Rain stood alone at the edge of the ruined observation deck, the wind catching the hem of his tattered coat as if trying to pull him back from the precipice. Below him, the shattered remnants of Lumina Citadel flickered weakly in the moonlight—an echo of its former glory. The silence around him wasn't peaceful. It was suffocating.
He hadn't spoken a word since the last battle. Not to Kai. Not to Aelira. Not even to the voice of the System, which had been unusually quiet.
He was scared.
Not of death. That was always hovering, whispering, tempting.
But of what he had become.
Rain slowly opened his palm. The crystalline shard of pure Protocol Energy floated an inch above his skin, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. It had been embedded in him during the clash with the Obsidian Herald. He hadn't asked for it. He hadn't even understood what it meant at the time.
But now… he knew.
The shard wasn't just power. It was memory. Will. Destiny.
And it didn't belong solely to him.
"You've been avoiding us," Kai said softly as he approached. His voice didn't carry judgment, only concern.
Rain didn't turn around. "I needed time."
"To think or to run?"
That made Rain smile faintly. "Maybe both."
Kai stepped beside him and looked out at the wreckage. "You know, I always thought being stronger would solve everything. The monsters, the trials, the doubt… I thought if we just climbed high enough, we'd be safe."
"But power doesn't erase pain," Rain whispered. "It just changes its shape."
They stood there in silence for a while, letting the wind say the words they couldn't.
Then Rain finally turned toward Kai. His eyes weren't glowing like they did in combat. They were just… tired. Human.
"I saw something when the shard merged with me," Rain said. "Memories that weren't mine. Visions of past Ascenders, lost timelines, forgotten battles. One of them… one of them had my face."
Kai blinked. "What are you saying?"
"I think this isn't the first time I've done this. The Protocol—it's not linear. It loops, folds, tests. Each time, someone gets chosen. And maybe, just maybe… I've been chosen before."
Kai looked stunned. "So you're… what? Reincarnated?"
Rain shook his head. "No. Worse. I'm a backup."
Back at the encampment, Aelira was tending to the wounded. Her healing had grown stronger, more precise, ever since bonding with the Verdant Core. But even now, she looked up every few minutes, searching for Rain with a flicker of anxiety in her emerald eyes.
When the two of them returned, her expression shifted instantly—from relief to guarded concern.
"What did you see out there?" she asked Rain.
"Everything," he said simply.
She frowned. "Cryptic isn't helping."
Rain looked around at the survivors—the broken, the hopeful, the ones too young to be here at all—and then looked back at Aelira and Kai.
"I think we're running out of time."
Kai crossed his arms. "You said that last time."
Rain's gaze hardened. "No. This is different. The Protocol… it's accelerating. It's not just pushing us to ascend. It's preparing us for something. A convergence."
Aelira stepped closer. "You mean the Nexus."
Rain nodded.
"But that was a myth," she said. "A theoretical final plane, where all paths meet."
"It's real," Rain said. "And we're heading straight for it. Whether we're ready or not."
That night, the wind howled louder.
Rain lay on his back in his tent, eyes fixed on the canvas above. The shard floated beside him, casting dim blue light over his face. He hadn't slept in days. Every time he closed his eyes, the visions came—different lifetimes, different choices, different deaths.
In one vision, he died saving a city. In another, he burned it down to survive.
The System was supposed to guide him. Instead, it had gone silent after absorbing the Protocol Shard. Almost as if it were thinking. Or hiding something.
Protocol Alert: Core Stability—Fluctuating…
The message blinked into view suddenly, startling Rain.
"What now?" he muttered.
System Recalibration Initiated.
Rain sat up. "Wait—what recalibration?"
Adjusting to Unstable Temporal Core. Merging Past Instance Memories.
He barely had time to react before his head was slammed with another wave of memories.
A battlefield. Thousands dead.
A throne of code and light.
A voice. "You were never meant to survive this long."
Rain screamed.
He awoke to Aelira shaking him.
"Rain! You're bleeding!"
His nose, his ears—blood poured like a broken dam. The shard had dimmed, pulsing erratically now.
"Too much…" he gasped. "The Protocol—it's rewriting me."
Kai rushed in. "Is he—?"
"No," Aelira snapped. "But he's close. Dammit, Rain, what did you do?"
"I didn't… mean to…" Rain coughed. "It's the Nexus. It's… pulling at me. Like gravity. Like fate."
Aelira looked horrified. "We're not ready! We're barely surviving each floor as it is!"
Kai stared at them both, his jaw clenched. "Then we get ready. We stop waiting for signs or fragments or destiny to hand us answers. We forge our own."
Rain grinned weakly. "That's the first heroic thing you've ever said."
"Shut up before I let you die," Kai muttered.
But his hand tightened on Rain's shoulder, steadying him.
By morning, the skies had turned violet.
A rift had opened in the east, visible even from their broken encampment.
It pulsed, not with power, but with invitation.
And Rain knew, without a doubt, that the next floor would be the last trial before the Nexus.
A place not marked on any System map.
The floor called "Origin."
And if the legends were true, then whatever waited there wasn't just a boss…
It was the Architect.
The one who had written the Protocol itself.
And Rain?
He was about to meet the god who kept rewriting his soul.