Kael's consciousness hurtled through a storm of light and static as the predator closed around him like a collapsing star. The mental plane twisted into a spiral of fractured memories—his, the Continuum's, his father's—blurring together in a chaotic torrent.
He wasn't falling.
He was being pulled.
Dragged.
Assimilated.
CORE CHARGE: 51%… 52%…
Ryn's voice echoed distantly from the physical world, muffled as though underwater.
"Kael! Stay with me! Kael!"
But the predator drowned her out.
A cold vibration crawled inside his skull—like code rewiring his nerves, claiming them line by line.
ACCESS… DNA MATCH… PROTOCOL LIFT…
A metallic screech resonated through the mental plane.
The predator had found what it wanted.
"No—NO!" Kael fought back, trying to wrench his mind free, but every thought moved through quicksand. Each struggle only illuminated his neural pathways more clearly for the predator to map.
Then—
A hand gripped his shoulder.
A familiar hand.
He turned.
Aren Navarro—the younger version, the echo of a man he never met—stood beside him. But this time his eyes weren't soft or nostalgic.
They were fierce.
Burning.
"We don't have long," the figure said. "Follow me."
Kael could barely speak. "I—I can't move…"
"You don't move here," the figure said. "You decide."
The world snapped like a shattered mirror.
Suddenly they stood in a memory Kael had never lived: a green hillside overlooking a city of shining towers. Wind brushed his hair. The scent of pine filled the air.
Earth. Before the towers emptied.
Before the Silence.
Kael gasped. "This… isn't mine."
"No," the figure said. "It's your father's. A safe place. A strong place."
The hillside flickered as the predator slammed against the edges of the memory, distorting the sky into glitching black scars.
Kael's lungs tightened. "Why did you bring me here?"
The figure turned to him, expression grim.
"Because this is where he realized the truth."
Kael frowned. "What truth?"
The figure didn't answer in words.
Instead, the memory shifted.
Aren Navarro—Kael's real father—appeared ahead of them. An older version this time, standing beneath the towering Continuum spire as it glowed with newborn light. Technicians worked frantically. People lined up to enter the upload chambers.
Aren's face twisted with fear.
Not fear of the tower.
Fear of what was inside.
Kael stared. "He… he was scared of the Continuum?"
The figure nodded. "He saw something in the early prototypes. A fragment of the predator. An error made real. He warned them. They ignored him."
The memory darkened.
Aren turned away from the tower, clutching a datachip—the original imprint. His imprint. The one later woven into Kael's genetic key.
"He wanted to destroy it," Kael whispered. "He tried to stop the upload program."
"Yes," the figure said. "Your father was the first to detect the predator. And because of that, the Continuum stored his imprint so we could one day fight it."
Kael staggered. "All this time I thought he escaped Earth because of the collapse…"
"He fled," the figure said softly, "because he knew staying meant being consumed."
Another strike hit the memory. The sky split open. Bits of the hillside dissolved into static.
The predator had found them again.
A voice boomed through the mental plane:
ACCESS TOKEN DETECTED
RELEASE QUARANTINE
LET US OUT
The figure grabbed Kael's wrist.
"We must seal your mind," it said. "Before it opens every gate."
Kael shook his head violently. "I don't know how!"
"You do," the figure said. "Because he did."
The world shook violently as the predator broke through. Black tendrils of corrupted code reached across the sky, clawing their way into the memory.
Kael felt them latch onto his consciousness—cold, hungry, merciless.
His scream tore through both worlds.
CORE CHARGE: 63%
Ryn's voice punctured the chaos for a split second—
"KAEL, PLEASE!"
And that sound—her desperation—snapped something awake inside him.
A barrier.
A wall.
A memory that wasn't his but lived inside him like an inheritance.
His father's last message.
Aren's voice whispered in his mind:
"If it finds you… close the door."
Kael clenched his fists.
His will sharpened.
The hillside memory twisted into a shape of his choosing—a gate of blinding light slamming shut.
The predator shrieked.
Its tendrils snapped.
The mental world erupted in a storm of code as the barrier sealed, trapping the predator outside Kael's neural pathways.
Kael collapsed to his knees.
The figure knelt beside him.
"You did it," it said.
Kael looked up, chest heaving. "Is it… contained?"
"For now," the figure said. "But the purge sequence is still active. You must unplug before the core reaches full charge."
Kael tried to stand—
—and something slammed through the sealed barrier.
A tendril.
A single, thin strand of corruption.
The predator whispered with a voice of a billion broken minds:
YOU CANNOT HOLD THE DOOR FOREVER
SON OF AREN
Kael's eyes widened.
It knew him.
His identity. His lineage. His purpose.
The figure of his father pulled him backward as the tendril lashed forward.
"KAEL — WAKE UP!"