The Rift tomb was breathing.
Saylor stood at its mouth, stone steps curling downward into a gaping wound in the Field. Mist didn't enter. It stopped at the edge like it was afraid.
Lucia exhaled slowly beside him. Her chain trembled faintly — not from fear, but from recognition.
"You feel that?" she whispered.
Saylor nodded. "Something in there remembers me."
The steps weren't natural. They bent wrong — as if made for a shape not quite human. The walls pulsed with faint blue veins. Between them, etched symbols glowed faintly, dimmed by dust and time.
Tickets.
Hundreds of them.
Every wall bore burned patterns of failed Tickets, scorched into place like warnings — or gravestones.
Halfway down, the walls opened into a dome-shaped vault.
At its center: a raised stone platform and a single message scratched into its base.
"Here lies the one who spun, refused, and was forgotten."
Lucia stepped forward, voice shaking. "That's impossible. The system doesn't forget."
"It didn't," Saylor said. "It buried him."
He placed a hand on the stone. Echoshard triggered.
A pulse.
A flash of static.
Then—
Fire. Chains. Screams.
A player kneeling before the Wheel, bleeding from the eyes.
"I do not accept this role."
"I will not become your weapon."
"You will remember my name."
Taelrin.
Saylor gasped, stumbling back.
Lucia caught him.
"You heard him."
"I was him," Saylor whispered. "Or I could've been."
The chamber trembled.
From the far end, a new voice crackled — half-system, half-soul:
"DENIAL DETECTED. ASCENSION REJECTED. RECYCLE COMMENCED."
Something moved.
Not a god.
A god-failed.
It stepped from the dust like a reflection burned into glass.
It was human-shaped, but its limbs looped — reanimating mid-movement. Its chest bore the Wheel's emblem, torn in half.
One eye leaked light. The other showed Saylor's own face, frozen in a scream.
Lucia raised her chain.
Saylor stepped forward. "Let me."
The thing charged.
It moved like it was skipping time — three frames at once. Saylor blinked left, Riftstepping into its blind side, but it turned instantly.
Too fast. Too recursive.
[MIMETIC THREAD: ACTIVE]
Saylor's Dustroot Bind latched to the floor crack. He spun around, tethering its ankle.
Lucia launched her chain. It snapped through its arm — but it regrew from a code loop.
"It's feeding on glitches," she snapped.
"Then I'll feed it something worse."
Saylor's eye flashed.
[UNLOCKED: DEAD REWIND] (Reverses last 2 actions of the tethered target. 8-second limit. Memory-synced.)
He pulled.
The god-failed rewound — falling into the step it had just dodged.
Lucia struck.
Her chain went through its heart — and this time, the heart didn't return.
It screamed.
Then unraveled.
Code, ash, memory — all undone in a spiral of dust.
[SYSTEM CORRECTION: REJECTED ASCENSION ERASED] [MEMORY TRACE PRESERVED]
Saylor knelt by what remained: a twisted chain fragment, fused with a core of obsidian.
Lucia reached for it.
It responded.
[BLOOD PACT BINDING: MUTATED] [NEW TRAIT: SECOND PULSE] (A counter-attack that activates seconds after a strike lands.)
She stared. "This was his. Taelrin's."
"You carry it now," Saylor said.
The chamber rumbled again.
They turned toward the exit— and saw it: a thin line of light spiraling down from the Wheel above.
It wasn't spinning.
It was watching.
Then a final message cut through the silence:
[RECURSIVE SIGNATURE DETECTED: PLAYER ID ∆4 — S. COGNI] [FIELD AWARENESS: ELEVATED]
Lucia stared at him.
"What the hell is ∆4?"
Saylor's voice was distant.
"A designation."
"For someone who's spun before."
The light vanished.
The tomb went still.
But Saylor knew — the Wheel remembered him.
And somewhere beyond the Field...
it was waiting for him to finish what he'd refused last time.