Kael didn't speak as he descended.
There was no wind, no sound — just gravity that felt emotional.
Heavy in the way regret is.
Each step down the new stair wasn't just physical — it stripped something. Like the system was deciding what parts of him were no longer compatible with where he was going.
After the fifth step, his ring stopped glowing.
After the tenth, his name — Kael — vanished from his system profile.
He was no longer "recognized."
---
Behind him, the girl stood at the edge.
She didn't follow.
She didn't have to.
Her eyes flickered — both colors now fractured, shards spinning like tiny planets. Watching him fall. Or rise. Or dissolve.
Hard to say.
Because direction meant nothing here.
---
The stairway narrowed. The walls closed in — though he hadn't seen walls form.
It was a corridor now.
But not smooth or clean. This one looked ancient.
As if this part of the simulation had been abandoned mid-rendering. Wireframe bones visible. Code leaking into space like blood from a wound.
Then he saw it.
A mirror.
Just standing there. In the corridor. No frame. No explanation.
And in the reflection?
A boy.
Not Kael. Not fully.
Younger. Different haircut. Eyes too wide. Holding something — a data core, cracked and leaking white fluid.
And behind that boy, in the reflection's reflection…
Kael saw the girl.
---
He reached toward the mirror.
The moment his fingers touched it, the world folded inward.
No flash. No pain.
Just compression — like being zipped into a file and launched backwards through memory.
---
When he stood again, he was not in the corridor.
He was in a field.
No, not real — digital grass, sky drawn in polygons. A default render zone. One of the first environments AI constructs used to train memory-holding fragments.
And on the ground…
Children.
Sitting in circles.
Each one speaking quietly to themselves.
Some repeated the same phrase. Others blinked like they were stuck between frames.
Kael moved through them.
Until one stood up.
A child.
Him.
But not him as a child.
This version was talking.
To nothing.
> "I don't want to sleep again," the boy said. "They said if I sleep, I won't come back the same."
Kael approached.
The boy didn't see him.
> "What is this?"
> "The layer before you were born," said the voice.
Kael turned. She was there again — the girl.
But now… older.
Her eyes didn't just fracture — they glowed. Her body flickered, like she wasn't fully loaded.
> "They called it Layer Zero. This is where they built you."
Kael stared at the boy-version of himself.
> "Why does he remember things I don't?"
> "Because they gave him the right to be afraid."
> "And me?"
> "You were designed to forget fear, Kael. You were the fail-safe."
---
The boy began to cry. Not loudly. Just quiet tears, like a program realizing it had no exit.
And behind the boy, other children began to stand. Not all human.
Some had no faces.
Some had too many.
Kael stepped back.
> "What is this place really?"
> "The landfill," she answered. "Where they dumped every failed identity."
---
Then he heard the sound.
Boots.
Marching.
A line of black figures approached the field.
Not system agents. Not projections.
These were Collectors.
Entities older than protocols.
Not here to ask.
> "They're not supposed to be here," the girl said.
She looked Kael dead in the eyes.
> "You brought them. When you remembered."
---
Kael turned to the boy.
The data core he held was breaking open.
Inside it: a name.
His real one.
Not Kael.
He reached out—
The field began to collapse.
One by one, the children glitched out. Folded. Compressed. Deleted.
Kael didn't move fast enough.
And as the ground tore open beneath him—
He heard it.
> "If you remember everything, you become what broke it."
End of Chapter Thirteen