The moment Hale crossed the threshold, the air changed sharpening like the edge of a blade.
He stumbled forward.
But there was nothing. No floor. No walls. No sky.
Only endless reflections folding into each other like dead stars collapsing in on themselves.
At the center of it all sat ALP.
His throne was jagged, built from fractured memories half-formed faces and pieces of forgotten moments.
And ALP himself?
His body looked stitched together from versions of people Hale had nearly remembered but never truly known.
That grin—that same hollow smile—stretched across ALP's face. It was too wide. Too certain.
Like he'd always known exactly how this would end.
Hale's voice tore out of him before he even knew what he was saying.
"Where is Ivy?!"
No echo came. The words simply fell like stones dropped into a pit with no bottom.
ALP tilted his head slowly. Like a predator studying prey it had already cornered.
And then he answered.
"She never crossed the Door."
"You're alone, Hale. You always were."
Hale's fists curled so tight his nails drew blood from his palms.
He moved forward but there was no ground. He moved because he refused not to.
"What did you do to her?" he snarled.
ALP let out a soft laugh, like a broken clock coughing up dust.
"Nothing you didn't already begin."
His voice grew quieter, more intimate.
"Had she crossed the Door, she'd have vanished. Not died. Just erased."
"Every memory of her, in every timeline, would turn away."
"Even Time forgets what cannot survive the truth."
A sharp pulse hit Hale's chest. His mark throbbed like a heartbeat trying to break through skin.
He lunged forward but the world bent. Time folded around his body, slowing his momentum into something helpless.
ALP rose from the throne like it was never meant to hold him. The throne crumbled behind him, disappearing into dust.
"You're not here to win," ALP whispered.
"You're here to remember."
"Remember what?"
Hale's voice cracked. He didn't even know if he wanted the answer.
Cracks spread through the space around them. Not walls just... reality itself.
And through those cracks poured memories.
Moments he had buried.
Moments he had refused to look at.
Ivy's first death.
The first sketch that moved.
The first time he wore the mark willingly.
The first time he chose to forget himself to keep her alive.
Memories didn't whisper.
They screamed.
They flooded the space around ALP, spinning like a black hurricane.
"You thought surviving made you special."
"You thought saving her made you noble."
"But surviving without consequence isn't a miracle, Hale—it's a disease."
"You didn't survive the collapse of fate."
"You became it."
"You're not the savior she needed."
"You're the reason she needs saving."
Hale staggered. His knees gave way. He whispered:
"You're lying..."
But it wasn't defiance. It was prayer. Pleading.
Because some part of him had always feared this was true.
ALP stepped closer and tapped Hale's chest, right over the burning mark.
"Then tell me this," he said, his voice a scalpel:
"Why does every second of 3:12 rip you apart?"
"Why does your mark burn—not like a weapon but like a lock?"
"A lock you built."
The ticking returned.
But not from a clock.
It was inside him now.
Inside his skull.
A countdown.
ALP walked around him like a priest delivering the last rites to a man who didn't know he was already dead.
"You branded yourself into the bones of the world."
"Not to save her but to be remembered by her."
"That mark?"
"It's not power."
"It's your apology. Burned into you because even death wasn't enough to make you forget what you did."
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
"You want truth, Hale?"
"You're not trying to save her."
"You're trying to convince yourself... that you didn't already lose her."
The ticking grew louder.
Each beat inside his head felt like a chisel carving regret into the inside of his skull.
The cracks in the void around them deepened.
Splintered timelines snapped at his feet. Each fragment was a version of himself that didn't make it in time.
"You want to fix this?" ALP whispered.
"Then bleed the price you wrote into your own skin."
"Own the debt you owe."
"And bleed accordingly."
And with that
ALP vanished.
Gone.
Like he'd never existed.
Hale dropped to his knees.
His breath came ragged, shallow, useless.
The mark on his chest glowed like a dying star.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The ground beneath him didn't feel like ground anymore. It pulsed like the ribcage of a god exhaling hatred.
He tried to stand.
Slipped.
His hands came away wet slick with something he couldn't see, but could feel.
Memory.
Regret.
It soaked into him.
Tick.
Tick.
The ticking became jagged now. Every second tore a new wound not into flesh but into the story he once told himself was true.
A voice rose behind him. Not ALP's.
Older.
Hungrier.
"Payment is due."
The mark on his chest erupted into flame.
Not normal fire.
Black fire.
A fire that burned not his skin but his certainty.
And the room,the world, the memory ripped open.
He stood at once in a school, a hospital, a hallway, a funeral.
They layered atop one another, impossible and seamless.
Places where Ivy died.
Places where he lost her.
All of them.
Every failure piled on top of the next.
On the far wall, words seared themselves in burning black:
"ONLY THE ONE WHO OWNS THE MEMORY CAN RESET IT."
And beneath it:
"WHAT HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO REMEMBER, HALE?"
His knees hit the floor. His fists clenched against his temples.
"I didn't... I wouldn't..."
But he saw it now.
He remembered the first time Ivy laughed under sunlight.
He remembered the first time she died.
He remembered begging not to a god but to the memory itself.
Begging not for her life, but for her memory of him to stay alive.
And in doing so...
He made the loop.
He made the trap.
Not to save her.
To be remembered by her.
Forever.
Tick.
Tick.
A new door appeared.
Cold. Iron. Waiting.
No choice.
No question.
He stepped toward it.
Bleeding. Trembling. Broken.
And ALP was already there.
Not smirking. Not cruel.
Just waiting.
When Hale reached him when he stood, hollow and haunted he didn't ask for answers.
He whispered.
"Why... why show me all this through memories?"
And for the first time, ALP sounded almost human.
Almost sad.
"Because you don't survive your memories, Hale."
"You carry them."
"Until one day, they carry you."
He moved slowly now, as if offering a kindness.
"I didn't show them to break you."
"They already had."
"You just refused to bleed for them."
Hale's voice cracked, nothing left but salt and ruin.
ALP opened the black door with no hand.
"You've reached the end of the question, Hale," he whispered.
"Now ask yourself the one that matters."
"Are you still someone worth saving?"
And the door
wide open
swallowed Hale whole.