"Old ghosts don't knock. They break the door down."—Seris-Va
New York City – Remnant Stark Tower
The building was abandoned—at least officially.
What was once a gleaming beacon of innovation was now a cold shell of memory, stripped of Avengers branding, with cracked glass and vines clawing their way up its steel bones.
But deep beneath, power still flowed. Hidden systems untouched by time or war, sealed behind Stark-level encryption.
Today, Riri returned.Not as a student.As an inheritor.
Inside the Sub-basement Vault
She stood in front of a biometric console. The A.I. read her vitals, paused…
And unlocked with a quiet hiss.
Lights surged. Generators hummed. A massive pillar of technology rose from the center—a dormant multiversal core interface, the one Tony had worked on secretly before the Snap.
"He called it the Mirrorheart," Riri whispered. "Said it could look through time without touching it."
Now it would have to do more.
Projection Room
Seris-Va synced her gauntlet with the system, Wong traced sigils over glowing circuits, and the Mirrorheart pulsed to life.
What emerged wasn't just data.
It was a trail.
Faint residue of Kael's temporal frequency, matched with alien code never seen before.
"The code is trying to overwrite itself," Seris-Va said. "It's mutating."
"Like a virus," Riri murmured. "It's evolving."
Wong's eyes narrowed. "Or being guided."
Suddenly, the screen flickered—then went black.
A new message appeared:
"HELLO, RIRI.""DO YOU MISS ME YET?"
Reality Warped
The room shuddered.
The Mirrorheart screeched with energy as Null-Kael's voice surged through the system.
They weren't just watching him—he was watching them back.
"The fracture wasn't a mistake," his voice echoed."I am the part of Kael willing to finish what you were too afraid to start."
"You're not him!" Riri shouted.
The air cracked, and for just a moment, Null-Kael's face formed—cold, perfectly still, stitched with glimmering data scars.
"No," he whispered. "I'm better."
And then he was gone.
Aftermath
Smoke drifted from the console. Seris-Va put out a fire with a magnetic pulse.
Wong stood silent, fists tight.
"If he can access the Mirrorheart," he said slowly, "then the Convergence protections are breaking down."
Riri looked at the screen. The message still glowed, seared into her mind.
"We need Kael," she said.
Seris-Va frowned. "Our Kael vanished. No signal. No trace."
Riri turned.
"Then we find the one person who might still be able to hear him."
Wong raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
"The child."
"Liora."
❖ To Be Continued in Chapter 3 – The Girl Who Speaks in Echoes ❖