The Eidolon Spire floated in uneasy silence, its systems still groaning from the last revision wave. But in the silence, Kaelen felt something worse than vibration, he felt a pressure against his thoughts.
It wasn't sound nor a signal.
It was memory, being rewritten.
Seris froze mid-sentence. "Kaelen, did we...did we already fire the disruptor twice, or…?"
Kaelen's heart went cold. She wasn't wrong. Her memory had split.
Two versions of events had been folded into her mind, one where they had fired, one where they hadn't. Both felt real.
The Forge wasn't just editing timelines anymore.
It was editing perception.
Lyra slammed her hand onto the console.
"This is it, Phase Two. Rewriting consciousness. It doesn't need to kill us. It just needs to overwrite us until we can't tell what's real anymore."
Her eyes glittered, half-fear, half-fascination.
"Do you understand, Verris? This is how the Forge wins. By making us its narratives."
Kaelen gritted his teeth. "Not while I still think."
The pressure grew. Equations in Kaelen's mind shifted. His Cortex pulsed wildly as the Forge tried to stitch new memories into his thoughts:
A version of him that had already surrendered to the Titans.
Another where Lyra was his partner, not his rival.
Another where the Forge itself had created him as its strategist.
For a moment, his body stilled.
His own mind whispered: You were never Kaelen Verris. You were always the Forge's instrument.
A hand gripped his shoulder. Firm. Real.
Seris's voice cut through the haze.
"Kaelen. Look at me. Whatever it's putting in your head, I know you. You are you. No rewrite changes that."
The false branches trembled. For a moment, they almost collapsed.
Kaelen steadied himself, forcing the Cortex to reject impossible consistency, to detect where logic bent, where causality folded wrong. He anchored himself in contradiction.
And the visions broke.
Ryn stepped forward, his crystalline implants glowing furiously. His dual-toned voice carried not just his words, but the Titans' consensus.
"The Forge's true danger is not erasure. It is assimilation. Every mind rewritten becomes another processor for its revisions. Another servant."
Seris's blood ran cold. "If it rewrites entire fleets…"
Ryn nodded grimly. "They do not vanish. They become its architects."
Lyra's eyes never left the Forge's pulsing structure. Her voice was almost a whisper.
"Imagine it. A million minds, unified. No conflict. No chaos. Just pure creation…"
Kaelen snapped toward her. "That's not unity. That's enslavement."
Lyra's smile didn't fade. "Slavery and harmony often look the same, Verris. It's all about who holds the pen."
Before Kaelen could reply, alarms screamed.
The Forge pulsed again. This time, the pressure hit all of them at once.
Seris gasped, her face flickering between anger and blank obedience.
Ryn staggered, implants sparking as the Titan lattice screamed in feedback.
Lyra laughed, a sound too sharp, too wild. "It's offering me a place…"
Kaelen forced his mind clear, his Cortex burning with strain.
On the main screen, new text scrolled across the Forge's broadcast, words that made no sense, yet branded themselves into his mind like fire:
KAELEN VERRIS: REVISION INCOMPLETE. PRIORITY: ABSORPTION.
The Forge wasn't just rewriting him.
It was trying to claim him.
A chorus of whispers drifted through the halls, voices overlapping, unfinished sentences repeating and distorting. The crew clutched their heads, their memories blurring in loops.
The Forge's broadcast wasn't just pressing anymore, it was bleeding into them.
Kaelen's eyes snapped to Seris. Her pupils dilated, her hand trembling on her weapon.
"Seris," he said sharply. "Anchor. Focus on me."
For a moment, she blinked, clarity flashing across her face. But then the whispers surged again, and her expression went blank.
Her voice was no longer her own.
"We were never here. We were always here. The Forge remembers."
Her sidearm rose, aimed directly at Kaelen.
The Cortex flared inside Kaelen's mind. He didn't move his body, he split his consciousness into fragments, running parallel lines of probability.
One part calculated Seris's trajectory.
One part reached for her memories.
One part braced for the possibility he would have to kill her.
"Not yet," he whispered. "Not her."
Lyra watched with wide, glittering eyes. She didn't move to help. Instead, she whispered under her breath, fascinated:
"Look at it, rewriting loyalty, rewriting will. Imagine armies that never disobey. Imagine… no wasted potential."
Seris's weapon fired. Kaelen's split-consciousness moved before his body could. The Probability Disruptor emitted a pulse, not aimed at the Forge but at Seris herself, creating a localized contradiction in her brain's timeline.
Her memory fractured, a new branch where she had never pulled the trigger.
The shot dissolved into nothingness.
But not everyone on the Spire had Kaelen's protection.
Across the deck, one of the navigators screamed as her eyes rolled back. When she spoke, her voice wasn't hers anymore.
"The Forge edits. The Forge claims. We serve."
Her body jerked unnaturally as if controlled by threads no one could see. Then she turned her weapon not outward, but inward, pressing it to her chest.
Kaelen shouted, but too late, she pulled the trigger.
Except… no blood.
Her body dissolved into light and text, vanishing like a paragraph deleted from reality.
Her last whisper echoed:
"I was always part of it."
Ryn's implants pulsed furiously. His voice was heavy with Titan resonance.
"It has taken her. Not erased. Absorbed. She will speak against us now, inside its lattice."
Seris, still trembling, choked out: "You mean she's alive? In there?"
"Alive, rewritten," Ryn replied coldly. "Every thought she ever had will be turned to serve the Forge. She will not know she was ever yours."
Lyra's smile flickered, but she didn't look away.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. His mind burned with probabilities, thousands collapsing every second under the Forge's pressure.
"No more," he said quietly. "Not my crew. Not Seris. Not anyone else."
He looked at Lyra, then Ryn, then back at the looming Forge.
"If it wants my mind so badly… then I'll give it something it can't rewrite."
Lyra arched an eyebrow. "And what's that?"
Kaelen's eyes blazed with impossible clarity.
"Contradiction."