Shukan ducked under a bridge that wasn't there ten seconds ago. "This place is making me schizo."
Copies of the two charged forward, closing the distance.
"We need to go faster!" Shukan yelled, the energy veins under his skin glowing brighter.
Yurei skidded to a halt, turning around. "What the hell." She snarled.
"Uh…aren't we like…supposed to be on our way to the next tether?" Shukan muttered, stopping as well.
A clone of Yurei leaped off the ground, its body twisting mid-air, leg slicing through the space like a guillotine, the form unmistakable to the real one.
Yurei blocked with her ice arm, the space around her folded in like wet paper. "Tch. You might be just like me but," she threw the clone off her, regaining her ground. "...You'll never replace me."
"I think you can wait to fight your clone Yurei." Shukan suggested, already starting to run again.
"Ugh. Fine." She ran, a flurry of ice spikes erupted from the ground, impaling some copies.
"And now they're closer than before. Thanks Yurei." Shukan grunted, frustration crawling on his face.
The ground pulsed under them again—harder this time. Not like something was chasing them.
Like the world itself was trying to decide whether it should exist or not.
Yurei looked around.
Her frost-arm was still glowing, steam rising off the ice. But her face? Tighter now. Focused.
"We're running in circles."
"No, we're running in broken circles," Shukan snapped. "There's a difference."
Then it happened.
A flicker.
Not in the sky.
Not in the ground.
In their vision.
Shukan blinked—and the trees were gone. Replaced by a narrow street. Dusty air. Dim lights. A house.
His house.
"Nope," he muttered. "We're not doing this."
He looked away—on purpose. Didn't even let himself scan the door.
Because if he did?
He'd stop.
Yurei slowed next to him.
"What the hell…?"
Her eyes were locked on a frozen pond.
There was a girl sitting by it.
Smiling.
Same red hair. Same posture.
No frost-arm.
Just whole.
"Yurei," Shukan said. "Hey. Look at me."
She didn't.
He grabbed her wrist.
"That's not you."
"I know," she muttered. But her voice was soft. "She's still smiling."
"That's the trap. That's the Core. It wants you to look. That's all it needs."
Yurei exhaled hard—eyes flicking back to the pond.
And then?
She shattered it.
One pulse from her arm and the ice cracked, the image warping like glass under pressure.
Gone.
"I'm not that girl anymore," she muttered.
"Good. 'Cause we've got company."
The world flickered again.
Back to trees.
Then to marble.
Then to some weird space where the floor felt like regret.
Everything glitched.
Like they were running through discarded timelines.
Then came the sound.
Soft at first.
A hum. Low. Mechanical.
Then—wings.
Aetheron dropped out of the sky.
He didn't say a word.
His landing shattered a half-formed clone.
He stood between the squad and the incoming swarm, light pouring off him like a dying star fighting to stay hot.
"Go," he said.
"What?" Shukan blinked. "We're not leaving you here."
"You are."
Aetheron looked back.
His armor—cracked along the chestplate. Only slightly.
But enough to know: he'd never been touched like that before.
"They're not testing us anymore," he said.
"Then what are they doing?" Yurei asked.
"They're replacing us."
He raised both hands, wings igniting—radiant pink and white arcing off the feathers like plasma.
"I'll hold this line. You find the next tether and break it."
"If you go down—" Shukan started.
"Then make it count."
The sky behind Aetheron lit up.
Clones charged through.
Not staggering.
Not glitching.
Clean.
Perfect.
A mirror army.
Aetheron launched first.
No hesitation.
One clone—gone in a flash of light.
Another—sliced in half by a radiant wing-beam.
But there were too many.
And they were learning.
Yurei pulled Shukan by the wrist.
"He said go. We go."
They ran.
The light from Aetheron's fight lit the trees like a sun.
As they ran, the ground warped again.
Memories curled up from the dirt like steam.
Words. Faces. Smells.
Shukan heard laughter again.
Too close to real.
"They keep doing this," he muttered. "They keep trying to make us stop."
"Then don't stop," Yurei said through her teeth.
She kicked open a glitch-door, and they passed through—
into a courtyard.
Half-frozen.
Half-burning.
Glyphs floated everywhere.
In the center?
A golden spike.
Embedded into stone.
Shimmering.
Another anchor.
"Is that it?" Shukan asked.
"If it's glowing and taunting us, probably."
But they weren't alone.
A shape moved out of the corner.
Same build.
Same eyes.
Same smirk.
Shukan's face.
Only this one?
No scars.
No dirt.
No pain in his posture.
"So," the copy said. "You made it."
Shukan stepped forward slowly.
"And you're the final boss?"
"No," it said. "I'm the improved version."
It smiled wider.
"You've been through too much. You're tired. Broken. Why not let someone better take it from here?"
Yurei raised her frost-arm—
but a copy of her stepped up behind the Shukan-clone.
Two of them.
Perfect posture.
No Void scars.
No trauma.
Just versions that looked like they still believed in something.
"I'll take the one that looks like she's never suffered," Yurei said.
"Cool," Shukan muttered, cracking his neck. "Guess I get to punch myself in the face."
Aetheron was starting to breathe harder.
You couldn't hear it through the armor, but you could feel it.
The way his wings pulsed slower between strikes. The way his light dimmed half a second longer before flaring again.
They were pushing him.
Not just fighting back.
Studying him.
Then— the air warped behind him.
Golden glyphs sparked. Space bent like a coin folding.
Chronos stepped through.
Not rushing.
Not panicking.
Just there.
"Took you long enough," Aetheron said, catching a clone's blade with both hands and shattering it mid-strike.
"Was waiting to see if you'd die first," Chronos replied calmly.
"Kind of you."
Chronos raised one hand.
The glyphs along his armor surged.
A ring of golden symbols burst out around him—hovering in the air like a countdown that was sick of being patient.
"Deploying temporal stasis zones. Try not to walk into them."
"You say that like I'm the reckless one," Aetheron muttered, stabbing a copy of Shukan through the chest and blasting it into light.
"You lit a forest on fire just by landing."
"Aesthetic choice."
The battlefield shifted.
Chronos moved like water across broken space.
Every step sent ripples of golden fracture across the ground—freezing time around the clones in tiny windows.
Aetheron followed close, using the pauses like shields.
Together?
It wasn't just a defense anymore.
It was a rhythm.
"They're pushing harder," Aetheron said between attacks.
"They're nearly deployed," Chronos replied. "Full stabilization phase."
"Meaning?"
"If we don't end this, soon they'll become the default."
The words hit hard.
Because Aetheron looked up—and saw it.
A version of him.
Identical.
Same light.
Same wings.
Same stance.
But the eyes?
Lacked hesitation.
"That one… doesn't remember falling," Aetheron muttered.
"Then destroy it," Chronos said.
"Gladly."
Meanwhile—
Shukan's fist connected with his clone's face.
But the thing didn't flinch.
It just copied the movement.
Same smirk.
Same follow-through.
Same voice:
"You always swing wide on the third punch."
Shukan blinked.
"How the hell would you know that—"
"Because I am you. But without the waste."
Shukan snarled, dodged the return hit, and kicked the clone in the ribs.
"Then let's test if you feel pain too."
Across the clearing, Yurei's clone melted her ice mid-cast.
Reflected it—turned it back.
Yurei's arm sparked.
Frost cracked.
The two locked eyes.
No words.
Just two versions of a girl who refused to die—
but only one of them had scars.
The golden spike pulsed behind them.
Still untouched.
Still the anchor.
Still waiting.
"Chronos," Aetheron called out across the field. "They've got maybe two more minutes before they break."
Chronos glanced up from where he'd just locked a row of clones into a spinning time loop.
"Then we collapse the tether manually."
"How?"
Chronos raised both hands.
"We rewrite the rewrite."
And somewhere inside the Core— the world began to tremble.
Because this wasn't just self-defense anymore.
This was a counterattack.
Yurei slammed her frost-arm forward— but the clone matched it.
Fist for fist. Ice to ice.
A shockwave blasted from the impact, freezing the grass in a spiral.
But the clone smiled.
"You're hesitating."
"No," Yurei muttered. "I'm measuring."
Shukan ducked under a punch—his own punch—then swept the clone's legs.
They both hit the ground at the same time.
Shukan grunted, rolling to his feet.
"I'm getting real sick of my own face."
Behind them, the anchor spike pulsed again.
Louder. Like it knew it was about to be destroyed.
"Chronos!" Shukan yelled. "How do we break this thing?!"
Chronos was mid-strike—hand extended, a time-locked loop spiraling around two clones that couldn't escape.
"The spike's not coded like the others. You can't shatter it physically."
"Then how?!"
"You destabilize it emotionally."
"That's the dumbest shit I've ever—"
"It's designed to replace us. You have to prove you're still the original."
Yurei's clone lunged again. No hesitation. No anger.
Just efficiency.
Yurei blocked the hit with her shoulder, frost cracking all the way down her back.
She didn't scream.
She stepped in.
Close.
Too close.
And whispered:
"You don't get to take my pain and call it strength."
She grabbed her copy's arm— and froze it from the inside.
The clone screamed.
Once.
Then shattered like glass.
The spike trembled.
Shukan stood across from his copy.
Both of them breathing hard.
Sweating.
Bleeding.
"You're tired," the clone said.
"So are you," Shukan replied.
"But I don't doubt myself."
"That's why you'll break."
Shukan stepped in.
The clone mirrored.
But Shukan didn't swing.
He dropped his arms.
"Go ahead," he said. "Prove you're better."
The clone hesitated.
Just a flicker.
Just long enough.
Shukan grabbed its shirt— and dragged it into the anchor spike behind him.
"You forgot the part where I fight dirty."
The spike flared.
The clone screamed—
and both were gone in a burst of light.
Yurei spun.
"SHUKAN?!"
Silence.
Then—
The light peeled back.
And Shukan stepped out of the smoke.
Burnt. Coughing. Still standing.
"Tether's broken," he wheezed. "Please tell me that was the last one."
Across the field, the sky cracked.
Not glitched.
Not flickered.
Split.
The remaining clones twitched—then dropped.
Every last one.
Gone.
Aetheron dropped to one knee.
Smoke rising from his back.
Wings fractured.
"It's done."
Chronos was beside him in an instant.
No words.
Just caught him before he hit the dirt.
Yurei stumbled toward Shukan, pulling him forward with her frost-arm like he weighed nothing.
"You almost died."
"Yeah, but like… not quite." His energy veins dimmed.
"Dumbass."
They regrouped.
Silence settled over the field.
No clones.
No glow.
Just burnt grass, melted glyphs, and four people too tired to say thank you.
"What happens now?" Shukan asked.
Chronos looked up.
The slit in the sky was gone.
But the Core?
Still alive.
"Now?" he said.
"Now we find the one writing all of this."