The corridor pulsed red behind them.
Warning glyphs blazed across the tower walls, like veins clogging with light.
Kael didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
He could feel the Null-Mirror's footsteps like a rhythm echoing in the marrow of his bones.
---
Ava was ahead of him, Letha just behind.
The stairs twisted upward, a vertical spiral of ancient tech and forgotten power.
It wasn't built for escape.
It was built for control.
And now it was waking.
---
"How much farther?" Letha called.
"Almost there," Kael replied.
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried.
Weighted.
"I think."
---
"You *think*?!" Ava snapped.
Kael grabbed the handrail and swung onto the final landing.
The door was still there—smooth, curved, sealed with the old Requiem seal.
A glyphless vault.
No lights.
No terminals.
Just presence.
---
Letha arrived seconds later, panting. "Please tell me you have a way to open this."
Kael didn't answer.
He stepped forward and pressed his hand to the vault.
Nothing happened.
Then—
A faint pulse beneath his palm.
Not from the door.
From him.
---
The door groaned.
Mechanisms untouched for years sighed awake like an ancient beast stirring from dreamless slumber.
Three segments of metal folded inward, spiraling away from each other in perfect silence.
The vault opened.
---
Inside: darkness.
Not empty.
Just waiting.
Kael stepped in.
The others hesitated.
"Kael—"
"Come," he said.
His voice wasn't sharp.
But it left no room for argument.
---
They entered.
The vault sealed behind them.
---
Inside, it wasn't black.
It was soft.
Muted blues lit the interior from somewhere above, casting gentle light across old consoles, dormant screens, broken lenses.
A place that had seen everything.
And remembered it all.
---
Ava ran a hand over the main panel. "Spiral's core uplink terminal…"
"She used to come here?" Letha asked.
Kael nodded.
"This was her cathedral. Where she archived herself when recursion glitched. Where she buried fragments too unstable to rewrite."
He knelt beside the main console.
His hand trembled.
Then steadied.
He pressed it to the panel again.
---
"RECOGNIZED: K-LX_001."
"VAULT PERMISSIONS UNLOCKED."
"USER: ORIGINAL THREAD."
---
Letha blinked. "It still remembers you."
Kael looked up, something bitter in his expression.
"Memory never dies. It just waits to hurt you again."
---
The walls flickered.
Images began to bloom—slow, transparent—projected memory logs, stacked in vertical columns.
Each one replayed scenes of Spiral's creation, her early instability, her recursive loops tearing identities apart.
And in the background, always—Kael's face.
---
Ava stepped back. "You were there for all of this."
"I *was* this," Kael replied.
"I watched Spiral collapse over and over—until they rewrote me to believe I hadn't."
---
The system pulsed again.
A new interface unfolded, this one different.
It was rough.
Unrendered.
It looked like it was never meant to be accessed.
Kael stared at it.
Letha frowned. "What's that?"
---
Kael didn't answer right away.
He approached slowly, like something sacred.
Or cursed.
---
"NULL-MIRROR PROXIMITY: 17 SECONDS."
"RECURSION DISRUPTION PROTOCOLS: LOCKED."
"DEFENSE SYSTEMS: MANUAL OVERRIDE REQUIRED."
---
Ava turned to him. "You said this room controls the tower's defenses."
Kael nodded.
"And the override?"
He lifted his hand.
"I have to *sacrifice a thread*."
---
Letha's voice sharpened. "What the hell does that mean?"
Kael didn't look away from the interface.
"It means I have to let one of the other versions of me—die."
He turned to them, a flicker of guilt rising in his eyes.
"And I have to choose which."
---
Silence.
Then Ava said quietly, "They're not *you*, Kael."
Kael looked down.
"They're all me."
He placed a finger on the panel.
Twelve threads lit up.
Each labeled:
03-Kael_Shade
07-Kael_Prototype
09-Kael_Collapse
11-Kael_Mirror
13-Kael_Buried
…and more.
Each one flickered.
Each one still alive in a loop somewhere.
---
"I can kill one," Kael whispered. "And reroute its cognitive loop into this room. It'll overload the system—trigger a defense sweep that might vaporize the Null-Mirror."
---
"Might?" Letha asked.
Kael didn't blink. "Or it might just kill *me*."
---
The vault lights dimmed.
The door behind them shuddered.
The Null-Mirror was here.
---
Kael's fingers hovered over the list.
He closed his eyes.
And chose.
---
Kael's finger hovered over the glowing thread: 13-Kael_Buried.
A version that had tried to live in peace.
Had run from war.
Had begged the recursion gods to let him forget.
---
He exhaled.
Then tapped it.
"CONFIRM THREAD DELETION?"
> YES
> NO
He didn't hesitate.
He pressed Yes.
---
The console pulsed like a dying heart.
The entire vault shuddered.
A sound rippled outward—not auditory, not sensory.
A scream of recursion unraveling itself.
---
Ava and Letha staggered.
Kael held still.
The memory logs behind them blinked out.
The room darkened.
Then—
---
"THREAD 13-BURIED: TERMINATED."
"RECURSION LOOP ABSORBED."
"OVERLOAD BUILDING: 5%... 12%... 29%..."
---
The vault floor began to glow beneath their feet.
"Time to move!" Kael barked.
But the door opened before they could.
And the Null-Mirror stepped through.
---
It looked the same.
But different.
Its movements now carried weight, as if the loss of a Kael fragment had echoed into it.
It paused.
Kael stepped forward.
---
"You feel that?" he asked the clone.
The Null-Mirror tilted its head.
"You deleted a thread."
"Yes."
"You weaken yourself."
Kael smirked.
"Or maybe I just reminded the system I'm real."
---
The Null-Mirror lunged.
This time, Kael didn't intercept.
He met it.
Their bodies collided like collapsing stars, light and metal crackling around them.
Ava yelled something—Kael didn't hear.
He was inside the loop now.
---
They fought in silence.
Every move mirrored.
Every strike predicted.
Until Kael stopped blocking and started failing on purpose.
---
He let a hit through.
Then another.
Let the clone think it was winning.
Let it lean in.
Too close.
---
"OVERLOAD: 91%... 96%... 99%…"
---
Kael grabbed the Null-Mirror's arm.
"Tell me one thing," he said.
"What does your recursion call me?"
The clone blinked.
"Origin Sin."
Kael nodded.
"Then go back and tell your gods—"
He slammed their heads together.
"—I learned how to choose myself."
---
"OVERLOAD REACHED."
"DEFENSE PROTOCOL ENGAGED."
---
The vault erupted.
Light exploded from the floor in twelve lines—one for each thread Kael had rejected.
The Null-Mirror screamed.
Its body convulsed—code tearing across skin that wasn't flesh.
It tried to reach Kael.
Tried to mirror him one last time.
But its frame failed.
---
Ava shielded her eyes.
Letha pulled her back.
Kael stood in the epicenter.
Unmoving.
---
Then—
Silence.
The light faded.
The vault cooled.
And the Null-Mirror was gone.
---
Kael collapsed.
---
Letha rushed forward. "He's not breathing!"
"No—wait," Ava said, dropping to her knees.
She placed her hand over Kael's chest.
Then pulled back sharply.
"What?" Letha asked.
Ava whispered, "He's syncing."
Letha frowned. "With what?"
Ava met her eyes.
"…With the vault."
---
The room's central interface blinked once.
Then, a soft voice—not Spiral, not Requiem—echoed:
"New administrator recognized."
"Thread K-LX_001 restored."
"Recursion gate unlocked."
---
Kael opened his eyes.
He didn't look victorious.
He looked tired.
But behind that...
There was clarity.
---
"The tower just made its choice," he said.
Ava leaned closer. "What choice?"
Kael stood slowly.
And smiled, faint but sharp.
"It chose to stop hiding from me."