The Spiral Archives were never silent. Even at the lowest levels—where forgotten records hummed in suspended stasis and memory crystals floated like stars—there was a low, resonant murmur. Some called it the Whisper of Time. Others, like Orien, felt it more personally.
Today, the whispers were gone.
Orien stepped through the reinforced threshold of Sub-Archive Sector C-9, the doors sealing shut behind him with a hiss that echoed far too loud for comfort. His boots made soft taps on the obsidian-tiled floor as he descended the stair-like data tiers. Above and below, shelves of temporal records blinked in ordered rhythm, each recording a slice of history from across the Spiral's expanse. Thousands of timelines. Billions of lives.
And dozens of sectors had gone dark.
He stopped at a vacant shelf—Unit 1071, dedicated to Delta Spiral Nine. Orien tapped a sequence into his wristband, and a floating holopanel appeared, confirming what he already feared.
"No Data Found."
Not "Corrupted." Not "Redacted." Simply—absent.
He took a slow breath, steadying himself. Time archives didn't just vanish. Even during the Expansion War, when causality fractured like glass and moments collided with their futures, the archives had endured. Now, whole spans of memory were evaporating without resistance.
Mirra's voice chimed in through his comm.
"Orien, you're not going to believe this. The name 'Delta Spiral Nine' is gone from the Council Registry. No trace, no mention—not even in the Vault. It's like the Spiral never existed."
He clenched his jaw. "That's the third one today. What about the people stationed there?"
"Also vanished," she replied. "Every record of them. No memorials. No family registries. Even the backup backups are null."
"Which means this isn't data corruption," Orien said grimly. "This is retroactive deletion. Reality is forgetting them."
"Or something is making reality forget," Mirra added. Her voice dropped. "You should see this with your own eyes. I've triangulated an echo source. Something's projecting a recursive signal from beneath the Clockvault."
The Clockvault lay deep beneath the Spiral Citadel, a forgotten chamber older than the Council itself. Built during the Final Phase of the Elion Convergence, it was meant to contain volatile time echoes, ensuring no unauthorized loops infected the stabilized Spiral. Few even remembered its location. Fewer still dared enter.
Orien and Mirra stood before its massive gate, a vault of white metal laced with glowing runes that pulsed in reverse patterns. The air crackled with raw chronal tension.
"I thought this place was sealed," Orien said.
"It was," Mirra replied. "I used Lyra's clearance. Temporarily."
He gave her a sidelong glance. "Did she approve that?"
"Let's say... she hasn't disapproved it yet."
The vault hissed and slid open.
Inside, the chamber spiraled downward like a nautilus shell. Mirrors lined the curved walls—some fogged, others pristine—each reflecting different versions of Orien and Mirra: older, younger, strangers, enemies. One mirror showed Orien with a crown of blue fire. Another reflected nothing at all.
At the chamber's center, a crystal pedestal hovered in midair.
A voice whispered. Not from the air—but from behind Orien's teeth.
"Child of the Infinite... return the memory."
Orien staggered. Mirra caught his arm.
"Did you hear that?" he asked.
She shook her head, worried. "No. But the pedestal is reacting to you."
Indeed, the hovering crystal had begun spinning slowly, emitting a steady pulse that synchronized with Orien's heartbeat.
He stepped closer. As he did, a wave of nausea passed through him—a sensation of being unraveled, of his atoms remembering they were once stars.
"What... is this?" he whispered.
The pedestal pulsed again.
Memory. Seeded before time. Buried beneath knowing. Speak the lost name.
Orien's lips moved without will. "Kaien."
The room responded.
The pedestal cracked open like an egg of light. From within, a silver shard floated outward—small, crystalline, humming with energy that defied logic. As it neared Orien's chest, it passed through his skin like mist.
And his mind exploded.
He stood on a balcony overlooking a planet made of fractured glass.
He saw Kaien—alive, robed, fierce—standing against a sky filled with spiraling time-birds, each wingbeat creating echoes.
"The Pulse is not evil," Kaien said to a council of shadows. "It's recursive will made flesh. A loop that became aware. But if it awakens fully, we will not face destruction—we will face stillness."
The vision shifted.
Kaien crouched in a ruined archive, speaking into a recorder.
"This is my final echo. The Pulse has begun to feed. It consumes not bodies, but contexts. It erases the memory of things—of people—so completely that even time forgets they were ever real. If you find this... then the Echo-Child must awaken."
Orien's consciousness slammed back into his body.
He screamed.
Mirra knelt beside him. "Orien! You were gone for ten seconds. Are you alright?"
"I saw him," Orien gasped. "Kaien. He knew this would happen. He called it the Stillness. The Pulse feeds on meaning. It eats the idea of something."
Mirra looked pale. "You're saying it's not destroying time—it's erasing it?"
Orien nodded. "And not just from records. From reality."
They looked around the chamber. Some of the mirrors had gone dark.
"We need to tell Lyra," Mirra said. "She needs to see this."
But when they returned to the Citadel, Lyra was gone.
Her quarters were cold. Empty.
Orien stood over her desk, reading the message crystal she had left behind. Her voice echoed from it, distant and hurried.
"If I am not found within the hour of your reading this, I have likely been erased. I detected a backwave through the Foundation Threads—an echo reeling back to the source. I had to follow it. If I do not return... know that the Pulse is awakening beneath time itself. Trust Orien. He carries the Final Spark."
The crystal cracked and dimmed.
Mirra looked stricken. "She followed the echo? Alone?"
Orien clenched his fists. "She knew it wouldn't let her back."
A sudden alert chirped on the central console.
"New anomaly detected," Mirra read. "Timeline Echo 0-A: Event inception zero-point."
"That's impossible," Orien breathed. "That echo shouldn't exist."
But there it was.
A ghost trace from before time. A memory of the moment time first thought.
And Orien knew—if they didn't act, time would think no more.