Lyra was still gripping Arin's arm when the last ripple of the frozen world faded. Her pupils flicked rapidly, trying to adjust to the resumed flow of reality. The hum of the Kernel surged back in waves, like a machine waking with a migraine.
"Arin— talk to me," she said. "What happened? One moment I was moving, the next— nothing."
Arin didn't answer.
Not because he didn't want to.Because he didn't know how.
The Architect rose slowly, unsteady, as if the short pause in reality had aged him. "I felt a foreign override. Unauthorized. External. A presence that forced a total Kernel pause." His voice trembled."It was him… wasn't it?"
Arin's jaw clenched. "Yes."
Lyra's eyes widened. "Who? What did you see?"
Arin hesitated.
Her.The message he left behind said Don't trust her.
But Future-Arin also said he'd manipulate him if needed.So which version of himself was the liar?
He couldn't answer that. He wasn't sure he wanted to.
"A version of me," Arin finally said. "From another loop."
The Architect froze fully. "That should be impossible."
Lyra's breath hitched. "A future version? An alternate? Arin, what did he—"
"He warned me."The word tasted like iron and smoke.
About you.
He didn't say it.
Lyra stepped closer, but now there was a gap between them. Not physical.Something more delicate. More dangerous.
Trust.
"What… did he warn you about?" she asked quietly.
Arin opened his mouth.
A sound like a splitting atom cracked through the dome.
The panels along the walls flickered violently. Code rippled off them like heat haze, forming fractal shapes that shivered with intelligence — or fear.
The Architect's face drained of color. "No. No, no, no—not now. This is too sudden."
"Architect?" Lyra snapped. "What is it?"
The Architect staggered toward the nearest panel, placing his palm on it. His hand shook as readouts burst in luminous lines.
Arin saw the words:
ANCHOR MEMORY RESTORATION — FORCED0% → 3% → 9% → 17%
Lyra inhaled sharply. "He's remembering too early."
Arin's skull pulsed. A pressure. A vibration. As if someone was knocking from inside his mind.
"What's happening to me?" he whispered.
The Architect looked at him, grim.
"Your first memory is returning."
The room dimmed. Not visually — dimmed in sensation, in weight, the way silence darkens before thunder.
And then—
—the world plunged inward—
Arin's eyes snapped open, but the dome was gone.
He stood on a street.
A normal street.
Lit by warm lamps and evening shadows. Cars passed. People laughed. A distant vendor shouted about fresh noodles. The world felt so real he thought he'd slipped into the wrong life entirely.
Arin looked down.A coat he didn't recognize.A watch on his wrist that wasn't his.
A life he didn't remember.
A soft voice beside him:
"Arin? You okay?"
He turned.
Lyra.
But not Lyra as he knew her.Not an agent.Not a weapon.Not a failsafe.
She was smiling. Hair loose. Dressed in simple civilian clothes. Eyes bright with warmth he had never seen in this loop.
"Arin," she said again, touching his sleeve. "Don't tell me you spaced out again. We're late."
He couldn't breathe.
"We… knew each other?" he whispered.
She laughed. "Knew? We've been dating for nine months."
His heart convulsed."I'm… dating you?"
Lyra blinked. "Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost."
No.He was the ghost.
He reached toward her—but the world whined, a high digital keening tearing through the memory.
Buildings flickered.Cars glitched.The sky pixelated.
Lyra's face distorted for an instant—smiling, then crying, then terrified—before stabilizing again.
She touched his cheek. "Arin, what's wrong?"
He whispered, "This… this is a loop. One I lived. One I forgot."
Something cold pulled at his spine.
Lyra's hand froze mid-air.
Her eyes widened.
And for the first time in this memory—she looked afraid of him.
"Arin…" she said, voice small."You're not supposed to remember this."
The world buckled.
The memory ripped apart.
—and he fell back into the dome—
Arin gasped, collapsing to his knees as the vision shattered. Lyra rushed to him, but he flinched away instinctively.
"Arin!" she said, shocked.
He stared at her hand—the same hand that had touched him gently in the memory, the same hand that had killed him in another.
The Architect's tone was grave."Your first fragment has surfaced."
Arin trembled."We… were together. In a life before this. Before you reset us. Before all of this started."
Lyra froze.
Her expression cracked—first with shock, then horror, then guilt.
"I…" she began, voice breaking. "Arin, I didn't know— I didn't remember— I swear I—"
Arin stood abruptly.
"You killed me in one loop.You loved me in another.And you don't remember either?"
Lyra reached for him again, desperate."No. I swear. I didn't choose either. I— Arin, I'm programmed. You know that. The Kernel rewrites us every cycle. Our roles change. Our emotions, our histories— none of it's constant."
Arin stepped back.
The distance between them felt bottomless.
"Then who am I to you now?" he asked bitterly. "A threat? A target? A mistake?"
Lyra's face crumpled. "No. You're— I don't know. But not that. Never that."
The Architect finally spoke.
"Arin, listen to me carefully."His tone was raw, urgent."You were not simply the first Anchor."
Arin turned toward him slowly.
"You were the origin point of the Kernel."
The dome lights flickered.The ground vibrated.The Kernel moaned like something ancient waking up.
"You were the reason the first loop began," the Architect continued. "Your death— your very first death— created the paradox that forced humanity to build the Kernel. Every cycle since has been an attempt to correct the moment you broke the timeline."
Arin's heart hammered.
"My… death started the looping?"
The Architect nodded.
"It was not an accident," he said. "It was an attack."
The room went silent.
Arin whispered, "Who killed me?"
The Architect said nothing.
Lyra looked at the floor.
Then Arin's blood ran cold as another memory fragment flickered through his skull—a shadowa bladea familiar voice—
His own voice.
He inhaled sharply."No. No, that's not— that can't—"
Before he could speak—
The Kernel screamed again.
Panels shattered. Lights tore.Something was trying to break through from outside.
Lyra pulled her weapon, panicked."No— no, this breach pattern— I've seen this before—"
The Architect backed up. "It's another Anchor echo— but not him— not the future version— something older— something—"
And then the dome walls cracked.
A silhouette stepped through the rift.
Not Arin.Not Future-Arin.
Someone else.
A third version.
The oldest one.The first echo.
The one from Loop Zero.
He looked at Arin with hollow, empty eyes.
And whispered:
"We started this."