The fragment still burned in his palm.
Kairo sat on the cathedral floor, eyes locked on the pulsing brand etched into his skin. It wasn't a wound. It didn't bleed. It just… existed. Like a tattoo that hadn't been inked—just written directly into his existence.
[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 1%]
[S.I.N. FRAGMENT: PRIDE – ACTIVE][STATUS EFFECT: ECHO WHISPER // MINOR]
Every few heartbeats, he heard her voice again.
Faint. Just a whisper beneath thought.
"You're already changing."
He stood, teeth clenched. The cathedral had returned to its pristine state—frozen windows, untouched pews, golden silence. No trace of Lucen. No sign of the garden.
No blood.
Just stillness.
He made it three steps before the world cracked again.
No warning. No sound.
Just—shift.
The marble split. The sky above turned inside out. The floor under his boots vanished.
And Kairo fell—
Back into the void.
But not the first one.
This time, it pulsed red.
The chains were back—stretching into infinity. A thousand broken sigils spun in a sphere around him, each humming in different tones like an orchestra tuning before the collapse.
Lira was already there.
Leaning against nothing.
"Back so soon," she said without turning. "I was hoping you'd last at least a day this time."
Kairo landed hard but stood without flinching. "I didn't die."
She turned to him. Her black eyes narrowed.
"No," she said slowly. "You didn't."
"Then why am I here?"
She walked toward him. "Because something's wrong. The system logged a death… but the world didn't reset."
He stiffened.
"You mean…"
"You fractured it," she whispered. "You made a choice too far outside the loop logic. You didn't just resist her—you rewrote the equation."
He ran a hand through his hair, voice tight. "Then I broke the system. Isn't that good?"
"No." Her tone was sharp now. "You didn't break it. You woke it up."
Behind her, one of the spinning sigils began to unravel.
And in the space it left, a memory spilled out.
A boy. Not Kairo. Someone else. Screaming. Begging. Tearing at his own face.
"He used the Fragment of Wrath," Lira said. "Too early. It rewrote his loop. He stopped dying. But the world kept getting worse."
The sigil screamed as it collapsed.
Lira looked at him, voice lower now.
"Rebirth isn't reset, Kairo. It's redirection."
"You're saying…" He swallowed hard. "...every time I die, the world goes on?"
She nodded. "Without you. Without your interference. Until it either eats itself or something finds a way to reset you into a different timeline."
He staggered back, breath catching.
"How many versions of me are out there?"
"Enough that they have names," Lira whispered. "Enough that some of them are still walking around."
Kairo's stomach dropped.
[INTERNAL CONFLICT: SYSTEM TRUTH COLLISION DETECTED]
[VOIDPOINT +1]
[SKILL UNLOCKED: FORK//TRACE - PASSIVE]
[EFFECT: Echoes of prior selves may manifest during high corruption states]
"What does that mean?" he asked.
Lira's eyes softened, just for a second.
"It means you might start fighting versions of yourself that remember things you can't."
A silence hung between them.
Then Kairo asked the question that had been burning since Eiras' garden:
"If I die now... who takes my place?"
Lira hesitated.
Then said: "Whoever's ready to break more than you are."
When he woke again, he was no longer in the cathedral.
He was in a house.
A quiet one.
Familiar.
The smell of tea.
A clock ticking.
And a picture on the wall.
Of him.
Smiling.
With people he didn't remember.
And a red line drawn across his eyes.