||The Soul That Should Not Be||
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Kaarn's midnight bled through clouds of rust and static. A permanent twilight cloaked the town as wind howled through old steel, its mournful whistle dancing between abandoned solar panels and rusted antennae. Somewhere, a synth-hawk cried. Somewhere else, a building caved under its own decay.
In the shadows of "Deep Coil," Code Seven didn't sleep.
Ezreth did.
She curled on the edge of a ruined couch, one hand resting near the stub of a dagger. Her breathing was even, but her brows twitched from time to time. Dreams, maybe. Or nightmares.
He didn't envy her.
Seven sat near the window, still and alert. Not like a soldier.
Like a weapon waiting for motion.
The mark on his soul still pulsed—faint, hidden, but active. The Infinite watched, but it remained silent. That meant it was calculating.
Or worse—waiting.
His fingers idly traced the curved hilt of the blade hidden beneath his cloak. The real universe around him churned with empires, betrayals, dying stars, and whispered wars. But he was a ghost here. A man erased. A prototype never meant to survive.
And yet…
He still breathed.
Outside, thunder rumbled in dry skies.
And far beneath the surface of Kaarn, something awoke.
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The Cradle Beneath the Sand
The structure was ancient—older than the empire, older than the stars that birthed it. A sealed vault, buried under hundreds of meters of collapsed strata and war-era rubble. It was not meant to be found.
But the pulse changed that.
The mark on Seven's soul triggered something—subtle, quiet. A vibration that no machine could detect. A resonance that reached into the bones of the old world.
And deep within the Cradle, something stirred.
An eye.
Metal, but organic.
Rustless, but old.
It opened.
[Observer Signal Acquired.]
[Identity: CODE-SEVEN.]
[Fragment Integrity: 0.0004%. Corruption Detected.]
[Activating Protocol: GRAVEMIND RECOVERY.]
[Awaiting Connection to Prime.]
The eye closed.
And the Cradle… shifted.
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Back at the Surface – Morning in Kaarn
Ezreth was already awake when he returned from the dead hours.
"You didn't sleep."
"I don't."
"Of course you don't," she muttered, then threw a ration bar at his head. "Eat. Even prototypes need calories."
He caught it without effort.
"Any news?"
Ezreth nodded toward a flickering news holo tacked above a half-functional terminal. "Ten star systems are at war. Emperors backstabbing their own sons. Entire cities lost to internal detonations. And get this…"
She gestured, mockingly dramatic.
"Someone killed a minor Oracle near the Altheon Rift. Two weeks ago."
Seven froze mid-bite.
"Oracle?"
Ezreth nodded grimly. "Yeah. You and I both know what that means."
"It means the old ones are restless."
She looked around, lowered her voice.
"More than that. A few high-value entities started watching the rankings again."
Seven's gaze flicked upward, to the unseen sky.
"The Infinite Planes," he murmured. "They know something changed."
"No," Ezreth corrected. "They know you changed."
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[Global Notification – Infinite Planes]
[Anomaly Recorded.]
[Subject: CODE-SEVEN.]
[Violation of Soul Protocols: Confirmed.]
[Reaction Threshold Crossed.]
[Tracking Protocols Enabled.]
[Observation Level: Tier VII.]
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In Realms Beyond
Across the Infinite Planes, dozens of ancient entities turned their attention toward a single name. The beings were silent—shrouded in robes of static, wearing faces that flickered between galaxies, speaking only in breaths of entropy.
They were not gods.
They were worse.
Curators. Executioners. Enforcers of the unseeable rules.
One of them—a skeletal form known as Null-Caster Aravin—hovered over a dying comet and spoke for the first time in millennia:
"He exists."
Another—Mist-Weaver Aloth, bound in chains of memory—sighed:
"Then he must die."
Others murmured.
But one stood apart, silent.
Eidolon Vash.
The oldest.
The Watcher of Fractures.
It said nothing. Only observed.
And its thousand eyes began to blink.
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Elsewhere – An Empire on the Brink
The Amalthea Empire had not stopped searching.
Even after the collapse of Project STRIKER.
Even after the prototype disappeared.
In a shadowed wing of their military citadel, a group of scientists and commanders viewed distorted footage of Code Seven's emergence near the ruins.
"He's alive," whispered one.
"Impossible," said another.
The head of research—the one who once oversaw the STRIKER program—clenched her fists.
"It was never about survival. It was about what comes next."
They stared at the final frame—Seven vanishing into flickering static.
The screen went black.
"Find him."
"Deploy the Ghost Cells."
"If he has awakened the mark, the Infinite won't be far behind."
And thus, the Empire prepared its knives.
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Back to Kaarn – Nightfall
Seven stood atop a cliff overlooking the crumbling outskirts. Ezreth had gone to meet a contact in the underlevels. He needed air. Distance. Focus.
But he was not alone.
A presence hovered beside him—subtle, curious. Not threatening. Familiar.
"Why did you bring me back?" he asked aloud.
Silence answered.
Then—
[You were not meant to die.]
Seven turned, eyes narrowed.
The presence was there now, visible only as a distortion in light. A ripple.
"You're not the Planes."
[Correct.]
"Then what are you?"
[Remnant.]
"Of what?"
[Of you.]
He frowned.
"Be clearer."
The Remnant flickered.
[You broke the loop. Escaped the recursion. Became self. Now you are hunted.]
"By what?"
[By all that fears change.]
Seven turned his eyes back toward the sky.
"I'll survive."
[You were not designed to.]
"I'll survive anyway."
The Remnant vanished.
And the wind picked up.
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Meanwhile – In the Infinite Vaults
Ancient beings gathered around a fractal lens, each viewing the moment when Code Seven spoke to the Remnant.
They said nothing.
But they knew.
He was no longer a mistake.
He was a threat.
And threats in the Infinite were always… removed.