The wind screamed through the broken sky.
Kazen stood in a place that shouldn't exist—half ruin, half memory. The Veil. A zone where every failed version of this world collided, layered and unstable. Beneath his feet, cities flickered in and out of existence. Whole timelines looping endlessly. A child cried in one fragment. A war raged in another.
He wasn't alone.
A version of himself stood at the edge of a broken cliff—older, colder, and armored in black interface plating. Revenant.
"You finally followed the echoes," Revenant said without turning. "Took you long enough."
"I didn't follow them," Kazen said. "I chased you."
"No." Revenant turned slowly. His eyes glowed like code errors—alive but wrong. "You chased yourself. I'm just the version that stopped pretending we're heroes."
A blade formed in Kazen's hand—raw, unstable, shaped by will rather than system prompt.
Revenant didn't draw. "You're not ready. Not yet. But the Veil will show you."
Behind them, a tower of light surged into the clouds. It pulsed like a heart—slow and ancient.
"The Tower of Decline," Revenant said. "That's where it ends. That's where the Core makes its choice."
"You mean where I make the choice," Kazen said.
Revenant laughed softly. "You still think this is about choice?"
A crack split the air as the world stuttered. Ghost Data spilled from the glitch—familiar voices whispering.
"Rael!" Patchling's voice snapped in over the link. "We've got cross-interference. He's not alone out there!"
More echoes emerged—some friendly, some twisted.
Kazen looked into the heart of the Veil. Memories he never lived. Battles he never fought. Friends he never met. Yet they all felt real.
He stepped forward.
"Then I guess it's time I remember the future."