The sky should not move like that.
It wasn't just broken—it was awake. Shards of starlight bled sideways, swirling in chaotic loops. Galaxies bent like fabric. Something behind the sky blinked.
And Kae'Luan felt it watching.
"Close the breach!" Maya yelled.
"I can't!" Juro shouted back, dodging an arc of energy from the Loop Enforcer. "That wasn't me. That sky—it came on its own."
Kae'Luan gritted his teeth. His skin still pulsed with light from the obsidian shard buried in his chest. The memory it unlocked hadn't faded—but something else had come with it.
A name.
A presence.
From the Outside.
"You opened a crack to them," the older Maya said, sliding beside him, throwing up a force field between them and the approaching Enforcer. "We weren't supposed to let the Outside know we were awake."
Kae'Luan held her gaze. "But if the loop is a prison, isn't the Outside the only way out?"
"Not if the wardens are worse than the cage."
A scream tore the ceiling apart as the sky twisted inward. A single eye—golden, vertical, and impossibly large—peered into the room from beyond the stars.
It didn't blink.
It didn't flinch.
It simply watched.
Kae'Luan felt something twist in his gut.
That wasn't just a creature.
It was a memory.
A memory of a being too big to exist, stored in the folds of the loop like a nightmare hidden under a child's bed.
Juro leapt down beside them, breathing hard. "I think it knows you."
"It shouldn't," Kae'Luan said.
"But it does," Maya whispered.
Suddenly, the Loop Enforcer spoke again—its thousand-voiced echo stuttering.
"OUTSIDE ENTITY... DETECTED."
"THREAT LEVEL: INFINITE."
"INITIATE EMERGENCY COLLAPSE."
The walls began to fold in on themselves. The Archive—sanctuary of stolen versions—started shrinking. Pods shattered. Versions of Kael and Maya screamed, fading like holograms.
"No!" Kae'Luan shouted. "They're me. They're part of—"
"They were," Maya cut in, "but they can't survive collapse. We have to leave. Now."
Juro raised a silver wristband. "I can short-step us to Sobo's Undergrid, but the window's tiny."
"No," Kae'Luan said firmly. "We're not just running. We're taking something with us."
He turned to the last chamber—the one holding the very first Kael Prime had ever looped. That version… still had something.
The truth.
"Open that pod," he said.
Maya hesitated. "He's broken. That version tried to loop himself to escape Prime's loop. He's a paradox."
Kae'Luan stepped closer. The version inside looked... old. Tired. His face was weathered like stone, but his eyes were wild with fire.
Kae'Luan placed a hand against the glass.
The man looked up.
Whispered a single word.
"Break."
The pod exploded outward, shoving Kae'Luan back. The elder version of himself stood, swaying, breathing in air like it was his first time alive.
"They let me remember," he rasped.
"Who?" Kae'Luan asked.
The man looked toward the crack in the sky.
"The Ones Who Watch. They never forgot me."
Then—
A massive voice boomed through the shattered dome. It wasn't made of sound. It was thought. Fire. History.
It came from the eye.
"CHILD OF THE BROKEN STAR... STEP FORWARD."
Everyone froze.
Kae'Luan looked up. "Me?"
The eye blinked once.
Then repeated: "STEP. FORWARD."
"No, don't," Maya said quickly. "You don't know what it is."
"I do," Kae'Luan replied quietly. "And I think... it remembers my mother."
Maya blinked. "Your mother?"
Kae'Luan nodded. "She wasn't a scientist. Or a soldier. She was a starborn cartographer. She mapped minds."
He stepped onto the edge of the collapsed Archive platform. Wind from the Outside whipped around him, tugging at his clothes, his thoughts, his fears.
The eye above blinked again.
And a stairway of light unfolded downward, made of language, time, and gravity.
Kae'Luan turned to Maya.
"I don't think I was meant to survive this loop."
She stepped toward him, eyes wet. "Then don't go alone."
Kae'Luan smiled faintly.
"I wasn't planning to."
They stepped forward together.
And with each step, the loop shook.
Elsewhere—far below the collapsing sky—a boy opened his eyes.
He had no name. No memory.
But he was surrounded by data crystals, all marked with one word: Kael.
He rose.
Alone.
Unaware that he was the thirty-third.
Unaware that his version hadn't just been forgotten.
It had been reborn.
And unlike the others... he had no limits written into his code.
Back on the stairway of light, Kae'Luan finally reached the peak. The eye hovered above him, now less monstrous and more... human. Still ancient, still unknowable. But not cruel.
It spoke again, this time in a voice that shook bones.
"YOU CARRY A FRACTURED CORE."
Kae'Luan nodded. "I know."
"YOU CARRY HIM INSIDE YOU."
"I know."
"HE WILL WAKE. HE WILL FIGHT."
"I'll be ready."
The eye blinked.
And then, it whispered.
"YOU ARE NOT THE END."
Kae'Luan frowned. "Then what am I?"
The air around him shimmered.
And from behind the eye, another presence stepped forward.
Not a god.
Not a machine.
But a version of Maya. Tall. Golden-eyed. Wearing armor made of galaxy threads and memory coils.
She looked at Kae'Luan.
And smiled.
"I'm the beginning."
And then—
The loop cracked.
To be continued...