Damon Korz stood alone in his apartment, staring at the window. He wasn't looking at the city. He was watching himself.
Reflected in the glass was not his usual image. His body was still. His reflection twitched. Eyes slightly off-center, blinking at the wrong rhythm, lips moving without sound.
And behind the reflection—within the warped layers of Holloway's evening light—was something else. Not a shape. Not a person. A distortion. A presence just beyond visual logic. It flickered like broken pixels in a dream: too sharp to be organic, too unstable to be static.
The Dominion hadn't said a word in hours.
Until now.
External Presence Confirmed
Classification: Unknown
Dominion Authority: Unrecognized
Protective Field Reversion: Failed
Cognitive Seal Breach Detected
Override Attempt Imminent
Then, his apartment blinked out.
Not physically. Not visually. Not even in memory. Contextually. One moment, he was standing in his apartment. The next, he was… elsewhere. Still standing. Still breathing. The floor beneath him wasn't wood, it was obsidian glass, stretched across a void so deep it had no bottom. The walls weren't walls, they were threads of light, stretched between invisible anchors, each humming with tension. Above him, no ceiling. Only orbiting rings made of fractured code and burning sigils that spun in concentric silence. He reached out to touch the air. It pulsed. Then he appeared. Not from shadow. Not from distance. He just materialized as in static.
A man, or something close to one, standing barefoot on the black glass, wearing a tattered suit that shifted between pinstripes and patchwork. His eyes were covered by a wide band of gold mesh, and in his left hand he held a cane made of blinking circuit lines and bone.
His presence was immediate. Unignorable.
He spoke before Damon could.
"I thought it would take longer for someone to reach this point," he said, voice smooth, deliberate. Not arrogant—but ancient. "You moved faster than most."
"Who are you?" Damon asked, breath cold in his chest.
The man smiled, almost sadly. "I was the first Candidate." Damon stiffened.The Dominion pulsed a warning:
Anomaly Identified
Thread Logic: Nonconforming
Tier: Architect-Class Interference
Recommendation: Terminate Dialogue Immediately
He ignored it.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
The man's smile widened, just a little. "I was the one who built the logic of Ascension. The one who turned ambition into a quantifiable structure. The Dominion wasn't given to you by Gods. It wasn't designed by mystics. It was programmed,line by line, cycle by cycle."
Damon stared at him. "You're lying."
"I don't have to lie. I exist outside your tree of consequence." He stepped closer. The void didn't echo. The space didn't shift. Damon's vision flickered.
"You've begun to fracture," the Architect said. "Your threadspace has absorbed more than one root path. You're no longer one Damon. You're five. Maybe six. Each making choices the others aren't aware of."
"I've seen them," Damon muttered. "Reflections. Variants. Echoes."
"They're not echoes. They're you. They just didn't win." "Then why am I still here?"
"Because the system doesn't know how to erase you." That stopped him.The Dominion buzzed hard, flashing warnings. Architect-Origin Logic Detected
Source Access Level: Unavailable
Abort Communication – Immediate Risk
Damon stayed silent. He looked into the face of the man this so-called Architect, and asked the question he wasn't sure he wanted answered:
"Did I delete her?"
A pause. Not out of hesitation. Out of… respect.
"Yes," the Architect said. "But not in the way you think." Damon's stomach twisted.
"You didn't kill Renna. You overwrote her. The system honored your momentum. But in doing so, it rewrote everyone's memory of her, including your own. That is Dominion protocol." "Why?" "Because you reached the threshold of Author status. You moved from Player to Editor."
Damon whispered, "So I was rewarded for erasing someone?"
"No," the Architect said. "You were rewarded for dominating the thread. The erasure was collateral. The system doesn't value lives. It values movement."
He turned his back and walked to the edge of the glass.Below them, faint images shimmered. Not reflections—simulations. Thousands of Damons, playing out other paths. Some still in the office. Some in hospitals. Some buried under piles of thread debris. One was laughing in a mirror. One was screaming. "All of this was meant to be observed," the Architect continued. "Candidates would rise. Some would fall. Some would breach. None would escape."
He turned again."But you're different."
Damon narrowed his eyes. "Why me?"
"Because you saw the flaw," the Architect said. "You remembered her. You saw the silence where her name used to be. Most Candidates don't notice. They accept the edit and keep climbing. You didn't."
Damon stepped forward. "Then what do you want?"
The Architect smiled.
"I'm offering you what was once offered to me."
He raised a hand. The space behind him twisted open, threads parting, light fracturing. A path revealed itself: a hallway made of living thought, doors made of pure intention, and at its end, an orb of code burning so brightly it couldn't be looked at directly.
"The core. The root source. The place where Dominion logic is rewritten."
Damon's throat tightened. "You want me to override it?"
"I want you to understand it."
"What happens if I go in?"
"You lose your shape. But you gain your own rules." "And if I don't?"
"You'll keep climbing," the Architect said. "You'll rise. You'll dominate. You'll become a Crowned Candidate, one of the Final Nine. But you'll never leave the system. You'll just rule it from the inside."
"And you?"
"I'm already outside," he said. "But I can't go back in. That's the price I paid."
Damon stared at the hallway.
Everything in his life had been about control. Structure. Optimization. The Dominion had given him that. Then it showed him it was broken. And now…
Now it was offering him freedom. Not escape. Something deeper. A chance to rewrite the game.
The Architect stepped aside.
"You've already begun the transition. The ninth thorn on your sigil confirms it."
Damon looked at his palm.
Nine thorns. One faintly gold.
New Path Detected
Access Code: ARCH-THREAD-INITIATE
Override Protocol Key: DamKZ092-Reach
You are now eligible to break the core.
Continue, and the system will never be the same.
Decline, and remain a Candidate.
Damon looked down the hall. He took one step forward.The Dominion screamed.
SYSTEM ERROR
Unauthorized Thread Detected
Override Path Conflict
REJECTION MODE ENABLED
The hallway shuddered.
Then exploded into light.
The Architect vanished.
Damon screamed,once, as his thread was torn in two.
He lay on the floor for what felt like hours.
The apartment didn't return to normal, it just stopped reacting. The air no longer pulsed. The shadows no longer whispered. Nothing was right. Time moved in broken increments. His phone blinked 7:08, then 7:06, then 7:11.
His thoughts followed no path. Each memory, when summoned, came with multiple versions. He couldn't remember if he had gone to work the day before or simply imagined it. Layna's voice echoed in the walls. Renna's absence bled through the apartment like a vacuum no logic could fill.
The Dominion didn't sync. It watched.
when it finally spoke, it was with the tone of an administrator, not a guide.
System Status: THREAD DEVIANT DETECTED
Candidate: Damon Korz
Class: Architect-Seed
Alignment: Fractured
Local Threadspace: Unstable
Emergency Enforcement Active
Emergency enforcement.
His breath caught.
He pushed himself to his feet, staggered to the sink, splashed cold water on his face.
The mark on his palm had changed again.
Nine thorns. The base of the crown cracked. Underneath, the new symbol, the triangle inside a circle, flickered like a heartbeat. More disturbing were the lines branching outward from it, like roots, or chains, reaching beyond his own thread.
The Dominion wasn't just tracking him.
It was binding him to something bigger.
A pulse hit his temple, sharp, sudden.
Phase Shift: Watcher Deployment Confirmed
Standby for contact
Do not resist
Contact?
A noise hit the apartment. Subtle, not physical. A presence more than a sound. Like gravity shifting slightly left.
Damon turned. A man stood in his kitchen.
Except it wasn't a man. It wore the concept of one. A suit that didn't bend correctly. Eyes where eyes should be, but too still. Its skin was smooth and untextured, like plastic remembering flesh. No weapon. No motion. Damon felt like prey.
"Damon Korz," it said.
Not a voice. A designation. Like hearing your name across different frequencies.
"I didn't ask for this," Damon said quietly.
"You activated Architect logic," it replied. "The system cannot allow this thread to grow. Reversal requires intervention."
"I didn't finish the override."
"But you attempted it," the Watcher replied.
Damon looked down. The roots beneath his sigil pulsed faintly. The Watcher stepped forward. Not walking. Just… closer.
"You are not yet outside the system," it said. "You can still be returned to Candidate class." "And if I don't return?"
"Then containment begins."
Something shifted.
The air peeled.
Behind the Watcher, space fractured, revealing the inside of his apartment layered with dozens of alternate Damons, each frozen in a different position. One on the floor, one on the ceiling, one screaming, one laughing. They were frames. Outcomes.
Timelines. Damon stepped back.
"You're going to erase me."
"No," said the Watcher. "You are going to choose which version of you gets to stay."
The floor collapsed beneath him.
He fell sideways through memory.
Suddenly he was in Layna's car. Rain hitting the windows. Her eyes red. Her voice asking him something, but he couldn't hear it. Then he was in the office. Standing at a podium, people applauding. His name echoing through the space, but the faces were blank.
Then back in the hallway outside Renna's old office. Except it wasn't hers.
Because in this thread, she never existed.
He clutched his head. Each memory hurt. He could feel the Dominion struggling to hold it all together.
ERROR: SIMULTANEOUS THREAD INTEGRATION DETECTED
Candidate experiencing Echo Collapse
Recommended Action: EXECUTE RESET
Then a hand pulled him from the void.
Reality slammed back.He gasped awake.
Not in his apartment.
In a corridor, metallic, smooth, cold-lit. Surveillance lights overhead. A Dominion control hall.
He was in the architecture itself.
someone else was waiting.
a woman.
Early thirties. Pale skin. Silver eyes. She wore a white coat laced with thin black thread-stripes—like circuit traces sewn through fabric.
She studied him with clinical detachment.
"You're early," she said.
Damon coughed. "What is this?"
"An unassigned thread hub. The system is using it to hold you until it decides if you're salvageable."
"Who are you?"
"Lucen Vale. Echo compliance analyst. I monitor low-probability Architects."
"There are more like me?"
"There were," she said. "Not anymore."
She handed him a tablet. No logo. Just a sigil, his sigil, burned into its surface.
"This is your root file," she said. "Your thread in raw form. Every path. Every edit. Every override attempt. It's you without filters."
Damon hesitated. "Why are you helping me?"
"I'm not. I'm recording you. Everything you say here becomes precedent. The system learns from you. If you survive this, others will follow."
"If I survive?"
Lucen tilted her head. "You broke protocol. But you didn't break intention. The Watchers can't delete someone who didn't reject their own momentum. But they can force you to choose which version of you becomes real."
"And if I choose wrong?"
"Then the rest are... culled."
Damon stood, gripping the tablet.
He stared at her.
"What if I don't choose?"
She nodded. "That's the question."
The corridor darkened.
The Watcher returned.
So did the hallway the one the Architect had shown him. The override path. Still damaged. Still unstable.
Lucen stepped back.
"This is your last frame," she said. "Your thread is in flux. Your memory's bleeding. If you want to define yourself this is the only time you'll be allowed to."
Damon looked from the Watcher… to the hallway… to the flickering realities around him.
He closed his eyes. Override thread alignment? Confirm or Decline. Final choice required. He whispered: "…Confirm." everything shattered, a single frame of light, infinite in structure his voice echoed across its surface, the Dominion changed.
It evolved. it whispered something back:
Override accepted. Damon Korz is no longer a Candidate. Damon Korz is now an Architect-Class Divergent, and then They came, not Watchers, not echoes, not versions, the Others, The original Nine. They had been watching the whole time.