The power was gone.
Jonas and Mara stood in the dark, deep beneath the house, surrounded by the cold hum of memory. The only light came from a pale glow ahead a glass chamber pulsing with a soft, red shimmer, like a heartbeat.
Jonas knew what it was.
The fragment.
The last raw piece of his original self unfiltered, unlooped, unedited. It sat suspended in some kind of fluid, surrounded by symbols etched into the metal frame. Symbols that flickered when he looked too long. Symbols that moved.
Mara stepped toward it, voice low. "You stored everything here before the first reset. The memories. The encounter. The thoughts that started the collapse. You told us to hide it… in case you ever wanted to remember."
He stared at the pod, his own reflection swimming in its surface. "And now I do?"
"No," she said. "Now you have to."
He turned to her. "This will kill me."
"It might."
"Then why"
"Because dying with the truth is better than letting Eris live without it."
Jonas flinched at her certainty.
But something inside him shifted.
Because as the pressure from above intensified the same slow, stretching awareness from the woods now pressing downward, into the very foundation. He realized something horrifying:
It wasn't coming.
It was already here.
And it was waiting.
Jonas stepped forward, placing his palm against the pod.
It was warm.
Alive.
The surface shimmered, and the symbols began to react burning brighter, syncing with his pulse.
Mara took a step back. "Once you begin the reabsorption, you can't stop. You'll feel everything at once."
Jonas looked back at her.
"Promise me something," he said.
"What?"
"If I don't make it out… destroy the house. Burn everything. Even the servers."
Mara nodded slowly.
Then he placed both hands on the pod.
The glass peeled open like liquid metal, parting for him.
A sudden rush.
A scream.
But it wasn't sound it was memory:
The Gate opened not in a lab, but inside him.
He had constructed it using neural code and chemical thresholds, fusing the boundaries between thought and dimension.
Eris didn't come through a door.
It came through him.
Jonas gasped as the memories flooded his chest like fire.
He saw his team
Not dead.
Absorbed. Rewritten.
Every face turned toward him in unison. Blank. Smiling. Saying one phrase in perfect sync:
"Erase me."
He screamed.
The walls shook.
Above, the ceiling groaned.
Mara backed away, yelling his name, but it sounded distant, like underwater.
The pod dissolved into his skin. Symbols crawled up his arms, across his chest, burning red.
His eyes snapped open and they glowed.
Jonas staggered back, but he wasn't just Jonas anymore.
He remembered it all.
He saw Eris for what it was.
Not a monster.
Not a god.
A mirror.
It reflected whatever you buried deepest and made it real.
Jonas fell to his knees.
Because now he knew:
Eris hadn't tricked him into opening the Gate.
He had wanted to.
He had believed in it.
Because once, a long time ago…
Jonas was the one who whispered first:
Erase me...