Chapter 17 – The White Between Worlds
The whiteness wasn't just light—it was absence. No sky, no ground, no shadows. Kai stood weightless in a void so pure it almost hurt to exist in it. His companions were nowhere to be seen.
For a moment, he thought he had died. Again. But death had a certain heaviness, a gravity pulling you down. This place was still, like the universe holding its breath.
A soft sound broke the silence—click… click… click… Footsteps.
Kai turned, and there he was.
Not the crimson-coated version from the mirror, not a distorted reflection, but a fully flesh-and-blood man. Same height. Same face. But his eyes… they were a storm of colors, shifting every second.
"You've finally caught up," the man said, voice calm yet impossibly layered, as though every word had been spoken by a thousand Kais across different timelines.
Kai narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"
The man smirked. "I'm the first version. The Prime."
He took a step closer, and with it, the void around them rippled, revealing flashes of other worlds—Kai fighting dragons, Kai leading armies, Kai dying in a hundred ways. "Every Kai you've ever been, every mistake you've made, every choice you thought was yours… I made first."
Kai's jaw clenched. "So you've been controlling me."
"Not controlling," the Prime corrected. "Teaching. Guiding. And now—testing."
Without warning, the Prime thrust out his hand. A surge of black-and-gold energy erupted from his palm, spiraling toward Kai like a living serpent. Kai barely reacted in time—he raised his own hand, instinctively shaping the Source Code into a shield. Runes flared, lines of binary wove together, and the serpent's strike shattered into motes of light.
The Prime smiled wider. "Good. You've learned to bend the rules."
Kai didn't answer with words. He moved—blinking across the void in an instant, reappearing behind the Prime and striking with a blade made from crystallized data. But the Prime was faster. With a twist of his wrist, he caught Kai's blade in midair, freezing it pixel by pixel.
"You think this power makes you free?" the Prime said. "It only binds you deeper. Every rewrite has consequences."
Kai pulled back, breaking the freeze effect, his voice low but steady. "Maybe. But this time, I'm the one doing the rewriting."
The void trembled. Far in the distance, Kai felt it—a pulse, like the heartbeat of the Source Code itself. The Prime noticed it too.
"You've drawn its attention," the Prime murmured, almost amused. "Good. Let's see if you survive it."
The whiteness shattered like glass, and Kai found himself falling again—this time into a massive chamber made of flowing code. Beneath him, standing at the center, were Aura, Soren, and Lyra… surrounded by tall, faceless figures in cloaks of shifting static.
Aura looked up at him, relief flooding her face. "Kai! Where were you?!"
He landed hard but steady. "Meeting the reason we're here."
The cloaked figures spoke in unison, their voices overlapping into a distorted harmony.
"REWRITER. YOUR ACCESS IS UNAUTHORIZED."
The Prime's voice echoed faintly behind Kai's ears.
"Prove you deserve to change the story."
Kai's hands tightene
d into fists. "Fine. Let's rewrite the ending."