The rain struck the translucent sky-panels like fingers tapping glass, the echo sharp in Cael Virell's ears. He stood atop a drifting monorail capsule in Sector Delta-9, surrounded by dead air and forgotten architecture. A line of code blinked on his retinal display, its meaning too heavy for even Echelon's cold voice to express.
Command: Rewrite Origin.
He hadn't summoned it. It had just appeared, uninvited, sitting in his interface like a gun on the table during negotiations. His breath fogged up the air as he stared at the words, a string of characters so absolute it seemed like a lie. The system didn't allow Origin Directives. That was the first rule in the forbidden layers of the Archive.
"Why is this here?" Cael whispered.
Echelon responded with silence. The train beneath his feet hummed with kinetic charge, pulling toward the edge of a gravity fold. He sensed it: agents of the Mirrorborn, stepping across fractured seconds, coming for him.
He had two choices: jump into the void and delay them, or risk everything and trigger the Directive.
He chose the second.
Command Executed.
Reality buckled.
Colors inverted. Gravity twisted. Memories that weren't his flickered across his mind. He was a child again, running through a white-field meadow. He was a fugitive in a blood-metal prison. He was someone else. He was no one.
And then it stopped.
Cael gasped, collapsing onto concrete. The train was gone. So was the city. He stood in a new world, familiar yet wrong. Veritas Prime—but brighter, cleaner. The neon was softer. The air held no ash.
More chilling than anything: his mother was alive.
She stepped out of their old apartment with groceries and a gentle smile. Cael almost dropped to his knees. The Directive had changed reality itself.
But Echelon was silent.
No system menu. No HUD. No voice.
He was alone. Or so he thought.
From the corner of the alley, a figure stepped forward. Pale skin, silver eyes, and a coat lined with code-thread. It spoke in static.
"You should not exist here, Cael Virell."