Location: Temporal Corridor Rupture Point
Threat Level: ???
Entity Class: Self-Echo [Fragmented Timeline Kael - Type III]
The clone lunged, dragging a crooked blade behind it, screaming without a mouth. Its eyes were blank voids, leaking silver fluid like dying stars.
Kael met it mid-charge.
Their blades collided—no clash of steel, just a shuddering pulse, like a heartbeat ripping apart in reverse.
The creature fought like him, but broken. Faster, yes—but unrefined. All instinct, no discipline. It moved like Kael after the Severing, without memory, without hesitation.
A monster made of muscle memory and rage.
He ducked a wild slash and countered low—but the clone pivoted mid-air and sliced through his shoulder. Kael grunted, blood spraying. Not deep. Not fatal.
But the clone laughed silently, a soundless hysteria that echoed inside Kael's skull.
This is what you'd be if you'd cut it all away, he thought. No Lira. No past. No doubt.
No soul.
"Kael!" Sael shouted, hurling her blade.
The crystal in her palm blazed.
The knife hit the clone's ribs—but passed through, phasing into smoke.
"It's not entirely present!" she cried. "It's echoing between failed timelines!"
Kael realized the truth.
He couldn't kill it with the present.
He had to anchor it first.
"Sael!" he barked. "Bind it with memory!"
She nodded and raised her left hand—the cube—chanting low.
"Seven names. One ghost. One path that broke."
"Bring the fracture back to form."
The cube pulsed and fired a tether of golden thread—pure memory. It wrapped around the clone's chest, digging into its form.
The monster shrieked, half-material now, jerking in pain.
Kael surged forward, eyes burning.
"I am what you could never be."
He drove his blade straight through the clone's chest.
This time—it stuck.
The creature froze.
Then collapsed inward, vanishing with a sound like time snapping shut.
[System Notice]
Temporal Echo Neutralized.
Divergence sealed — for now.
Sael's presence remains anomalous.
Tower Response: Adaptation in progress.
Kael dropped to one knee, gasping.
Sael knelt beside him.
"You did it," she said, voice shaking. "You're still… you."
He looked at her.
"Tell me everything. Now."
She hesitated. Looked down at the cube in her hand.
"I come from a recursion loop," she said quietly. "One of hundreds. You tried to change the Tower's core in my timeline. You failed. Died in front of me. Again and again."
Kael's breath slowed.
"I remembered you," she said. "You trained me before the sixth collapse. Before the Tower rebooted. You called me your Shadow not because I followed you—but because I came after you. Your last echo."
Kael stared into the dark, where the clone had vanished.
The Tower didn't just test climbers.
It recorded them.
Played them again. And again.
Until they broke.
"How many versions of me are there?" he asked.
Sael answered with a whisper.
"Too many."
They sat in silence as the corridor reformed around them.
But the Tower no longer felt silent.
It watched, aware now that Kael could interfere with its loops.
And it didn't like that.