---
The bodies were gone.
Vaporized in a containment sweep drone just minutes after Kael left the alley.
No evidence. No trace.
But he didn't care.
His mind was already somewhere else — replaying the intercepted message again and again in his head.
> "He has awakened. Begin Phase Extraction."
> "What the hell is Phase Extraction?"
---
The Void Engine pulsed again.
A fragment of the last enforcer's neural link had been hacked and absorbed during the battle — buried beneath encrypted layers.
Kael sat cross-legged in a collapsed mag-lift tunnel, hand pressed against a cracked interface node.
> [ Decrypting... Imperial Blacklist Packet: CODE ECHO-PROT-X23 ]
[ Contents: Audio-Visual Logs. Coordinates. Experimental Directives. ]
The file opened.
And Kael saw himself.
---
A hollow room.
White walls.
Bright lights.
Kael stood strapped to a cruciform frame — unconscious, thin, tubes in his spine. But this wasn't the present him.
This was a clone.
> "Subject Echo-23: Status — unstable."
"Void saturation at 89%. Recommend cerebral wipe and re-sequencing."
Another voice interrupted:
> "No. If we keep wiping him, the original essence won't anchor. Let the Memory Echoes stabilize naturally."
> "And if he remembers everything?"
> "Then pray he doesn't remember why we built him."
---
Kael's heart thundered.
> "They didn't just clone me…"
> "They copied me. Over and over."
> "Trying to recreate the original — the one who ascended and vanished."
His hands trembled, not from fear — but from clarity.
He hadn't reincarnated randomly.
He was resurrected by design.
A tool.
A weapon.
A mistake.
> [ Echo Protocol: Directive Summary ]
– Origin Project: Null Ascension Initiative
– Goal: Rebirth of the Void Architect via Essence Replication.
– Status: Phase Extraction Activated – Memory Collapse Imminent
– Warning: Host is regaining autonomy. Protocol breach likely.
---
Kael stood.
No more running.
> "They're not trying to erase me."
> "They're trying to control me."
He closed the data packet and burned it from his system.
But a single line lingered in his HUD:
> [ Primary Backup Facility – Sector Eos-7. Coordinates Locked. Enter via Rift Gate: ID LUCENT-FOLD. ]
---
Kael looked toward the city's horizon.
Above the towers, a broken moon hung low — behind it, the Void shimmered faintly like a scar on the stars.
> "Time to visit the place they tried to bury me."
> "Let's see what else I left behind."
---