The deeper we went, the less the Drowning Room resembled anything real.
Walls shimmered like mirages, flickering between hospital corridors, theater wings, and voided space. The floors groaned under our weight—not from pressure, but memory.
This wasn't just a broken narrative.
It was a graveyard of unfinished truths.
Ren walked beside me, steadier than he had been. His trauma loop was behind him, but the weight of what we'd seen hadn't left. Ahead, Nyx and Blitz scouted, weapons drawn, ready for the next twist.
Vox drifted further back. Quiet. Distant.
Cipher whispered from my side, "Something's off."
I nodded. "I feel it too."
The Threads were vibrating unnaturally, like they were resisting the space. Not hostile—but nervous.
Moth wrote a warning midair:
TRUST LOOP BREACH IMMINENT. CHECK INTERNAL CONSISTENCY.
Cipher frowned. "That's System speak for 'watch your team.'"
Then came the voice.
"How long will you pretend?"
It echoed across the cracked ceiling, sweet and cold, familiar as my own reflection.
Everyone stopped.
I turned slowly—and there it was.
The impostor.
Standing on a twisted arch of broken code above us, its new form clearer than ever.
No longer a mimic, no longer raw data.
It now wore Vox's face.
Ren's blade was out in a blink. "What the hell—"
"Wait," I said.
The impostor smiled at me, calm and composed. It was uncanny. It wore Vox's jacket, his mannerisms, even the way he cocked his head slightly when listening.
But the Threads surrounding it were wrong. Inverted. Parasite code tangled with memory.
It spoke again.
"You think you've held this team together, Anchor."
"But you don't even know what he's hiding."
Blitz stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "Who?"
The impostor pointed—directly at Vox.
The air shifted.
Cipher's scanner whined. Moth froze, gaze darting between us.
Vox didn't move.
I took a breath. "Vox. Say something."
Silence.
The impostor stepped down from the arch. "Should I say it for him?"
Vox finally looked at me.
And said, quietly:
"It's true."
The Threads around us rippled violently, like they recognized the admission before we did.
"What's true?" Nyx snapped, blade out. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Vox lowered his gaze. "Before I was erased… before you ever entered the System… I knew the Director."
That landed like a gut punch.
Ren snarled. "You what?"
Vox met my eyes—his expression empty of excuses. "He wasn't always the Director. Once, he was a player. Like us. And we were partners."
Everything locked into place.
The impostor laughed—a hollow, fractured sound. "Tell them the rest."
Vox turned away. "I helped him build the Drowning Room."
The room shook violently. Doors slammed shut behind us. The Threads recoiled.
Cipher backed away from Vox, his hands trembling. "You were part of it. You were part of this."
"I was young. Desperate." Vox's voice cracked, not with emotion, but exhaustion. "He offered to rewrite my arc. A clean slate. I didn't know he'd use my story as scaffolding for this horror."
"Didn't know?" Ren's voice broke like glass. "You watched him erase people. Turn grief into currency."
"I tried to stop him," Vox said. "And he deleted me for it."
The impostor's voice purred from the shadows.
"But you left the door open."
It smiled wider.
"And I walked through."
Suddenly, I understood.
The impostor didn't just take Vox's form because of power.
It had originated in Vox's residual code.
A sliver left behind. A guilt so potent the Threads never fully expunged it.
Moth signed rapidly:
HE'S NOT POSSESSED.
HE'S THE SEED.
Cipher turned to me. "We can't bring him with us."
Nyx lowered her blade slightly. "He's compromised."
"I'm not your enemy," Vox said. "But the impostor is bound to me. If you don't stop me… it'll keep coming back."
Blitz stepped forward. "So what are you saying?"
Vox looked at me—eyes clearer than they'd ever been.
"I'll take us to the Core. But after that… you lock me out."
I didn't want this.
Not like this.
Vox was the only other Anchor who understood what it meant to carry others' pain.
But now his pain had twisted into something else.
I nodded.
"After the Core, we cut the Thread."
No one spoke.
Vox closed his eyes. "Understood."
The impostor snarled—its stolen face warping, reforming into static.
"He can't undo what he is."
"And neither can you."
It lunged—but this time, we were ready.
Nyx and Ren flanked it, their blades cutting through its outer veil. Blitz fired a blast of compressed thread-energy, staggering it. Cipher jammed a spike into the code beneath us, pinning the space.
And I—
I rewrote the zone's structure.
The floor fell away.
The walls became wireframes.
And behind the impostor, a gateway opened:
The Core of the Drowning Room.
Light poured through it, pure and white and ancient.
The impostor screamed in frustration.
It retreated into the dark, too unstable to follow.
And we ran—through the door.
Into the beating heart of the final arc.