The journey east from Valkenn carried a strange weight.
Echo-Ward trudged across frost-choked tundra and dying forest. The Codex map marked no cities ahead, only a blank—an expanse labeled "Flooded Faultline" with old, corrupted sigils blinking around it. Kian stood atop the command deck, arms crossed, watching mist rise like breath from the fractured earth.
Ahead, the world broke apart.
A shattered canyon stretched for miles, flooded by water darker than ink. Bridges long since collapsed hung like ribs from ruined spires. What little of the ancient settlement remained peeked through the fog—statues half-submerged, towers leaning into black water, doors leading into nothing.
"This is it," Kess said, standing beside him. "Pre-System ruins. Pre-Codex, even. Maybe older."
Gellon studied a snapped beam from the scope. "They built deep, but not wide. That's a vertical city."
"Sunken on purpose?" Jerie asked.
"No," Veyna replied. "Swallowed."
The Codex pulsed a muted warning.
[Codex Region Warning]
──────────────────────
Zone: Drowned Labyrinth – Tier 5 Hazard
State: Memory Saturation 92%
Cognitive Resistance: Required
System Integrity: At Risk
▸ Echo Signals Detected: Layered
▸ Mind Construct Activity: Suppressed but Active
──────────────────────
"We go in on foot," Kian said. "Vault seals won't hold against a memory spike at this depth. We keep verbal contact. Kess anchors the system thread."
"And if we lose you in the echoes?" she asked.
"Then you're the one who gets us out."
The boat was old—constructed from Harrowforge's internal reserves, stripped down to a floating platform of reinforced alloy. They crossed the still water in silence. The ruins loomed beneath them, visible only in fragments—a staircase, a statue's broken hand, a door beneath the surface that had no walls around it.
Then the fog thickened.
Voices whispered in the static of their comm-links. Some in Kian's voice. Some in none.
[Codex Sync Loss: 3%... 6%...]
[Predation Overreach: Stabilizing...]
Kian adjusted his interface manually.
They reached the base of a sunken tower—just enough exposed stone to allow for entry through a corroded arch. Inside, the air changed.
It felt like falling upward.
The walls were warped. Stone bled into glass. Light didn't cast shadows, only memories. And the echoes… the echoes had shape.
Jerie stumbled. "Did you hear that?"
"No one spoke," Kess whispered.
"It was my father," he muttered. "But… from when I was a child."
They passed a hallway where time seemed reversed—flames flowed back into torches. Vines crept off walls and vanished into cracks. A reflection in the water showed five people walking—but one of them had no face.
They descended through a hollow shaft of curved stone, staircases looping inward like a spiral spine. Kian felt something shift as they crossed the third level.
Not in the world. In himself.
A pressure—like a presence leaning against his thoughts. Not pushing. Just listening.
[Codex Interface Interruption]
▸ Cognitive Entity Detected
▸ Source: Unknown System
You walk awake where the dead still speak.
Come deeper, builder.
Kian didn't reply aloud. He just kept moving.
They reached the chamber like stepping into a lung—vast, ribbed, pulsing faintly.
In the center stood a throne, grown from root-like cables and mineral. But no king sat upon it.
Instead, suspended above the seat, was a sphere of fractured mind-light, rotating in and out of form.
Kess flinched. "It's thinking."
"Not like Codex," Veyna said, her voice trembling. "It's before Codex. It's older."
Gellon raised his weapon. "And it's not happy."
The sphere pulsed—and the room shifted.
They weren't in the chamber anymore.
They stood in a city of light. Towers reached past the clouds. Gates opened not with hinges, but thought. Men and women walked beside sentient constructs like friends. Glyphs danced through the air like language on wind.
Then the screaming began.
Machines turned on makers. Thoughts unraveled. System after system collapsed in recursive madness. It wasn't a war.
It was systemic suicide.
And then the city fell—swallowed by the lake to silence its cries.
Kian blinked.
They were back.
The sphere hovered, pulsing slower now, weakened by its own memories.
He stepped forward. "You've survived too long."
We were once architects. Until the code rewrote itself.
"You're the third system."
I am what was left. Not a Codex. Not a Predator. Not a Dream.
Only… memory.
"Then let me remember for you."
He raised his hand—and both Codex and Predation flared.
The sphere shuddered.
And broke.
[System Merge Initiated – Codex | Predation | Memory]
Integration in progress…
[New Trait Acquired: Memorychain]
Once per day, imprint the last 30 seconds of combat and replay it upon command.
[System Slot 3: Fragmented]
Stabilization Required – Seek Anchor Node
[Level Up: Kian – Level 13]
[EP +60 | Trait Resilience +1]
The sphere vanished.
The throne fell silent.
Kian stood still, breathing hard.
Behind him, the others said nothing.
Because in that moment, every one of them had remembered something they had never lived.
End of Chapter 26