The floor beneath Zayn lit in concentric rings. They didn't glow with energy, they pulsed with memories. His memories. Some real. Some twisted by time. He stepped forward once more, but the moment his foot crossed the innermost ring, reality caved in around him.
The chamber was gone.
F-13 was gone.
Even the Null felt... distant.
Zayn stood in a void stitched together by moving fragments of glass, each shard reflecting a different life... his life. Some showed him bleeding on a cold floor. Others showed him as a warlord standing over fallen nations. One showed him surrounded by people, smiling... but none of them had faces.
Then came the voices.
"Where were you when she died?"
"Do you even remember her name?"
"Why didn't you burn it all down?"
"Why didn't you stop it?"
"Why did you survive?"
The shards pulsed louder with each accusation.
Zayn fell to one knee. The ground beneath him wasn't ground at all. It was memory hardened into matter. The Null tried to stabilize him, but something here resisted, a friction in the fracturing of his own sense of self.
He looked up.
In the distance, through the veil of broken reflection, he saw a door. Not mechanical. Not designed. It was a wooden door from his childhood... red, chipped at the bottom, with his mother's handprint still faintly visible from the night she slammed it shut.
Zayn stood and walked toward it.
Each step pulled him deeper into himself. Not metaphorically. He could feel his own mind opening, memory by memory. He saw himself as a child laughing in the gardens of the Ark, racing toward a hologram that no longer existed. He saw the first time he felt a Null pulse, the first time the world shimmered when he screamed.
And then... the Cleanser.
Always that mask.
Always watching.
He reached the door.
His hand hovered over the knob.
He didn't want to open it. He knew what waited. Not monsters. Not ghosts.
Answers.
He opened it.
The hallway beyond was pitch black, but filled with sound, soft, wet breathing, like lungs on the verge of collapse. He moved forward, and with each step, the light returned, piece by piece.
The hallway became a lab.
His father's lab.
Only this time, Zayn wasn't a visitor.
He was the experiment.
A glass chamber stood in the center, and inside it was a younger version of himself, suspended in Null, eyes wide open, mouth screaming without sound. Monitors blinked around the tank. Dozens of them. Each showed a different test result. All of them read the same word in red: unstable.
He turned slowly.
His father stood at the console.
"You were supposed to be better," the man said softly. "Cleaner. More... complete."
Zayn stepped forward.
"You made me this."
His father didn't turn.
"You were born from silence. We gave you form because we needed a key."
Zayn clenched his jaw.
"You needed a weapon."
Finally, the figure turned.
It wasn't his father.
It was Zayn himself.
Older. Hollow-eyed. Radiating Null like a collapsed sun.
"You are what we feared," the double said. "You remember too much."
The room shattered around him.
The illusion broke.
And Zayn returned to the chamber.
The Council watched.
The Mute Prophet's veil showed his trial from the outside. Zayn had not moved. Not once. Not even blinked.
Glass Skin's voice was quieter now.
"You endured your fracture."
Aether Rot pulsed erratically.
"He's holding too many echoes..."
Mother Coil vibrated in a new tone.
"…he-is-assimilating-them…"
F-13 stood nearby, hands shaking. Her eyes had gone too bright.
Zayn stood, breath ragged.
He didn't speak.
He looked at his hands.
He felt... heavier.
Stronger.
The memories hadn't broken him. They'd joined him.
The Null pulsed with new rhythm.
Each echo he'd faced had left something behind.
A phrase.
A feeling.
A power.
Zayn turned to face the Council fully.
"I'm not here to be weighed."
The Hollow General raised his chin.
"Then why are you here?"
Zayn answered without hesitation.
"To decide what to do with all this power."
The chamber dimmed.
None of them spoke immediately.
F-13 stepped forward, voice steady but distant.
"He's not like us."
Glass Skin nodded once.
"No. He's not."
The Hollow General stepped down from his platform and stood at eye level with Zayn.
"You passed the fracture. But passing isn't the same as enduring."
Zayn narrowed his eyes.
"Speak plainly."
"You're still human," the General said. "But if you keep going... if you keep absorbing fractures, you won't be."
Zayn didn't flinch.
"Then I won't stop."
Aether Rot flared.
"Then we must choose."
The Council began to vote.
One by one, they stepped back into their platforms.
Glass Skin — support
Mother Coil — abstain
Aether Rot — support
The Mute Prophet — no response
The Hollow General — oppose
A split.
Tension filled the air.
The Council had not split in decades.
Zayn looked at each of them.
"You brought me here for judgment," he said. "Then listen carefully."
The Null began to rise around him. His body shimmered slightly, not with light, but with weight. Reality dipped inward at his feet.
"I'm not here to fix your world. I'm here to end the fracture. Permanently."
The Hollow General's eyes narrowed.
"That will tear the system apart."
Zayn nodded.
"Good."
The chamber convulsed.
Walls buckled.
F-13 collapsed.
Zayn caught her as she fell. Her skin was cold. Too cold. Her eyes flickered with glitching memories... some not hers. Some not from this timeline.
She whispered a name.
"Velon..."
Zayn's blood froze.
The name hadn't passed anyone's lips in over a decade.
The Cleanser's origin.
The Null inside her twisted. F-13 shuddered.
Zayn stood and looked up at the Council.
"This conversation is over."
Without waiting for a response, he stepped backward into the breach.
The Sphere didn't resist.
It folded around him.
And in one breathless moment, they were gone.
Back in the crater.
Back in the real.
Or... what remained of it.
The stars overhead no longer aligned correctly.
The world had shifted.
And somewhere beneath the shifting earth, an ancient Core engine came back online, powered by a name long buried.
Zayn.
And the one waiting to meet him again.
Velon.