The Reminder moved through the broken vault wall as smoke with flesh.
It didn't move. It floated.
Its shape contained no features—only a moving outline formed like me, black as nothing, as if the universe had sculpted me out of itself and never sewn the tear shut.
Its voice rang in layers, every word dropping through time:
>Kevin… you died in Loop Eleven.".
You weren't meant to come back.
You disrupted order. You don't belong.
I unsheathed my sword, but my hands shook. This wasn't terror.
It was realization.
The Reminder was constructed from all I'd forgotten—every memory I wouldn't acknowledge, every error I hid. It was me.
Luro prepared to strike first.
The Reminder didn't budge.
It simply whispered:
> "Luro died five times for you.
And you never even remembered him."
Luro's sword halted in mid-air.
His eyes went wide.
He let the sword fall.
"No… that's not…"
"You didn't recognize me?" I said.
Luro did not reply.
He simply retreated.
---
The Vault creaked open further.
The thread at its center beat faster, glitching between timelines. A thousand iterations of this moment danced around us—each one ending in a different way.
In one, I had killed Luro.
In one, he had killed me.
In one, the thread broke and the Vault crumpled into nonexistence.
In one, we both disappeared—and never existed at all.
I had seconds. Perhaps less.
I stepped forward, blade low.
"I'm done being reminded."
The Reminder cocked its head once more.
"Then let me remind you of what you've lost."
It stepped forward.
Quicker than time.
I barely parried the first strike—its fingers honed like shreds of memory, slashing without touching, leaving creases of remembered pain on my mind.
Flashbacks cascaded in my mind:
—Kaelis crying in a dying Loop.
—My younger self clenching a frayed thread.
—A voice I didn't know whispering, "You're not him anymore."
The Reminder struck again. My shoulder caved in. My blade slid across the floor.
But the thread glowed—shining, raw, silver—and I felt it haul me up.
Not physically.
Existentially.
It was selecting me.
Or attempting to.
---
"Kevin," Luro said abruptly. "You don't recall. But I do."
He inserted himself between me and the Reminder, bleeding from the mouth.
"I remember the Zero Loop. I remember you saved me. And I chose to forget—because I couldn't carry the guilt."
He faced me.
"I'm sorry."
And then he turned back to the Reminder.
"I'm not forgetting again."
He pulled a needle-shaped artifact from his coat—an old breaker sigil from Loop Three...and rammed it into his own arm.
The Reminder screamed.
The vault walls cracked apart.
And the thread unleashed a pulse of light that erased everything.
Except us.
---
I woke to find us outside the Vault.
The city was quiet once more. The statues had dissolved into dust.
Luro sat next to me, breathing but hardly aware.
The thread… was missing.
But something glowed in the dust where it used to hover.
A shard.
Little. Dim. Pulsing gently.
I stretched for it—and it melted into my hand.
No burning. No pain. Just… clarity.
A memory came back.
One I never knew I'd lost.
Kaelis, whispering in the dark:
If the Loops ever turn on you… follow the call that calls you back. That's where the truth slumbers."
I closed my eyes.
And the sky over Veyruun split apart.
---