Riven had written the name down.
She checked again.
It was gone.
Not erased. Not smudged. Not even faded.
Just... never there. Her handwriting stopped just before it would have begun the "C."
She stared at the open page longer than necessary. Her bunk was dim-lit. Her knees drawn tight. The only sound was the brush of paper and the low whistle of the Citadel's second vent tier.
She tried again. Wrote the same word.
Cael.
Good. There. That was his name. She remembered saying it. Remembered whispering it.
Then—
"Why would I whisper it?" she muttered aloud.
Her skin crawled.
Across the room, her datapad flickered. She had queued training footage from earlier that cycle. Fragment tests. Combat drills. One replay, three views.
She hit play.
Cael stood in the frame. Alone.
And then he moved.
No—he was already in motion. No—he was waiting. Her head tilted. Her eyes narrowed.
The footage rippled. Just once.
In one frame, he dodged before the instructor swung.
In another, the instructor hadn't swung at all. Just stood there. As if waiting.
Then the third playback. This time, Cael wasn't there for the first four seconds. Then he flickered into the shot.
"[Thread sync mismatch—user fragment not registered.]"The warning blinked once. Then vanished.
She rewound the footage.
He never entered the ring.
Except he had. She remembered watching. Right?
Right?
Riven shut off the playback.
Her hands were shaking.
She pulled up the still image of Cael from earlier that day. Stared at it.
Same white hair. Same scar over the right wrist. Same unfocused eyes.
But something behind his posture felt… stolen.
Like whoever was standing in his place had borrowed him and forgotten how he worked.
She opened her thread journal. The one the Overseers didn't know she kept.
Entry: Cael said "good morning" to me at the water channel. But I also remember him not being there. I think we shared food last week. But when I checked my rations log, his name wasn't scanned in. He's real. I remember. I think I remember. Don't I?
She paused.
Then, at the bottom of the entry, she wrote:
When did his voice change?
---------------------------------------------------------
The Vault was wrong.
Cael knew it the moment he stepped inside. The corridor didn't tilt the same way. The third lamp flickered out of rhythm. The smell of iron came first, then the heat, then the sound. Out of order. Misfiled by the world.
His boots clacked too loud. Or not loud enough. He couldn't be sure.
The Severance Vault—Chamber 3-Black—had always been identical to the others. But this time, it breathed differently.
Two Overseers stood flanking the altar. Not Veyl. Not yet. These were standard facilitators, faceless behind glyph-threaded masks. One shifted. The other did not.
They didn't greet him. They didn't have to.
A glyph lit up across the archway as Cael passed.
Then flickered.
Then rewrote itself.
[SUBJECT: CAEL | THREAD ID: 026.03.2]
[WARNING: PHASE UNSYNCHRONIZED]
[Initiating Stabilization Buffer...]
[Current Ritual Thread Detected: Incongruent]
[Proceed Anyway?] > [Y / N]
He stared at it. A single letter to seal the next loss. No Overseer. No witness. Just a System that asked permission without caring.
Cael hovered his hand over the Y.
Paused.
What would happen if he said no?
Would they drag him in? Reset his body? Unthread his name from the System entirely?
Would they notice he'd ever lived?
He touched the Y.
The prompt flickered. Then dissolved.
A momentary hum passed through his chest. Like a second heartbeat made of metal. Then gone.
He stepped forward—
"Cael."
The voice was soft. Barely louder than the ritual vents.
He turned.
Riven stood just past the threshold.
Her uniform collar was askew. Her breath visible. Not from cold—but effort. She'd run.
They stared at each other. Not like people. Like weapons left in the same drawer too long.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, voice hoarse.
She looked at the walls. Then at him.
"This is your second?"
He nodded. Slowly.
"You look…" She blinked. "You don't move the same anymore."
"I don't feel the same."
"Do you feel anything?"
He didn't answer.
She stepped closer. Just once.
"Do you remember what you said to me… by the east vent, last cycle?"
Cael frowned. "I didn't speak to you then."
"You did," she whispered. "You asked me if I still tasted oranges. I thought it was a joke."
"I don't remember," he said.
"I know. That's the part that scares me."
Another step closer.
"If you keep doing this, you'll forget how to be you."
He smiled. Not kindly. Not unkindly.
"That's the point."
From behind her, the metallic footsteps of Overseer Veyl entered the chamber.
Riven stiffened.
She looked at him one last time.
Then—
"If you forget me… I'll remember harder."
And she turned.
And she left.
And Cael walked toward the altar as if his legs belonged to someone else.
The Vault accepted him now.
As if Riven's voice had calibrated it. As if her presence was the payment required.
The sigils lining the stone circle pulsed once in sync—then split into a stuttering pattern, like teeth misaligned. The altar's third blade vibrated with invisible friction.
Overseer Veyl stood waiting in silence. The only sound was the rhythm of her breath, filtered through glyph mesh. She didn't speak.
She didn't need to.
Cael stepped onto the platform.
The System lit the air above the altar with pale blue text.
[Severance Protocol 02][Sacrifice: Peripheral Temporal Flow][Thread Anchor: Denied][Consequence: Loss of moment-to-moment sequencing | Perceptual drift expected][Confirm Severance? Y/N]
He closed his eyes.
And whispered, "Yes."
The blades floated upward.
Not by force. But by memory.
Or the absence of it.
Veyl raised her hand. One of the sigils seared into her glove began to blink—red and slow, as if pulsing with a heartbeat not her own.
The first blade—the initiator—moved without a hand. It passed above Cael's skull. It shimmered with inverted light.
Then dropped.
There was no pain.
But time fractured.
The blood did not drip downward.
It pooled sideways, hovering midair for a moment. Cael's legs shook—except they hadn't yet. His balance tipped left before his ankle rolled.
His breath came in backward order—exhale, then inhale. Then exhale again.
He opened his mouth to scream but found his voice already echoing from the wall.
"—don't want—!"
[System Warning: Perceptual Lag Detected | Synaptic Timeflow at -0.8 seconds]
[Instability Acceptable: Proceeding]
The second blade—closure—cut into his collarbone in a spiral line.
His head twitched violently. Not pain.
Dislocation.
His neck skipped like a scratched recording. His knees struck the ground before he knelt.
He was everywhere in his own skin, but nowhere with it.
The glyphs shifted again. One blinked red.
Then black.
Then went out.
The third blade—unnamed—rose.
It did not cut.
It inserted.
Cael's spine spasmed. Not with injury—but with a scream from the Gate itself.
A voice not his voice whispered inside the cartilage.
"Spiral doesn't end. You only fall until you meet your mirror."
Then silence.
Then something unfolded.
A pulse—not forward. Not back. A corkscrew twist of presence.
He saw a version of himself falling sideways across the altar.
And then he was on the ground.
Face-first.
Breathing.
[Fragment Acquired: Spiral Dislocation (Tier II)]
[Effect: Spiral-warp movement | Phase Flicker 1.3s max]
[Warning: Instability Signature Present]
[Backlash Risk: Echo Duplication | Recursive Identity Drift]
[Current Thread Integrity: 52%]
Veyl said nothing.
But she watched him longer this time.
And the blade did not return to its slot.
He wasn't escorted out of the Vault.
They left him there. Alone.
The Overseers didn't speak. They never did after a Severance this strange.
Veyl had disappeared mid-blink. One frame, she stood behind the glyph ring. The next—gone. Cael didn't remember hearing the door.
He didn't feel her leave.
He didn't feel anything clearly.
Not anymore.
The air outside the Vault bit cold against his skin—then warm—then cold again, like time was arguing with itself. His legs didn't walk so much as drift forward.
A group of Initiates passed him in the hallway.
None of them looked up.
He wasn't sure if they'd already passed him, or were still on their way.
Cael found himself in the Shard Ring, an isolated corridor used for agility drills. Empty. Silent.
The walls were marked with impact scars from past Fragments—scorch lines, claw tears, memory-burns.
He breathed.
One step.
Then another.
Then—he triggered it.
[Fragment Activation: Spiral Dislocation][Duration: 1.3 seconds | Phase Flicker Enabled]
The world twisted.
His spine bent backward and leftward at the same time. His ribcage stretched with a silent click. Then he moved—
—diagonally through decision.
Not teleportation.
Not speed.
Something in-between.
He existed in multiple positions—blurred frames, half-lagged, each one a few milliseconds apart. He saw himself ahead. Then behind. Then ahead again.
And one of him turned its head—
Too slow.
Too curious.
Too alive.
[Backlash Detected: Echo Instability | Manifested Thread Copy (Visual)][Warning: Spiral Fracture Breach | Echo Duplication at 12% Probability]
From the corridor wall, a second Cael peeled away.
Not from him. Beside him.
It had no eyes. Just sockets. Its head tilted the same way.
It moved exactly a half second after he did—perfectly mirrored, but always just behind.
It whispered—
"Too many of you."
Cael staggered back.
The Fragment deactivated.
Time collapsed into one version of him.
The echo disintegrated, but the air still smelled like it remembered him.
He dropped to one knee.
Sweating. Breathing hard. Trying to remember how breathing worked.
Inhale. Then exhale. Or was it the other way?
[Thread Integrity: 49%][Spiral Residue Detected in Memory Index][Stabilize at next cycle or risk cognitive stutter]
He clenched his jaw.
The Spiral was real. Dangerous. Powerful.
But if he could master it—
He wouldn't just outrun his enemies.
He'd outrun the System itself.