The golden light faded, and Kai found himself lying on the cold floor of the Memory Archive. His head felt like it had been split open and filled with stars. Thousands of new memories swirled in his mind, memories that weren't his own but felt as real as his childhood.
"Kai!" Maya's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Are you okay?"
He opened his eyes slowly. The woman with silver hair was gone, and the First Memory crystal had turned dark. Only its ancient symbols still glowed faintly. Maya knelt beside him, her face full of worry.
"I'm... different," Kai said, sitting up carefully. "I can see things now. Things that haven't happened yet. Things that happened before."
The memories from the First Memory showed him the truth about the multiverse. It wasn't just a collection of different dimensions. It was a living thing that grew and changed and sometimes got sick. When it got too unstable, it reset itself by destroying everything and starting over.
"What did she do to you?" Maya asked, helping him stand.
"She gave me the knowledge to save everything," Kai said. But even as he said it, he felt the weight of what saving everything would cost. "Maya, we need to leave. Now."
The sound of heavy footsteps echoed through the chamber. Security guards were coming, their scanner lights cutting through the darkness.
Kai touched his memory crystals, and now he could feel their full power. They weren't just storage devices. They were keys that could open doors between dimensions, between cycles of existence. But using them would change him in ways he couldn't undo.
"This way," he said, pulling Maya toward a wall that looked solid but felt different to his enhanced senses.
He pressed his hand against it, and his crystals began to glow. The wall dissolved, revealing a passage that hadn't existed moments before. It was a dimension tunnel, a way to travel between realities without using the normal gates.
"How did you do that?" Maya asked as they ran through the tunnel.
"The First Memory showed me how," Kai explained. "But Maya, there's something else. The destroyer of worlds isn't some enemy we can fight. It's the multiverse's own defense system. And it's about to activate."
They emerged from the tunnel onto a rooftop in a different part of Neo-Tokyo. The city looked the same, but Kai could feel the subtle differences. This was a reality layer just slightly different from the one they'd left.
"How long do we have?" Maya asked.
"Days, maybe less," Kai said, looking up at the artificial sky. Already, he could see tiny cracks forming in the reality fabric. "The system is starting to identify unstable elements for removal."
Maya pulled out a communication device. "I need to contact the resistance. If what you're saying is true, we need to evacuate as many people as possible."
"There's nowhere to evacuate to," Kai said quietly. "When the reset happens, it affects all connected dimensions. Everything gets wiped clean."
"Then how do we stop it?"
Kai felt the memories from the ancient being stir in his mind. In past cycles, some had tried to fight the reset. Others had tried to hide from it. All had failed. But the woman in the archive, the Memory Keeper, had suggested something different.
"We don't stop it," he said. "We survive it. But to do that, we need to find the others."
"Others?"
"The Memory Keeper said there were others like her. People who have survived multiple resets by preserving their consciousness outside the normal reality structure. They're the only ones who know how to make it through."
Maya's device crackled to life. "Maya, where are you?" The voice belonged to the red-haired woman from the safe house. "The city is going crazy. People are disappearing, and some areas are just... fading away."
"It's starting," Maya said, looking at Kai. "The reset is beginning."
Kai closed his eyes and reached out with his enhanced senses. He could feel the other memory crystal holders scattered across different dimensions. Some were afraid, some were fighting, and some were searching for answers just like him.
"I can find them," he said. "But we'll have to jump between dimensions rapidly. It's dangerous, and we might not come back as the same people we are now."
Maya looked at the fading edges of the city, where buildings were becoming transparent like ghosts. "We don't have much choice, do we?"
"No," Kai admitted. "We don't."
He took out his memory crystals. They pulsed with power that seemed almost alive now. The Fourth Crystal was calling to him from somewhere far away, in a dimension where the rules of reality were completely different.
"Hold on to me," he told Maya. "And whatever you see, whatever happens, don't let go."
As Kai activated the crystals, reality began to bend around them. The last thing he saw of Neo-Tokyo was the sky cracking like broken glass, letting in light from somewhere else entirely.