The next day started before the lights did.
I was already awake when the dorm's alarm tone buzzed. My HUD displayed a faint trail—an afterglow from the Echo Signal Key. It pulsed toward a point in the Academy I didn't recognize.
Not on any map.
Not on any schedule.
Below everything.
Glint spoke casually, but his tone buzzed with tension.
"Follow the resonance. That's where they buried the fourth."
"Buried?"
"Hidden. Wrapped in false loops. This one's not just locked—it's suppressed."
"Why?"
"Because this one doesn't just show you. It shows them."
I moved through the Academy like a shadow. Dodging scans, cutting across silent halls, diving through maintenance shafts no cadet should know about. The deeper I went, the more unstable the architecture became.
Lights flickered into unfamiliar hues. Audio loops stuttered. I caught ghost-static in my ears—sounds like reversed whispers. My skin itched with static charge. The floor tiles didn't always align.
By the time I reached the lowest access tunnel, my HUD was mostly blind.
Only the Key pulsed.
A single door stood in front of me. Unlike the other hidden entries, this one had no tech. No scanner. No interface.
Just obsidian stone.
Etched into the surface:
TRUTH IS A SHARD. LOOK AND BREAK.
I placed my palm on the symbol.
The stone cracked.
And the world fell away.
I didn't fall down. I fell sideways. Through color. Through sound. Through time.
When I stopped, I was somewhere else.
A room. White. Too white. It buzzed with false perfection.
Mirrors lined the walls. Each one showed a different version of me.
Some older. Some younger. Some broken. One standing above a field of bones.
"This isn't memory," I whispered.
"No," Glint replied, "this is the shard. The raw code. The unrevised truth."
In the center of the room stood a child. Masked. Silent.
The mask was familiar.
"Who are you?" I asked.
The child lifted their hand.
A mirror shattered.
Images swarmed me:
The first scan I ever failed.
A scientist screaming, "Pull him out!"
A reset order being overridden.
A room of cables and one glowing pod marked ECHO-CORE.
The child stepped forward.
"You are not the system's mistake," a voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere. "You are its memory."
"What does that mean?"
Glint answered slowly.
"They couldn't delete you. So they cut you into pieces. Stored your identity inside Anchor shards. This is the last one. The part they feared the most."
I stared at the child.
"What happens if I take it back?"
"Then you'll see what they see. And they'll know you've seen it."
The child held out their hand. Inside it, a mirror fragment.
I took it.
Pain flooded my body.
The pod. The fire. The girl with the braids. A voice singing off-key. Kane screaming my name. The mural. The shard. The Eye. Glint screaming from the static.
Everything.
All at once.
I collapsed to my knees, choking on my own breath.
ANCHOR NODE: 4 OF 4 INSTALLED
ECHO CORE UNSEALED
REALITY ALIGNMENT: INITIATED
My HUD spun, lines of code racing faster than I could read. Then a single, clean message:
VAEL DRAYCE // ID CONFIRMED
RANK: NULL. SYSTEM: UNLISTED. STATE: REMEMBERED.
The child vanished.
The mirrors cracked.
And the walls of the white room peeled away to reveal something I hadn't expected.
My face.
Dozens of me. Frozen in glass tubes. Versions that never woke up. Versions that failed.
"These are your echoes," Glint said. "Some chose silence. Some fought too soon. Some simply... broke."
"And me?"
"You made it this far."
As I turned to leave, I saw one last mirror.
In it, I wasn't alone.
There was someone beside me.
Eyes glowing. Veil-like shimmer around their frame. Watching. Waiting.
I didn't recognize them.
Yet.
But something in me knew—
They were coming.
I reached out and touched the mirror. The glass rippled, distorting the image within. The reflection of the unknown figure didn't follow my movement—it moved on its own. It leaned closer.
Then it spoke.
Not out loud. Not through the HUD. But straight into my mind.
"Anchor confirmed. Signal breach imminent."
I staggered back. Glint's voice surged with static.
"Vael, disconnect. That's not part of the system—it's watching through the shard."
"What is it?" I asked.
Glint paused. "Something older than the system. Something they buried with you."
The mirror cracked. Not from the outside—from within. My reflection, and the other presence beside it, blurred together.
Another message flashed:
EXTERNAL TRACE LOCKED — EYE AWAKE
The room began to collapse. Walls warped. Mirrors shattered. Lights burst in sync with each heartbeat.
I ran. Not just away—but toward the breach that opened where the first mirror had been. The corridor was raw, unfinished code—lines of light and broken tiles that barely held together.
As I leapt through, a final voice followed me:
"Not all of you will return."
I landed hard on the other side. My legs buckled, but I caught myself before falling. The world on this side was dim—like light had to push through water just to reach me.
My HUD sputtered back to life. A single message blinked:
ANCHOR STABILIZATION: 67%
ECHO CORE INTEGRITY: PARTIAL
"Partial?" I asked.
Glint answered after a pause. "One more layer. The shard connected the core, but there's one more piece. The interface anchor."
"Where is it?"
A direction pinged—deep below even Zone 13. The ping was unstable, flickering between coordinates.
"You said this was the last one."
"I said this was the last shard. You're still the container."
The corridor around me twisted. I walked carefully, each step making the tiles shift and settle like it had to remember how to exist.
At the far end, another door waited. This one looked real. Steel. Sealed. And freshly locked.
I approached, expecting a scanner. Instead, my HUD went blank.
A voice—not Glint's—cut through the silence.
"Vael Drayce. Identified."
It was my voice.
"Reintegration path unlocked."
Then the door opened.
I stepped through without hesitating. The air was denser here—colder, too. The moment I crossed the threshold, something deep in my chest clicked. Not physically. Like an old circuit had powered on for the first time in years.
Beyond the doorway, a new corridor extended in both directions. This one wasn't collapsing or glitching—it was clean. Pristine. But wrong in a way I couldn't place.
Glint's voice came back, more subdued now.
"You're inside the system's buffer. A space between signal and execution. They don't think you can survive here."
"Can I?"
"We're about to find out."