They reached it after three hours beneath the skeleton of Ashveil.
The Ark wasn't a place. It was a preserved memory.
A memory sealed beneath layers of system corruption and fractured time.
Echo guided them through a corridor of shifting code. Walls flickered between reality and archived Nexus blueprints. Glimpses of alternate outcomes. Dead Kaels. Forgotten timelines.
"This is where the original Kael was buried," Echo said. "The anomaly they couldn't destroy."
Kalen coughed up blood. "We need to extract his core. It's the only way to rewrite your access."
At the heart of the Ark stood a cryo-pod—shattered open from the inside.
Inside it, the imprint of a body.
Kael's body.
But not his.
Next to the pod, a sigil pulsed—ancient, complex. It burned just looking at it.
[Core Memory Node Detected: KX-Origin]
Kael reached out.
It didn't reject him.
It welcomed him.