The door loomed before them—worn, unassuming, etched in delicate handwriting Zero recognized instantly.
His mother's.
Not a digital projection. Not a glyph. Just real, shaky handwriting from a pen that probably hadn't existed for centuries.
He hesitated.
"Should I open it?"
Patch snorted softly. "If it explodes, I call dibs on your boots."
Fry didn't move. "That door isn't just memory. It's targeted. It was shaped by your recursion signature. The Karnyx isn't showing you this—it's remembering with you."
Zero swallowed hard. Then he reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the wood, the door didn't open. It melted. Disintegrated into dust that curled inward like smoke being sucked into a black hole.
And beyond it was the house.
His house.
Everything was… wrong.
At first glance, it was just a childhood home—faded couch, crooked bookshelf, light through cracked windows.
But the walls pulsed. The shadows bent the wrong way. And every picture frame had the faces blurred.
Except one.
A photo of him, age ten, holding hands with his mother.
Zero stepped closer. "This shouldn't exist. I never saw this photo before."
Patch peered over his shoulder. "Maybe it doesn't exist. Yet. Or maybe it exists because you're remembering it now."
Fry's gaze was locked on a corner of the ceiling.
Zero followed it.
A faint red glyph shimmered just beneath the plaster. Hidden. Fragile. Shaped like a sideways spiral.
"Memory anchor," she whispered. "Someone embedded a vault key here."
Zero touched it.
Reality lurched.
He was back in the same room—but younger. Much younger.
Maybe six years old. Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, chewing on a rubber hexagon and laughing as his mother stirred tea in the kitchen.
The smell hit him first.
Cinnamon.
It was the same scent from the phantom memory—the one Patch had used to unmask the fake Zero.
It was here, real, again.
His mother knelt beside him, brushing his hair back.
"You've got such bright eyes," she whispered. "One day you'll see too much."
Zero wanted to speak, to ask a thousand things. But his body was a child's. His mouth refused to move.
She leaned close.
"I'm sorry for what I'll do. But I won't let them take your soul. You'll forget. And you'll hate me for it. But that's okay."
She kissed his forehead.
Then everything shattered.
He staggered backward. Fry caught him before he fell.
"That was a vault trace," she said. "Only partial. The rest is still buried."
Patch knelt beside the couch and picked up a stuffed animal. "Uh. Guys?"
They turned.
Patch was holding a toy—a knitted bear with one button eye.
It was identical to the one Zero saw in the vision.
Except this one had something stitched into its back.
A spiral. The same sideways glyph. Glowing faintly.
Fry's voice was hollow. "That's not a toy. It's a carrier."
Zero stared. "Of what?"
Fry slowly lifted the bear. Opened the seam.
Inside was a thin strip of metallic thread, wound around a shard of obsidian tech—a Karnyx seed.
Zero's legs gave out.
Fry caught him again.
"She implanted it," she said. "She didn't trust anyone else. Your mother bound you to the Karnyx before you ever touched recursion."
Patch looked between them. "Wait, wait, wait. Are we saying Mommy Dearest Karnyx-bombed her son for funsies?"
"No," Fry whispered. "She was protecting him. But she broke every law to do it."
Zero's voice was a rasp.
"Why didn't I remember?"
"You did," Fry said. "But the Karnyx made sure you didn't understand what you were remembering."
Zero clutched the bear.
And the cinnamon smell returned.
They sat in the ruined house for a while.
Patch kept making quiet, poorly timed jokes about "trauma bears."
Zero didn't laugh. But he smiled once.
Then the spiral on the bear pulsed—and the house began to dissolve.
Memory Anchor Depleted. Recursive Access Ending.
As the home vanished, Zero caught one final glimpse of his mother—standing in the kitchen, staring through the veil of time.
She raised a hand.
And mouthed something.
One word.
His real name.
He woke back in the recursion chamber, heart pounding.
Fry crouched beside him. "You're back. Good."
Patch handed him the bear. "Look who survived existential stuffing."
Zero stared at the spiral.
"We need to find the rest," he said. "There's more. I can feel it."
Fry nodded.
And Patch sighed. "Fantastic. We're officially bear-chasing through recursion. I need a raise."