Kael didn't sleep.
He didn't need to.
The moment he closed his eyes, the mark on his hand pulsed—filling his mind with images that didn't feel like dreams, didn't feel like memories. Just static, shaped like truth.
He saw:
A child floating in a dark tank, eyes open, wires feeding into his spine.
A screen flashing red: SUBJECT: KAEL. COGNITIVE DETERIORATION 89%. REJECTED.
And then: a woman's face. Mouth moving, but no sound—until one word broke through:
> "Run."
---
Morning came with no sun—just a pale glow from the cracked sky. Kael stood on a ledge, overlooking the valley beyond the glass forest.
And there it was.
Another clock.
This one wasn't submerged. It was suspended in the air, tilted sideways, spinning slowly like a broken satellite frozen mid-fall. Around it floated shattered black stones, orbiting unnaturally.
But what made Kael's skin crawl was this: the clock's numbers weren't numbers.
They were names.
And one of them was his.
> "Kael — 03:07:14"
A countdown?
He checked his palm.
The mark had begun spinning again—slowly, silently. The inner circle turned clockwise. The outermost, counterclockwise. And the middle ring... pulsed once with red light.
Kael clenched his fist.
> Find answers. Move forward. Don't get stuck in thinking. That was instinct. Or maybe memory.
As he approached the suspended clock, the air grew thicker—not heavy, but aware. Each step sounded wrong, like walking in someone else's dream.
Then, a voice. Mechanical. Hollow. But not unfamiliar.
> "Protocol Echo initializing."
The clock stopped spinning.
The world around Kael froze—glass trees halted mid-sway, leaves suspended in air, even the clouds locked in place.
Kael's breath steamed. Time wasn't just slowing.
It was waiting.
> "Subject 17 — rejected 17 cycles. Manual override detected."
Kael's mind flooded again—more memories bleeding through.
Running through fire.
Waking in hospitals he'd never seen.
Voices screaming about breach events.
Rooms of faceless people watching him through glass.
> "Reintegration incomplete. Fracture Level: Red. Protocol attempting sync."
And then—a figure appeared.
Right next to him.
Human-shaped. Head shaved. No face. Just a swirling mask of mirrored liquid.
Its hand was outstretched.
Kael didn't move.
> "Take it," the voice said.
The figure held something in its hand—a small cube. Transparent. Inside it, a miniature version of the lake-clock, ticking in reverse.
Kael hesitated. "What is it?"
The figure answered in silence.
But something inside Kael already knew:
This cube was a fragment—a part of the system's memory core. A broken piece of the original timeline.
Whoever collected enough of them… could rewrite the Protocol.
Or destroy it.
He reached out—and took it.
Instantly, the mark on his hand flared white.
The world snapped back to motion. The floating clock shattered, its pieces evaporating into dust.
And somewhere far away, in a chamber made of shifting metal and whispers, an alarm went off.
> "Subject 17 has initiated recursion."
A row of dead monitors blinked to life.
And in the dark, someone watching whispered:
> "He's starting again."
---
End of Chapter Three