Anchor NULL.0 — The Deadframe
The Rift spat them out into total silence.
No sound.
No color.
No time.
Just a blank, flickering plain — like someone had tried to erase a universe but forgot to clean up the chalk outlines.
Kael Voss looked around, teeth clenched. "This isn't an Anchor."
Ghost Ronin scanned the void. "No. It's a Deadframe — a timeline so corrupted, even paradox can't survive here."
Myra dropped to her knees. "It's where the first Kael died."
The others went silent.
The First Kael. The original spark of defiance against the Time Weavers. The man who rebelled when everyone else still believed. He wasn't a myth.
He was the reason Kael existed.
---
Suddenly, something shifted.
A heartbeat echoed in the void — slow, thunderous, and wrong.
From the gray nothingness emerged monoliths — vast, twisting slabs of broken memory. They showed scenes out of order: A boy on a cliff. A man buried in machines. A woman calling out a name that never came.
Kael walked toward them.
Every step he took, one monolith shattered.
Each shard whispered:
> "YOU LET ME DIE."
"WE ALL DIED."
"YOU'RE NOT READY."
Then Kael saw him.
Kneeling at the center of the wasteland, unmoving — cloaked in rusted armor, face scarred and ashen — was Kael Zero.
His eyes were shut.
His chest was still.
No Variant signature.
No chrono-pulse.
Just death.
Kael stood over his predecessor.
"This is the one who never got a second chance?" he asked.
Myra nodded. "The Weavers made an example of him. Burned his timeline. Scrubbed him from the Archive. No one remembers him... except us."
Ghost Ronin knelt beside the corpse. "They feared him more than they ever feared you."
Kael said nothing.
Then he reached down... and touched Kael Zero's shoulder.
The world twitched.
Not a spark of resurrection.
Not a miracle.
Just a memory.
---
🔥 Flashback – Anchor 0.Ø – 14 Seconds Before Erasure
Kael Zero stands alone on a burning rooftop, bleeding from the mouth, holding the core codes to the Prime Chronogrid. He's transmitting them off-world — to someone. Somewhere.
As the sky turns to code, he smiles through bloodied teeth.
> "There will be more of me."
Then, white.
Then, nothing.
---
Back in the present, Kael opened his eyes.
"I saw what he died for. He bought us time. Literally."
Myra stood. "We have to finish what he started."
Kael looked around the Deadframe. "No. We have to do more."
He placed a chronorune on the ground — a grave marker.
First of its kind.
The Deadframe pulsed.
Faint light returned to the horizon.
And with it… the faintest echo of a voice:
> "Run, Kael."