As soon as I left the shattered bridge, the air shifted.
Not the temperature the pressure. As if the world wasn't sure if it wanted to admit me.
Below, the broken skyline of Durnhal writhed in the fog as if someone had grabbed a city and folded it up into a question. Towers of stone leaned inward like sentinels. Roads unspooled in midair before curling back on themselves. I wasn't plummeting toward somewhere I was plummeting into a memory that didn't want to be remembered.
I landed with a quiet crunch. Not stone. Not earth.
Glass.
Thousands of shards of glass covered the plaza. Not shards individuals. Statues. Each one stuck in time, caught halfway through something. A woman protecting a child. A man grasping for a coin. A soldier mid-swing.
They weren't statues.
They were miscalculations.
Echo loops.
And each and every one of them turned their face in my direction.
Not suddenly.
But slowly bone-grindingly slowly until each empty glass face was looking straight at where I was standing.
I didn't breathe. Didn't blink. And then, seemingly pleased, they turned aside.
A whisper left my lips:
"This city… remembers me."
Because it had to.
Kael had warned me Durnhal was loop-locked a ruin that had been in every timeline, but now was excluded from all of them. And still. here it was.
The city that shouldn't be permitted.
A city sustained only because someone remembered it too hard to give up on it.
And someone was waiting for me in its center.
I walked through its shattered streets.
Buildings droned like organs. Doors opened into spaces that didn't exist yet. Street signs flashed with words I hadn't learned until I walked by them, and suddenly I did.
The lamps above whispered.
One voice. Soft. Familiar.
"Kevin. You shouldn't have come back."
I didn't reply.
Because I wasn't sure which me the city believed it was addressing.
I hurried along.
Finally, I arrived at the Center Spiral Durnhal's memory-core. A huge open square where the loop glyphs were inscribed into the floor like roots. The glyphs changed when I trod upon them. Not in appearance in emotion. Some slowed my pulse. Some constricted my throat. One seared.
And in its center stood a tree.
High. Twisted. Naked. And constructed of memory.
Not figuratively.
Literally.
Its limbs glowed with frozen moments: children's laughter, fire coming down from heavens, Astra's sword cleaving a mountain, Kael shrieking through gore. My own face. Repeated and repeated. Older. Younger. Smiling. Weeping. Gone.
And under the tree stood Saela.
The Keeper of Frozen Echoes.
She wasn't as I had imagined.
No glowing eyes. No drifting symbols. No dignified stance.
Just a woman in a long, ashen-gray coat. Her hair was the shade of drifted snow. Her face was unreadable not from coldness, but from weariness so old it had ceased to show.
"You're late," she said without turning.
"You knew I'd come?"
"I remember the versions where you did. I forget the ones where you didn't."
I moved closer.
"Kael said you could help me stabilize."
"Kael wants you alive. That's different from stable."
She finally glanced at me.
Her eyes weren't glowing. But they felt like they'd looked into the space after time ends.
"You've stacked too many of yourself," she said. "Six anchors. Three corrupted. Two erased. One trying to eat the others."
I flinched at my pounding heartbeat.
"So I'm a paradox?"
I loathed that word.
"No. Not yet. You're a Witness. Becoming.".
It was like a punishment and a prophecy mixed into one.
"Can you repair it?" I asked.
"You want to be repaired?"
"I want to live."
"That's not the same thing either."
She went over to the memory-tree. Plucked one of the branches off. Held it out.
"This version of you never returned to the Vault. Never laid eyes on Kael again. Never even came as far as me."
I paused.
"What occurred?"
"He chose differently. He remembered something the rest of you didn't."
I reached out and touched the branch.
And howled.
Not because of pain.
Because of recognition.
I looked at a Loop I'd never experienced but had nearly.
In this one, I could see that I'd rescued Nima.
Lost everyone else, though.
I had failed the mission. Hid in a ruined, frozen hideaway. Lived a quiet, cowardly existence. Cooking. Hunting. Regretting.
Until Astra found me years later and finished it.
That me survived, but did nothing with it.
And yet… he was happy.
I let go of the memory.
It disappeared before it reached the ground.
"You remember now," Saela spoke softly.
"I didn't want to."
"You don't get to choose anymore. That's the price of Witnessing."
She pointed east.
"There's someone waiting for you. Just past the ruined arch."
"Who?"
A collapsed version of you. The one the Loops rejected. He exists only in fragmented memory-space now."
I caught my breath.
"And why do I need to see him?"
"..."
"Because that's what happens when a Witness refuses to evolve. The Loop doesn't kill you. It disconnects you from meaning."
I turned without a word.
Walked toward the arch.
The wind in Durnhal shifted behind me. Saela's voice trailed after, soft as falling time:
"Be careful, Kevin. You're not meeting an enemy."
"You're meeting a warning."
The arch was broken. Beyond it, nothing stood. Just cracked stone. A horizon that looped in on itself.
And in the center, kneeling in a pile of his own memories, was me.
Or… what was left.
His eyes were black voids. His skin translucent, bleeding echoes. His voice barely carried as he spoke without looking up:
"You took too long."
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I was you… before you learned to forget. Before you made yourself into something sharp enough to survive."
"Why are you still here?"
He looked up.
"Because someone has to be."
His body started to untangle shards of time curling off like smoke.
"You can't carry all of us," he whispered. "So let go. Stop trying to be the Kevin who saved everyone."
"That's not what I'm trying to..."
"Yes, it is."
He smiled.
And vanished.
The wind stopped.
The Loop pulse faded.
And for the first time in hours… Durnhal went silent.
I stood alone.
Just me.
The last Kevin still trying to matter.
---