||Beneath the Veins of Stone||
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The darkness that greeted Seven was different this time.
Not a darkness of absence—but a presence. It moved. It breathed. It pulsed like the heart of some ancient titan buried beneath time, pressing against the edges of his thoughts.
He couldn't tell when his feet had stopped touching the floor. Or if there was a floor at all.
He floated.
Above him, below him, everywhere—countless threads shimmered faintly in the black, crisscrossing through the void like veins of dying stars. Some throbbed with faint crimson light. Others flickered, silver and sharp, like threads of thought snipped mid-sentence.
He was drifting through something alive.
The silence fractured.
[Consciousness Identified: Code Seven.]
[Thread of Sovereignty: Located.]
[Acknowledging the anomaly within the Pathless.]
The notifications echoed across reality itself. Not from a source. Not from a direction. The words simply were, as though woven into the structure of thought itself.
Seven inhaled slowly, and for a moment, he wasn't sure if he was the one breathing—or if the world was breathing through him.
And then the whisper returned.
"You shouldn't be here."
Seven's pulse quickened. It wasn't fear. Not yet. But something far deeper: the primal tension of a predator sensing another hunter in the same shadows.
"You were never meant to reach the core."
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Something stirred.
A figure stepped forward from nothing.
It had no face. Only the shimmer of flowing energy, like liquid stars wrapped in human form. Its limbs were long, its torso indistinct, fluctuating with symbols too ancient for recognition. Across its chest ran jagged runes, glowing blue-white, shifting constantly like equations too vast for comprehension.
It regarded him.
And then, it spoke—not with a voice, but with knowledge.
"I am a Warden of the Threshold."
[Warden-Class Entity: Active.]
[Designation: Null Aspect.]
[Function: Guardian of Core Access.]
[Threat Level: Uncalculated.]
Seven's hands flexed, the cold weight of readiness settling over him like a second skin.
But the Warden raised no weapon.
Instead, it pointed.
Seven turned—and saw a river of memory.
It wasn't a stream of time as humans understood it. It was his memory—cut open and laid bare across the dark. Scenes pulsed in the distance: a flash of sterile lights, a scream in a lab, white-coated figures arguing behind glass, the sound of his own heartbeat slowing beneath a needle.
Then the nights alone in the wilderness. The hunger. The kill. The fire.
And the silence.
"You are not complete," the Warden said.
"You never were."
Seven stared back. "I don't need to be complete to survive."
The entity tilted its head, runes fluttering.
"You misunderstand, anomaly. This is not a test of survival."
[Initiating Core Evaluation.]
[Anchor: Truth.]
[Directive: Observe.]
Suddenly, Seven was falling.
Not through space. Not even through thought.
He was falling into himself.
-------
He struck the ground with a thud.
Grass.
Wind.
Sky.
He blinked, disoriented. A field stretched before him—rolling hills under golden light. Birds chirped in the distance.
And then he realized the truth.
This was a memory.
His memory.
But he had no memory of this place.
"Where...?"
A voice called out from the hill.
He turned sharply.
A boy stood there. Small. Lean. Familiar.
Too familiar.
It was himself. But younger. Before the implants. Before the experiments. Before the name "Seven."
Before anything was stolen.
The boy smiled.
"You don't remember this, do you?"
Seven narrowed his eyes. "No."
The boy took a step forward. His features shimmered—and began changing.
Hair darkened. Eyes turned golden. Muscles thickened.
He aged—quickly.
Until he stood as an identical mirror of Seven.
Perfectly matched.
"I'm what was cut from you," the doppelgänger said. "The 'Code' they extracted. The human that could've been."
Seven stepped back. The air behind him shifted.
"You are not real."
The double laughed. "Neither are you."
-------
Flashes of light. Screams. A blade in someone's back. The betrayal of a handler. The burning of a village.
One after the other, memories began exploding outward, overlapping, clashing.
Seven clutched his head. "Enough!"
[Core Evaluation: Incomplete.]
[Anomaly resisting inner convergence.]
[Initiating Defensive Layer.]
-------
The illusion shattered.
The Warden stood once again in front of him, but something had changed.
It had drawn a weapon.
It was not forged of metal. It was a concept.
A long, curved edge of purpose, crackling with undefined power. The blade hummed with the weight of decisions unmade.
And without ceremony, the Warden lunged.
-------
Seven ducked low, narrowly missing a slash that split the air behind him into glass-like fragments. He rolled, his hand grasping the phantom hilt of a weapon not given, but demanded—and to his shock, something answered.
From his hand bloomed a spear. Not quite physical. Not quite imagined.
The Infinite Planes had given him nothing.
But his will had carved something out of the void.
And the void had permitted it.
Steel clashed with abstraction.
The Warden moved like silence given form. Every attack forced Seven into motion not based on instinct—but evolution. The core wasn't testing reflexes. It was measuring growth.
Every strike questioned his purpose.
And every parry answered.
Their battle moved through the dark like a storm of memory. Shattered symbols erupted with every impact. Threads were severed. New ones were born.
And then, Seven fell to one knee.
The Warden's blade hovered inches from his throat.
He didn't flinch.
"Kill me, then," he said. "But it won't change what's broken in your system."
The Warden paused.
And lowered the blade.
[Acknowledging anomaly's assertion.]
[Confirming deviation from pre-defined sequence.]
[Interference: Denied.]
[Access to Core: Granted.]
The Warden stepped back.
Its form began to unravel, fragmenting into motes of thought and concept, which vanished into the void like dew under morning light.
Seven stood, panting, confused—but standing.
Then came the voice of the Infinite Planes.
Not a whisper. Not a notification.
But something greater.
[Entity: Code Seven.]
[You have walked the path not paved.]
[You have resisted what should consume.]
[You have denied the false reflection.]
[This is the core.]
The darkness cracked.
Light poured through.
Not blinding—but eternal.
And at the center of it stood a shape.
A throne of ancient thought.
Unclaimed.
Unseen.
Unwelcomed.
Until now.
-------
Far, far away, in a star cluster ruled by the Umbral Sovereigns, an old man awoke from a thousand-year meditation.
He gazed into the void—and trembled.
"He touched the core..." he whispered. "The anomaly lives."
Behind him, shadows stirred.
"Do we move?" one asked.
The old man looked skyward, fear in his ancient eyes.
"Not yet. But watch him. Closely. If he breaches another threshold..."
He didn't finish the sentence.
-------
Seven stood before the throne of thought.
Not the real one. A illusion.
He did not sit.
Not yet.
But for the first time, the Infinite Planes did not test him.
It waited.