The moment Zero touched her hand, the world bent sideways.
Not like a dream. Not like a drug. It was more like falling through an idea that hadn't finished forming yet. Light peeled away in translucent ribbons. Shapes collapsed into sketches. Sound became a whisper half-recalled.
He stumbled, his boots scraping against something that felt like glass and sounded like wind.
Then—
He landed.
They were no longer in the archive room.
They stood in a corridor of infinite mirrors, stretching in both directions. But unlike real reflections, these showed impossible versions of him. One wore a crown made of antennae. Another blinked with six eyes. One had no mouth. Some were visibly... wrong. Distorted. Melting around the edges like wax under heat.
The girl held his wrist tightly.
"Don't speak to them," she whispered.
"What is this place?"
"The between. The archive's buffer space. A memory bleed. Your reflections—versions that didn't stabilize. They can hear you. But they shouldn't know you exist yet."
"What happens if they do?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "Then we both dissolve."
A shard of laughter echoed from behind one of the mirror walls.
They walked quickly.
The corridor narrowed into a small antechamber made of obsidian. Strange runes flickered across the ceiling, written in a language Zero didn't recognize but somehow understood: "Do not trust the mouth that still remembers."
The girl let go of his wrist. "This is as far as I can take you without anchoring you to me."
"Why is that a problem?"
"Because I'm already dying in a thousand other versions. If you bind to me, you'll inherit my termination loops."
Zero rubbed his temple. "How do you know so much about this?"
She smiled faintly. "Because I was the first unstable one. The first echo."
"Then why help me?"
"Because you're the last."
Before he could respond, a metallic chime rang out—like a broken tuning fork striking concrete. A crack formed across the floor. The walls shook.
"We're out of time."
She stepped back, her eyes glowing faintly.
"Walk through the door, Zero. Whatever you see, accept none of it as truth. Ask only what questions remain when nothing makes sense. That's your anchor."
"And you?"
"I'll follow. Eventually."
He hesitated, then stepped through the shifting doorway that had appeared ahead—rippling like a pond of mercury.
He emerged into an endless library.
No books. Just glass boxes suspended in air, each containing a moment.
He stepped closer to one:
A memory of himself, age ten, breaking a window and hiding the evidence.
Another:
Zero at seventeen, staring at a starless sky, whispering something he no longer remembered.
Each box held something he had done. Or hadn't. Or maybe only dreamed of.
He walked between them, heart pounding. Some moments he recognized. Others felt alien. One box showed him stabbing a stranger with a fork. He recoiled. Had that happened? Had he ever felt that kind of violence?
A whisper followed him through the aisles:
"Fragment 7. You have deviated."
Zero froze. A tall figure emerged from the mist.
A man in a white coat. No face—just a swirling blur.
"You should not be awake."
"Who are you?"
"I am the Curator. I preserve coherence. You are a disruption."
Zero clenched his fists. "Then why do I exist?"
"You were a hypothesis. The Karnyx chose wrongly."
He took a step back. The library trembled.
"Where is the original Karnyx?"
"Sealed. Buried in the First Loop. You cannot reach it without inversion."
"What's inversion?"
The Curator turned away. "To ask is to begin unraveling."
Zero lunged forward. "Then let me unravel!"
The Curator snapped his fingers.
Every memory box shattered.
The library collapsed.
Zero screamed as he fell. Not through air, but through story—a twisting cascade of lives he had lived, erased, rewritten, never born.
And then—
Stillness.
He landed in a hospital bed.
Beeping. White walls. Sterile scent.
A nurse passed by. Didn't see him.
On the wall: a mirror.
Inside it—
The girl.
Only now, she had no face at all.