Shukan cracked his knuckles.
"Then we better break the clock."
Chronos didn't respond right away.
He just stared at the slit in the sky like it was some unsolvable math problem staring back.
"I was hoping we'd have more time," he said finally.
"You literally manipulate time," Shukan replied. "That's kinda your thing."
"And the thing's evolving faster than I can outthink it."
The ground split again. Another version of Aetheron crawled out— but this one had half a face.
It still breathed.
And it still looked up like it knew them.
Yurei froze.
"That one… it looked at me. I mean really looked."
"They're getting closer," Chronos said. "Not just in shape. In… pattern."
"They're learning," Aetheron muttered, voice reverberating from within that radiant armor. "One's gonna figure out how to be me soon."
That hung in the air a little too long.
Like it didn't feel like paranoia anymore. It felt like a countdown.
"Okay, let's stop pretending we have a plan," Shukan said. "We're either fighting ghosts or punching our way through a rewrite. Neither sounds fun."
"It's the second one," Chronos said. "We're not fighting the ghosts. We're pulling the plug before they finish syncing."
A low, dull thud rolled through the ground.
Not an earthquake.
Not a glyph.
Just a reminder:
"It's still writing."
Chronos turned, and without motion—just presence—reached into the pocket of his personal time-space.
A soft distortion—like glass blinking.
And from the ripple, he pulled something small. Jagged. Glowing faintly gold.
Shukan squinted.
"That it?"
Chronos nodded.
"Clockbreaker."
"God, you name things like an anime villain."
"It's not mine. The fracture called it that."
Shukan blinked.
"The what."
"It named it. Not me."
"Yeah, cool, that's worse."
The device didn't feel impressive.
Didn't hum.
Didn't glow hard.
It just sat in Chronos' palm like a ticking apology.
"You take this," Chronos said. "You find the anchor tether—the part of the system keeping this version stable. You jam this in."
"Then?"
"Then we shake the whole rewrite loose. The system pauses. Long enough to eject the clones."
"And what happens to us?"
"...Ideally? Nothing."
"And not ideally?"
"You ever hear your own voice scream from a place you've never been?"
Shukan stared at the device.
It ticked once in his hand.
Like a dare.
"If I screw this up, do I just disappear?"
Chronos didn't answer at first.
Then:
"No. You'll still be here. But you'll be the version that made the wrong choice. And that's the one the Core keeps."
Aetheron turned his helm skyward. Light refracted softly off his polished armor—purple and pink and white burning against the clouds.
"They're watching again."
The copies above weren't moving.
Just waiting.
"I hate this place," Yurei muttered, frost-arm pulsing slow.
"Same," Shukan said. "I'm the one getting copy-pasted into low-resolution nightmares."
Chronos stepped next to him.
Didn't make a sound.
Didn't rustle cloth.
Just stood there—obsidian armor humming faintly with suspended glyph logic.
"You don't have to do this alone."
"Yeah," Shukan replied. "But I think I'm supposed to."
He walked forward.
Each step kicked up dust that wasn't dirt. Looked like broken thoughts.
Little fragments of scenes and sounds.
Laughter. Screams. Static.
The kind of debris you find when a reality stops mid-save.
Ahead of him, the tether point glitched.
Just a ripple in space.
Like the world was trying to avoid being solid there.
Shukan stood in front of it.
Took a breath.
Rolled his shoulder.
"Alright, time. Let's see who breaks first."
He raised the Clockbreaker.
Behind him, Chronos called out:
"Hit it clean. If it hesitates—don't."
"Yeah, I got it. No pressure."
He stabbed the gear forward—
And the tether took it.
Swallowed it.
Like it wanted it.
Nothing exploded.
But something changed.
The light stopped.
Like it forgot how to move.
Then—
Color drained.
From the grass. From the sky. From them.
Like the world blinked, and forgot to open its eyes again.
A wind slammed through the fracture.
No direction.
Just presence.
Everyone dropped a step.
Even Chronos.
A voice cut through it. Not loud. Not human.
Just there.
"You are not the correct version."
"Yeah?" Shukan coughed. "That's the idea."
The tether pulsed.
The gear cracked.
And the world screamed.
Not with sound.
With memory.
Shukan heard himself—
crying in a timeline he'd never lived.
Yurei heard herself—
begging someone not to leave.
Aetheron saw himself without wings. Just a Shunogai. Standing alone. Again.
Chronos saw nothing.
But his hands shook.
Like he'd heard something he refused to remember.
Then— it stopped.
The world clicked.
And color came back.
The copies?
Gone.
The watchers?
Gone.
The slit?
Closed.
But the tether?
Burnt into the ground.
Still smoking.
Shukan collapsed to a knee.
Breathing hard.
Alive.
Barely.
Chronos moved first.
Helped him up.
No rust. No rattle.
Just weight and presence.
Didn't say "good job."
Didn't say "you did it."
Just nodded.
Like: You're still here. That's enough.
Yurei looked around.
"...That's it?"
Chronos shook his head.
"That was just the compile phase."
"So what's next?"
Chronos exhaled.
"Now it tries to deploy."
Reality twisted—like something behind the woods was trying to force its way through the backdrop.
And then—
Figures started stepping forward.
Again.
"Nah," Shukan muttered. "Nope. We're not doing this again." He instantly got up, hands brushing against his daggers.
But these weren't like before.
No slow crawl.
No glitching hands.
They were walking.
Smooth. Complete. Alive.
One of them was Aetheron.
Down to the last shimmer.
But his glow?
Wrong.
Cold pink. No warmth. No heartbeat. No tether.
"They're cleaner," Yurei whispered. "They're stabilizing."
"They're not test prints anymore," Chronos muttered. "They're drafts."
One of the Shukan-copies tilted its head, eyes locked on the original.
Shukan instinctively reached for his dagger—
And stopped.
Because the thing smiled.
Not evil.
Just familiar.
Too familiar.
"You," it said, "are inefficient."
Shukan stood slowly, wincing.
"Yeah? You're a bootleg. Try again."
It took a step forward.
But before it could move again—
Aetheron dropped in front of it.
Wings flared.
Not for show.
For war.
"You don't get to walk past me," he said.
And he meant it
The clone hesitated.
Just for a second.
Then—
Attacked.
It moved fast.
But Aetheron was faster.
He caught the thing mid-lunge— palms open— and slammed it to the ground.
No glyphs.
No words.
Just light.
Pure, radiant rejection.
The clone twitched once— then crumbled into fragments.
"I'm done watching," Aetheron said, voice sharp. "No more free passes."
More clones came forward.
Chronos stepped up beside him.
"We hold the line."
"You buying time?" Aetheron asked.
"You're the shield. I'm the reset."
"Then I hope your plan's ready."
Behind them, Yurei grabbed Shukan's arm.
"We need to move."
"Move where?!"
"The Core's not gone. Just hidden. We trigger it again, we shut down the next wave."
"And how exactly do we do that?"
"We find the anchor point."
Shukan groaned.
"Of course. Another goddamn walk into glitch hell."
Another clone stepped into view.
This one?
Yurei's face.
Scarless. Whole. Happy.
Holding a snowflake in her palm like it mattered.
Yurei didn't flinch.
She just raised her frost-arm.
And shattered the thing mid-step.
"That wasn't me," she muttered.
"I know," Shukan said. "You've got worse taste in memories."
The group split.
Aetheron and Chronos stepped into the front line.
Shukan and Yurei headed toward the far edge—where the next tether might be forming.
"If we die," Shukan muttered, "you wanna be the one to explain this to the afterlife?"
"Shut up and run," Yurei growled.
Behind them— the battlefield ignited.
Golden glyphs.
Radiant light.
And a promise:
They'd hold the line.
No matter how many versions stepped out.