It took exactly nineteen steps for Kael to lift his eyes and glance at me like a stranger.
Not an enemy.
Not a threat.
Just someone he didn't recognize anymore.
His coat was neater than I had remembered. A pale gray cloak clasped at the neck, gold filament stitched along the seams. His gloves carried new script—inked with loop-bindings that had not been there the last time I saw him. His eyes, weary and spiteful before, now sparkled with a chill, clinical remoteness.
"Designation Kevin, right?" Kael asked.
The mood wasn't composed of any coldness, though. It was professional. He was examining me like a glitch in the timeline.
I ceased walking.
The corridor behind me pulsed once—one last echo from the collapsed Loop where I'd just fought my other self. The walls of this ruin were made from jetstone, the ancient polished black marble used by the Watchers of the Second Reclamation. Between cracks in the ceiling, dusty light filtered down, cutting through a thin fog of residual energy.
The smell was sharp—copper, ash, and something faintly herbal.
You don't remember me," I said softly.
My heart was empty.
Not shattered. Just… rearranged.
"We talked thirteen Loops ago," I said. "You told me I was the only one whose name made it through the rewinds. That I shouldn't trust you if you ever forgot."
His eyes flickered at the corner—but for only a moment.
"Wouldn't be standard procedure," he answered. "I wouldn't say that."
"Though you did."
He moved a step toward me. His boots didn't make a sound on the rock. At his wrist, tiny symbols burst forth—auto-seals, memory locks, script-based shields. Each movement of his was too calculated. Too immaculate.
This Kael was younger, or perhaps just… less touched by pain.
I wondered what they had taken from him.
"I'm not an Echo," I told him. "I'm real. I'm this Loop's Kevin. Just not one you've met yet."
"Unlikely." He clicked a ring on his finger. "If you possessed Loop-split memory, your paradox signature would resonate the hall's anchors."
"It already did."
Kael stopped.
Then: "What?"
I gestured behind me.
There was a collapse. A rotten loop fragment. I got sucked in and faced. myself. A reflection. A Loopborne Echo. I just escaped."
"That shouldn't be possible." Kael's voice was constricted now—his hands flew faster, scanning rows of hove ing text and flickering blue glyphs. "The system is designed to wall off infected echoes. You shouldn't have.."
"Then somebody let it happen."
Silence.
The hallway bobbed fractionally beneath foot. Just a breath. The sort of tremor you don't hear—but your spine picks up.
"You still don't believe me, do you?" I asked.
Kael let out air, but it was not frustration. It was calculation.
"You're either a highly advanced mimic," he said slowly, "or an individual outside the Loop's calculated schema. Either, you're a threat until confirmed."
My throat constricted.
"Kael… I saw you die once."
His jaw came together only slightly. The flash of memory. Hidden. Repressed.
"..."
"..."
He didn't answer.
We moved together through the broken sanctuary.
Even without faith, we had a silent pact: survive first, explain later.
The halls of the ruin plunged deeper—winding down, curling in spiral shell shape. Here, the air grew thinner. Glowing runes marched up the walls: warning signs, tracking lines, and sealing marks too ancient to read altogether. Some pulsed softly. Others were shattered, their faint golden vapor seeping like bleeding light.
Every floor we navigated carried scars of broken time stabilizers—smoldered-out loop-tags, black burn marks spread out in overuse patterns. Someone had attempted to pin this place in a secure chunk of time and fallen short.
"Why were you sent here?" I asked.
Kael did not respond immediately.
"The Watchers intercepted an unstable echo report from this ruin three Loops ago," he at last said. "We thought it was a remnant of Astra's last purge cycle."
"It wasn't."
"Obviously."
I watched his face as we walked just slightly.
He had a thin scar under his right cheek now. Recent. His eyes, normally a washed-out blue, now shimmered faintly silver when they caught the light. sign of Loop-recursion exposure. He was changing, too. Just more carefully.
More safely.
"You've locked your memory this time, haven't you?"
"It's safer that way," he said without flinching. "Some memories are too unstable to be preserved raw."
"Like me?"
He didn't reply.
The chamber opened.
An enormous atrium stretched out before us, emptied of stone and time both. Towering statues eight of them stood along the room, each weathered and faceless, shrouded in broken armor and grasping shattered hourglasses. Light seeped in through cracks in the ceiling above, casting the entire space in a dimly lit dusk glow.
A podium of black obsidian stood in the middle.
And atop it…
A device.
Not big. No larger than a hand. A sphere with two rings around it, ticking softly, pulsing like a heartbeat. It wasn't machine-like. It was alive in the sense of paradoxes are not of nature, but right.
Kael halted.
"This… isn't supposed to exist."
"..."
> "What is it?"
"...*
"It's called a Null Heart."
"Sounds dramatic."
"It's not a weapon." His tone was strained. "It's a reset permission key. Only Loop Architects may create one. If this is here… someone attempted to manually force a reset."
My stomach dropped.
"Could it have caused the Echo?"
"It did. This is the source of the collapse."
Kael moved gradually forward. His hand was suspended over the sphere but didn't make contact.
"This shouldn't be here. If this was used—then someone broke Loop law to change fate. A crime more terrible than collapse."
The following quote is from Digger Hans:
"Who would do that?"
Kael's hand halted.
He regarded me.
But not with doubt.
With… fear.
"You."