The figure emerging from the fissure didn't walk.
It unfolded.
Like someone had taken a human silhouette, flattened it into a reflection, and then pulled it forward into reality. Light cascaded off its cloak—shards of crystalline resonance drifting like snow around its feet.
Lyra's pulseblade ignited with a low, furious hum beside him.
But Cael barely heard it.
Because the moment the figure raised its head, something struck through his mind like a needle of white heat.
Not a memory.
A reflex.
Like his entire body recognized the presence before his consciousness caught up.
Lyra stepped half in front of him. "Cael. Who is that?"
"I…I don't know."
But the breach did.
The entire chamber tilted, resonance patterns re-aligning as if bowing toward the newcomer. The figure's face remained hidden behind the veil of shimmering light, but its voice—when it finally spoke—was quiet, level, and painfully familiar.
"Cael Drayen."
His name sounded wrong in that voice.
Like it had been said before. Often.
By someone who once had the right.
Cael swallowed hard. "You erased me."
Lyra didn't move, didn't breathe.
The figure tilted its head slightly, as though considering the accusation.
"No," it said. "I silenced you."
Cael stepped forward, but Lyra caught his wrist instantly.
She wasn't stopping him—just grounding him.
"Silenced?" Cael repeated.
The figure lifted a hand.
Resonance coiled around its fingers like ink dispersing into water—dense, heavy, too controlled to be natural.
"Your Echo was fracturing the weave," it said. "Your connection to the breach was becoming unstable. Intervention was required."
"The interference was you?" Lyra shot back.
"Yes."
"And deleting his memories was—what—'required' too?"
A faint ripple crossed the figure's outline, as if it found the question trivial.
"Memory is a distraction."
Lyra's pulseblade flared.
Cael gently pushed her blade down. She didn't like it—but she trusted him enough to let him speak.
"Why me?" Cael asked. "Why my memories? Why my Echo? Why erase everything I was before Project Eclipser?"
A moment of stillness.
Then the figure spoke softly.
"Because you were not meant to return."
Lyra inhaled sharply.
Cael felt something cold crawl up his spine, but he held the figure's hidden gaze.
"I don't understand."
"You will."
The figure reached into its cloak and pulled out something small—glinting with a soft, pale resonance. A device? A crystal? No—it was a ring. A twin-ring emblem nearly identical to the one on Cael's pulseband, but older, worn, edges smoothed by time.
Lyra stared at it, then at Cael.
"Cael…that looks like—"
He knew exactly what it looked like.
The symbol of the old Eclipser prototypes.
The ones that weren't supposed to exist anymore.
The figure extended the ring toward Cael.
"You have always been incomplete," it said. "When I severed your link, it was to keep the breach from reclaiming what it made."
Cael's heart hammered.
The breach…made him?
No.
No, that wasn't right.
He was human. He had a childhood. He had—
He had—
He couldn't remember those early years.
Not clearly.
Not at all.
Lyra must've seen the panic forming because she grabbed his shoulder, squeezing hard.
"Cael. Stay with me."
He dragged in a breath.
The figure continued, voice unchanging, almost gentle:
"You were the first successful convergence. A bridge between the mortal plane and the breach's core resonance."
Cael felt the words land like weights.
Lyra stepped in front of him fully now, blade pointed at the figure's throat.
"You're lying."
"I do not lie," the figure said. "I simplify."
Lyra's voice dropped to something close to a growl. "Why erase his memories? All of them?"
"Because he asked me to."
The chamber fell silent.
Even the swirling resonance froze.
Cael stared. "I—what?"
The figure lowered its hand.
"In your final moment before collapse, you chose forgetting. You understood the consequences of remembering. You begged for release from what the breach demanded of you."
"…No." Cael shook his head, pulse pounding. "I wouldn't—"
"You did."
The figure stepped closer.
"And now that you have returned, the breach will not let go of you again. It will devour what remains of your identity. Unless—"
Its hand extended again.
"—you come with me."
Lyra moved instantly, blade intercepting the figure's path, resonance sparking.
"You're not taking him anywhere."
The figure didn't react.
It simply turned its veiled gaze to her.
"Your attachment is noted."
"Try me," Lyra spat.
Cael slipped past her, stepping closer to the figure—but not accepting its hand.
"What do you mean, 'come with you'?"
"To complete what you began. And to prevent the breach from collapsing into your world. Only a convergence can stabilize it. You are the last one."
"And if I refuse?"
The figure didn't pause.
"Then your Echo will consume you. And everything connected to you."
Lyra stiffened beside him.
Cael felt her fingers barely brush his sleeve—subtle, but desperate.
"Cael," she whispered. "Don't listen to him."
But Cael's mind was a storm.
His erased past.
His unstable Echo.
The breach calling him by instinct rather than name.
And the figure—who claimed Cael once begged for oblivion.
He stared at the offered hand.
"Tell me who you are," Cael said quietly.
Finally, the figure lifted the veil.
Light condensed, swirling inward—
Revealing a face that hit Cael like a physical blow.
Not a stranger.
Not an enemy.
Someone with his jawline.
His eyes.
His voice—
Older.
Cracked at the edges.
Haunted.
A future version of himself.
Lyra gasped so sharply it echoed.
Cael's breath shattered in his chest.
The older Cael—The Crystal Veiled One—spoke softly.
"I am what you become…
…if you survive."