Astra could've killed him.
But she didn't.
Instead, she walked to the chamber's core and touched a crystalline console.
"Before you became Kael the Echobound," she said, "you were my second-in-command. You believed in purging the Nexus, not preserving it."
She activated a shard-node.
A copy of Kael's old persona appeared—arrogant, powerful, unscarred.
"Wipe the subroutines. Burn the nodes. Cleanse the system. No survivors."
Kael staggered back.
"I said that?"
"You lived that," Astra said.
He dropped to one knee. The weight of dual selves—past and present—warred in his mind.
Echo's voice whispered, close now. "Your code is splitting. If you embrace who you were… you may lose who you are."
Kael gritted his teeth.
"I'm not him anymore."
Then he sliced the projection of his old self apart.
The core pulsed once. A scar healed in the chamber wall.
Astra lowered her head. "Then maybe you're finally ready."