The air around Brant shimmered like heat rising off broken glass.
He wasn't bleeding anymore. That had stopped a minute ago. Not because he'd healed—but because his body no longer understood the concept of wounds.
He stood in the middle of a spiraling thread crater, both hands limp at his sides, eyes open but unfocused.
> [MEMORY LOOP DETECTED] [USER: BRANT. VARIANCE INDEX: 0.04]
Lucia stepped forward. Her chain twitched.
"Saylor, he's locked in something."
Saylor's voice was quiet. "He's looping. The system's trying to reset his field entry."
> "You mean his first spin?"
> "Not his." Saylor looked at the sky. "Someone else's. A version of Brant who didn't make it."
---
Inside Brant's mind, there was a wheel.
It didn't spin.
It repeated.
Each pulse sent out images: a boy with a blade too large for him. A Ticket that bled ink. A god made of mirrors. A scream. Then silence.
Then again.
> You are not the original, the system whispered. You are the consequence of a failed spin.
Brant wanted to scream. But he had no mouth, no sound. Just return.
Until something touched the loop.
---
Saylor moved fast.
He bent beside Brant, touched the thread lines curling under the earth, and activated Unholy Devotion. Not to bind. To trace.
He followed the loop back. Back through god threads, Remnant fragments, recursion pulses—and found the point where Brant had been inserted.
> [ANCHOR POINT ESTABLISHED: TEMPORAL TETHER CLASS I] [STABILITY: 6%]
Lucia flung her chain around the crater.
"Use me," she shouted. "Split the tether through my link."
> [CHAIN ECHO ENGAGED]
The Field resisted. Hard. The ground cracked. The sky rippled with fractured system tags.
Then a pulse of color—not light, not shadow—spread outward.
Brant dropped to one knee.
Then to both.
He breathed.
---
"Can you hear me?" Saylor asked.
Brant looked up. His face was pale. His eyes were bloodshot and wide.
> "I saw a god made of my own death," he said. "And it smiled."
Lucia crouched beside them. "You were inside a thread that wasn't yours. A failed version of yourself."
Brant blinked. "I remember being him. Dying. Watching me take his place."
> [ANCHOR STATUS: INSTALLED] [ID: BRANT — OBSERVED VARIANT CONFIRMED]
Saylor stood.
"The system knows now. You're not just a player. You're a variant."
Brant looked around. Everything felt different. The Field was louder. The god threads pulsed when he focused on them.
> "I can feel pressure points," he muttered. "Where gods are trying to form."
Saylor offered a hand.
Brant took it.
"Then let's stay ahead of them."
---
As they walked toward the next shattered zone, the system whispered to itself.
> [ANCHOR INSTALLED. MEMORY RETENTION ENABLED.] [NEXT GOD FORMING: ECHO-CROWNED ENTITY…]