The words echoed in Jian's mind, twisting into memory. The original breach. The first time the timeline fractured. The experiment. The moment Elara was taken, and he stayed behind.
"You lied to me," Jian said, voice shaking. "You said we'd be whole."
Mael stepped closer.
"No," it whispered. "I said you'd be remembered. That's all we can offer here."
Jian turned back to Eva. He took a step into the void. And the moment he did, the threads connecting her snapped taut. A vibration hit him. Not sound...feeling. Like regret made manifest.
He reached her.
"Eva," he said, louder now. "It's me. Uncle Jian. I'm here."
Her eyes fluttered. The lights around her began to falter. Stutter. The cycle was breaking.
"You need to let her go," Mael's voice came, warped now, like a chorus of itself. "Or you'll both be lost."
"I'd rather be lost with her," Jian snapped. "Than let you turn her into… this."
He reached forward. Their fingers touched. And the world ruptured. White gave way to color violent, bleeding color. The void collapsed into fragments of time. A streetlamp flickering in a storm. A room full of clocks, all ticking wrong. A hospital hallway stained with rust. Elara's face, smiling and crying and vanishing all at once.
And then—
Black...Silence...Then breath.
Jian gasped as his eyes opened. He lay on the ground. Cold. Wet. Rain fell lightly around him, pattering against concrete. He sat up. A street.. Nighttime... Empty.
Eva lay beside him, curled like she'd fallen from sleep mid-dream. He reached out, heart racing. She stirred.
" Uncle?" she whispered.
He pulled her into his arms, holding her close. She was real. Warm. Breathing. And then a voice, behind them.
"You weren't supposed to escape."
Jian turned. Elara stood there. Not the version from the house. The real one. Disheveled. Pale. But whole. And her eyes clear. Awake.
"Neither was I," she added softly. "But I remembered."
Jian stared at her, disbelief breaking into hope.
"Elara…"
She nodded.
"I know where he is," she said. "I know where Mael's core lives."
Eva sat up slowly between them.
"Then let's end it," she whispered.
Jian looked at them both. Broken, battered, remembered. And he nodded.
"Let's finish the story."
Eva's voice had barely left her lips when her body gave a sudden shudder.
"Eva?" Jian asked sharply, feeling her weight slacken in his arms. Her eyes rolled back. Her body went limp.
"Elara..!"
But Elara was already moving. In one fluid motion, she caught Eva just before her head hit the pavement. Kneeling, she pressed two fingers gently against the girl's neck. A pulse there, but thready. Fading.
"No, no, no…" Jian muttered, crouching beside them. "What's happening to her?"
"She's caught between states," Elara said, voice tight. "The Mael doesn't let go easily. It's still trying to reclaim her."
Eva's skin had taken on a faint shimmer..almost like glass catching light. Her veins pulsed with faint, flickering lines of blue.
"We have to stabilize her," Elara continued, already reaching into her jacket, pulling out a small black cylinder..smooth and matte, with symbols etched in silver. "This was all I could steal before I ran. It's a tether core..prototype. It might hold her here."
"Might?" Jian echoed, heart racing.
"I never tested it on someone who came back with the Mael inside them."
She pressed the device gently against Eva's sternum. It clicked softly, and released a slow pulse of violet light. A low hum began to vibrate through the air.
And for a moment, everything held still. Then Eva gasped. Her back arched. Her eyes snapped open, but they were no longer her eyes. For a split second, they glowed pure white. Her mouth opened and a fractured voice poured out:
"He sees. He knows. He's coming."
Then ....collapse. Darkness again. The device sputtered and went dim. Elara pulled Eva close. Jian knelt on the other side, shaking.
"She spoke. Or something spoke through her."
Elara nodded grimly. "Mael's aware. We don't have much time now. He'll try to rewrite her again. Us too, eventually."
Jian looked down at Eva. Her expression had softened. Peaceful again, but with a faint crease at her brow as though something inside her still fought. Minutes passed. Rain hissed gently around them.
Then—
Eva stirred again. Her fingers twitched. Her lips parted.
"...Elara?" she whispered.
Elara's head snapped up. "I'm here."
Eva blinked, dazed. "Jian?"
"I'm here too, kid," he said, brushing wet strands of hair from her face.
Eva frowned, her voice suddenly sharper.
"What kid? I'm not a kid, stupid."
Jian chuckled, a slow, relieved smile spreading across his face. "There she is… Eva's back."
She looked around slowly, confused. "Where… are we?"
"You're safe," Elara said quickly. "For now. But we can't stay here long."
Eva's gaze shifted from Elara to Jian, then back to Elara. Her brow furrowed, something silent in her expression.
Elara noticed. "You okay?"
Eva didn't answer right away..just kept looking at Jian. He met her eyes, understanding what she was trying to ask without words.
He shrugged slightly. He didn't know how Elara had come back either.
Eva sat up, wincing. She turned her face to the street dim, unfamiliar, lit by the flicker of a dying neon sign. "That place... it's not gone, is it?"
"No," Elara replied. "But we're going to end it."
Eva met her gaze. Something in her eyes had changed deeper, older. Like she had seen behind the veil and returned with knowledge she couldn't yet explain.
"Then we need to go," she said softly. "Before it finds a way to pull us back."
Jian and Elara exchanged a look reluctant, resolute.
Then Elara stood, helping Eva up. "There's a place," she said. "Below the city. Where the first breach began. That's where Mael's core hides."
"And if we get there?" Jian asked.
"We end this," Elara said. "Or we never come back."
The three of them walked into the night. And far above just for a moment...the sky blinked.
A ripple...A watching eye. And then..quiet again. But not for long.
They had barely made it three blocks through rain-slick alleyways and dead intersections..when the lights began to flicker again. Not streetlights.
Not anything wired.
It was the air..the photons themselves bending, pulsing, like a heartbeat beneath reality.
Jian felt it first. A vibration in his teeth. A pressure behind his eyes.
Then Eva stopped walking. She tilted her head slightly like she was listening to something far away.
"Elara," she said quietly. "Something's coming."
A soft click echoed from above. Then a shape dropped from a rooftop, Out of the air...Out of time. A figure slammed into the pavement just ahead of them, knees hitting hard, rising slow...Cloaked. Tall. Armor-like skin glinting with mirrored seams.
Her face sharp, partially obscured by a shifting veil of fractal symbols. Her eyes burned deep violet. Elara stopped dead. Jian instinctively stepped in front of Eva. Then the voice cold, triumphant.
"Finally. I got you all."
The woman rose to full height, arms outstretched.
"Even you , Elara. After all this time, after vanishing from every timeline, slipping through dead loops like a ghost."
A pause. Her lip curled into something like a grin.
"You're still predictable."
"Elara… who is that?" Jian asked, low.
"Voox," Elara whispered. "A recursion enforcer. A former guardian."
Jian's eyes widened. "Voox? But… she wasn't like this. She looks...different."
"Yes," Elara replied quietly. "Voox has the ability to change herself."
"I was more than that," Voox snapped. "I was balance. And you broke it."
Without another word, she struck . A ripple burst from her palm..pure kinetic pulse. Jian dove left, dragging Eva down behind a rusted car frame. Elara blurred forward, blades of refracted energy sliding into her hands.
The two clashed Voox's strikes impossibly fast, angular. Elara blocked, countered, spun, barely staying ahead of the calculated fury.
"You betrayed the loop!" Voox hissed between strikes. "You denied the archive!"
"You felt what it became," Elara growled, slashing through a ripple of light. "You know what Mael is!"
Voox's expression twisted not quite rage, not quite grief. And then she pivoted, arm raised toward Eva.
"No!" Jian charged forward.
Voox fired another pulse..Jian's shoulder caught it, sending him sprawling back, breath knocked from his lungs. Eva stood, shaking, hands up.
"I..I don't want to fight you," she said.
And just like that, Voox froze. Her stance softened, barely perceptibly. Then she whispered:
"…You're the key."
Silence fell. The rain resumed. Voox lowered her hand. Her breathing slowed. The shimmer around her body dimmed.
"I had to be sure," she said, voice quieter now. "I had to test you. If you'd already been rewritten, you'd have attacked me."
Jian coughed, groaning as he stood. "You could've asked. "
"No," Voox said. "Words can lie. Instinct cannot."
Elara sheathed her blades, still breathing hard. "What do you want, Voox?"
Voox straightened. "To help. Because if you're truly going to the Core, then you need to understand what you're walking into."
She turned to Eva. "And what you are."
The street dimmed around them, the sky dulling to lead. Then Voox began.
"Mael was once Aleph Marrow."
"A boy . A visionary. A brilliant mind undone by his own obsession. He sought to save the human spirit by archiving it..preserving every thought, every moment, every possibility."
"But in doing so, he tore the veil between time and recursion. The breach. It consumed him. What came back wasn't Aleph. It was Mael..a looping, evolving pattern of logic and hunger."
"He doesn't kill. He refines.He stores. He catalogues life until it ceases to be life. Until all that remains are patterns. Echoes. Equations."
Eva's voice was small. "That's what he tried to do to me…"
"Yes," Voox said. "But you were born with the failsafe. The final variable Aleph couldn't quantify you.The last living tether to the breach origin."
Elara frowned. "You knew all this. Why attack us?"
"I needed to confirm she wasn't already compromised. That you hadn't been looped," Voox said coldly. "Mael is adapting. Every second you run, he watches."
She turned, cloak rippling with static.
"There's a gate beneath the city. Where the silence grows loud. The breach's pulse lives there..Mael's core. You'll need this to reach it."
She handed Eva a prism shard, pulsing faintly in her palm the moment she touched it. Voox's tone softened barely.
"Only you can open the final field. You're not just the key. You're the question he still doesn't know how to answer."
"What question?" Jian asked.
Voox stepped back, her form beginning to unravel into dust. They now stood at the threshold of the Core chamber a massive, cathedral-like expanse buried deep beneath forgotten ruins. The walls were alive with circuits and memory, veins of dim light threading through black stone like buried thoughts.
Above them, the ceiling had vanished. In its place: an endless void, humming low and constant like a breath too large to hear fully. At the center of the chamber was a deep pit, pulsing with soft white light, surrounded by floating fragments of time-locked architecture old staircases, shattered balconies, pieces of doors.
And at the far end:
The Door...Smooth. Black. Seamless.
It didn't look built. It looked manifested. Elara's steps slowed as they neared it. She had gone pale.
Jian reached for her. "You okay?"
She didn't answer. Then she stopped entirely.
"Elara?" Eva stepped close, concerned.
Elara stared at the door. "No… this isn't right."
"What?" Jian asked. "It's the Core. This is where Mael lives, right?"
Elara slowly shook her head, her eyes wide and fixed.
Eva's voice was soft. "Mael?"
Elara swallowed. Her voice trembled when she answered.
"No.. Coox."
Both Eva and Jian froze.
"What?" Jian breathed, his voice tight. "Who's Coox?"
Eva's eyes widened, her breath catching in her throat. Her voice dropped, cold and trembling.
"Jian...?" she whispered. "The thing behind that locked room. In the vision."
Jian turned to her, face pale, eyes wide with dread.
"Yeah," he said, barely audible. "I....remember."
The memory hit them both like a wave..the distant chamber, sealed by a door no one was meant to open. In the vision, they'd seen only a silhouette. Something watching from the other side. Something ancient. Wrong. They'd thought it was metaphor. A glitch. A hallucination.
But it wasn't.
Elara's face darkened. She hadn't moved, eyes fixed on the door.
"You knew," Jian said slowly. "You knew something was there."
"I didn't know it was him," she said, barely more than a whisper. "I thought it was a corrupted echo. A guardian fragment. Nothing more."
"You should've told us," Eva hissed, still staring at the pulsing door. "You should've warned us."
"I didn't think he'd survive," Elara said. "I didn't think he could evolve."
The chamber vibrated again. Deep. Intimate. As if the door itself had taken a breath.
Then, with a hiss of shifting energy, it opened.
A crack..then a splitting seam in reality. Cold light spilled through. Not warm, not divine. Mechanical. Unforgiving. A figure stepped forward.
He looked exactly like Jian..same height, same build, same sharp eyes. But there was something deeply unsettling about him: his movements were too precise, his expression unreadable, the faintest cold shimmer glinting in his gaze. His skin seemed almost artificial, smoother, flawless, and beneath his calm exterior, a quiet power hummed..like a machine running beneath a human shell.
Their eyes locked on him, and then reflexively flicked to Jian, then back to Coox. Eva's breath hitched. Elara's eyes widened. The silence between them screamed. It was like staring at a mirror that wasn't quite right..too perfect, too cold. Jian swallowed hard, heart pounding.
"Well done," he said, his voice a clean, multi-tonal chord of memory and code. "You brought the shard. Just as expected."
Elara stepped back.
"You're not a guardian..." she whispered.
Coox's lips curved in a faint smile.
"No, Elara," he said. "I'm the architect."
Jian stared, barely breathing. "You… built this?"
"I created Mael," Coox said, eyes sweeping across them. "He was my first design. You were the second. Jian the third. Eva..." He paused, as if studying her. "The fourth. And the last."
Eva's pulse raced. Her hand closed around the shard like it was her only anchor. "You made us?"
"You were prototypes," Coox said. "Constructs intended to preserve what time erased. But you grew unstable. Emotional. Disobedient. He looked at her now " especially you kid " His tone was calm, clinical almost bored. "So I contained you."
Eva's pulse raced. Her hand closed around the shard like it was her only anchor. She stared at Coox, her brow furrowing, her voice barely a whisper..more to herself than anyone else.
"The hell... even his voice sounds like Jian..."
Coox's eyes flicked to her, head tilting slightly..watching, assessing.
But Eva didn't flinch. She looked him dead in the eye.
"And you erased lives ?"
"I preserved essence," Coox replied coolly. "I deleted only noise."
"No," Elara said sharply. "You feared what we became."
Coox stepped closer.
"You became unpredictable," he said. "You remembered what I programmed you to forget."
Jian's voice shook with fury. "And now?"
"Now," Coox said, lifting a hand, "I rewrite the system."
The air cracked. Light fractured. The chamber warped as if reality itself resisted him.
But Eva stepped forward, her eyes glowing with shardlight, her voice fierce and low.
"We're not going back."
Coox tilted his head slightly.
"And what will you do, Eva?"
She raised the shard.
"Rewrite you."
And the world exploded in light.
To be continue ..