Rain clawed at the neon-soaked skyline of Veritas City, each droplet fizzing softly as it made contact with the electromagnetic field shielding the rooftops. Below, the city pulsed like a living circuit board, and somewhere inside that endless tangle of glass, code, and conspiracy, Cael Virell moved like a shadow.
His Directive—the one that had rewritten reality—was silent now. Since activating "Rewrite Origin," he had lost full access to the Echelon system. It hadn't abandoned him; it had hidden itself. The only trace that remained was a sigil embedded in his left palm, visible only under concentrated light: three interwoven rings, rotating slowly, impossibly, as if trapped in their own time loop.
He had questions, but no answers. One person might have them.
Rin Soryen.
A name spoken in system-forged whispers, the rogue archivist who once stole fragments from the Time Library itself. She was rumored to be a former Echelon interpreter—someone who had seen the original core logs of the god-tier systems. Cael didn't care what she'd done; he needed her help.
Veritas' lower districts were soaked in artificial rain and synthetic fog, designed to keep lower-tier citizens docile. Cael slipped through security grids with the help of vestigial commands—Echelon reflexes buried so deep they acted on muscle memory. He found her beneath Sector Theta-Zero, inside an abandoned broadcast tower converted into a library of forbidden code.
She was exactly how they described her: cloaked in light-bending mesh, eyes flickering with firewall overlays. She didn't speak right away. Instead, she gestured toward a massive holoscreen that pulsed with living data.
"You're Cael Virell," she said. "The boy who broke his own timeline."
"I need my system back," he replied. "And I think it's encrypted inside me."
She studied him. "Then you'll need the Code of Absence."
---
The Time Library existed out-of-phase with the city. It was cloaked in temporal folds, policed by autonomous Sentinels that could edit memory, perception, and even existence itself. Breaking in was a suicide mission.
Which is why Rin brought him.
As they rode the transit through warped raillines, she explained. "The Code of Absence isn't written in any record. It's a hypothetical directory—containing Directives that were almost created but never initialized. Failures, paradoxes, forbidden branches. Think of it like Echelon's dreaming mind."
Cael nodded slowly. "If I can access that..."
"You might wake the rest of Echelon," she said.
The Library was a monolith of fractal architecture, ever-shifting, reflecting the past and future in looping symmetry. Rin disabled the outer gates with a virus she'd forged using stolen god-keys. As they entered, light bent around them. Their identities began to unravel.
Inside, the halls whispered their fears aloud.
You will fail.
You are not worthy.
The system chose wrong.
Each echo was a psychological firewall—Echelon's defense mechanism. Cael focused, grounding himself in the Directive sigil on his palm.
They reached the Archive Core, a spiraling corridor that bent gravity like ribbon. Floating within were holograms of events that had never occurred. Cael reached toward one.
A vision enveloped him.
He stood before a woman in a silver mask.
Axiom.
She smiled without lips, her voice echoing from inside his own skull. "You don't know how to use it. You never did."
The vision shifted. He saw versions of himself dying in thousands of scenarios—some fighting her, some joining her, all losing.
Rin's hand on his shoulder pulled him back. "You're seeing fragments of failed timelines. Axiom has rewritten herself into the system's memory layer. That's not supposed to be possible."
Cael breathed heavily. "She's not just a user."
Rin nodded. "She's a recursive entity now. A living command loop."
"How do I stop her?"
She pointed to a shimmering code-node in the Archive's heart.
"By rewriting the Code of Self."
---
Accessing the node required sacrifice. A real one. Echelon demanded a personal Directive—a piece of his identity, offered freely. Cael stepped forward and declared:
"Command: Surrender Emotional Anchor: Mother's Memory."
The sigil on his palm burned. His chest hollowed. The warmth of that last goodbye—the one that had anchored him through every nightmare—was gone.
But the Archive responded.
Code unfolded like a flower. A stream of potential Directives flooded his mind. Among them:
Command: Merge Identity with Absent Form
Directive: Override Cause with Consequence
Rewrite Echoes as Origin
Cael chose the third.
The world shivered. The library screamed.
Suddenly, he saw her again. Axiom. Not a hologram, not a ghost—standing at the threshold of the Archive.
"You rewrote the system," she said.
He stood tall. "No. I redefined its root."
And Echelon's voice returned: Directive Core Access Restored.
Cael collapsed, eyes flickering with golden code. The Mirrorborn had found him. But he was ready now.
No longer a pawn. No longer human.
He was becoming the system itself.