROTOCOL: UNLOCKED
NEW ABILITY: ANCHORING ECHO (Unstable)
Kael coughed.
The air around him felt denser now. He could feel himself vibrating at some deep level—like his body remembered something his mind hadn't caught up to.
He looked to the east.
The land stretched onward, but something had shifted.
The sky was dimmer.
The stars were closer.
And something beneath the surface of Kael'theran had begun to stir.
Not in rage.
Not in warning.
In recognition.