The world ended quietly.
Not with fire. Not with screaming skies or falling stars.
But with breathing.
Three breaths.
One after the other.
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The first breath belonged to the eldest.
A sharp inhale tore through dry lungs as if air itself had edges. Kael's eyes snapped open to darkness fractured by thin bands of silver light. He tried to move. Cold resistance met him. Glass.
No — not glass.
Something thicker. Alive.
He pressed his palm against it. The surface rippled.
A memory flickered.
Run.
It vanished.
His heart pounded. He couldn't remember his last name. Couldn't remember how old he was. Couldn't remember anything before—
A second breath echoed.
To his right.
A softer, trembling gasp.
"Kael?"
The voice was hoarse, uncertain — but familiar enough to twist something inside his chest.
Lyra.
He didn't know how he knew.
He just did.
"I'm here," he said, surprised his voice worked.
Silver light intensified. The walls around them dissolved like frost touched by morning sun. The chamber unfolded — mechanical petals peeling back to reveal a cathedral-sized room built from black metal and bone-white stone. Thousands of suspended pods lined the curved walls.
Most were empty.
Some were not.
The third breath came slowly.
Measured.
Controlled.
"Interesting," murmured the youngest.
Caelum.
His pod had opened without struggle. He stepped forward as if waking from a nap rather than a grave. His eyes adjusted instantly to the dim light, calculating, observing.
Above them, a ceiling of shifting constellations rotated in silence.
Lyra stumbled free of her pod and nearly collapsed. Kael caught her instinctively.
When he touched her, something burned beneath his skin.
Not pain.
Recognition.
The air vibrated.
A low hum rippled outward from where their fingers met.
Caelum's gaze sharpened.
"Don't," he said quietly.
But it was too late.
The constellations flared.
And the chamber awakened.
A voice descended from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"GENETIC TRIAD CONFIRMED."
The words were not heard — they were felt, embedded directly into their bones.
Lyra clutched her head. "Make it stop."
"SOCIETAL RESET PROTOCOL ENGAGED."
Kael felt something rising inside him — something ancient and furious. The walls trembled. Fine cracks spidered through the stone beneath his boots.
Caelum tilted his head slightly, studying the fractures.
"Fascinating," he whispered.
The voice continued.
"MEMORY SUPPRESSION: INCOMPLETE."
Images slammed into Kael's mind.
Fire across a skyline.
A tower collapsing inward.
A hand — his hand — stained red.
He staggered.
Lyra cried out as light burst from her skin in faint pulses, like a heartbeat escaping her body. The pulses spread across the chamber floor in luminous veins.
The pods along the walls began to open.
One.
Two.
Ten.
A hundred.
Figures fell from them — human shapes, unmoving.
Sleeping.
Or waiting.
Caelum watched the spectacle with unsettling calm.
"They're empty," he said.
Kael blinked through the haze. "What?"
"Their minds," Caelum replied. "The bodies are intact. The consciousness isn't there."
As if summoned by the observation, one of the fallen figures twitched.
Its eyes opened.
Pure white.
It rose in a single, unnatural motion.
Then another did.
And another.
Lyra's pulses of light grew erratic. The figures turned toward her as if drawn by gravity.
"Why are they looking at me?" she whispered.
Kael stepped in front of her without thinking.
The first figure lunged.
Kael moved faster.
He didn't know how — but he knew how.
His hand shot forward and the air warped, compressing into visible force. The creature flew backward, smashing into a column hard enough to crack it.
Silence followed.
All three siblings stared at him.
Kael stared at his own hand.
"I don't—"
The floor exploded beneath them.
Metallic tendrils erupted upward, coiling around the siblings' ankles and wrists with surgical precision.
"VARIABLES DETECTED."
The voice was no longer neutral.
It sounded… irritated.
Caelum did not struggle.
Instead, he closed his eyes.
And smiled.
The tendril around his wrist shattered — not from force, but from disintegration. It aged a thousand years in a second, corroding into dust.
Kael felt the shift immediately.
The chamber temperature dropped.
Lyra's light stabilized.
The white-eyed figures froze mid-motion.
All because Caelum opened his eyes again.
"What did you just do?" Kael demanded.
Caelum looked at his own hand as if mildly surprised.
"I altered a probability."
The voice thundered.
"ANOMALY ESCALATING."
The ceiling constellations rearranged violently, forming a single sigil none of them recognized — yet all three felt they should.
Lyra gasped.
"I've seen that before."
"Where?" Kael asked.
Her expression shifted.
Fear.
"No," she whispered. "I caused that."
The chamber lights dimmed.
Outside the cathedral-sized room, massive doors groaned open, revealing a horizon beyond — a city of impossible architecture stretching beneath a fractured sky.
Floating districts.
Bridges made of light.
Black spires piercing cloud cover that shimmered like digital static.
And in the distance —
A colossal structure shaped like a crown.
Broken.
Kael felt it before he understood it.
"That place," he breathed.
Caelum nodded slowly.
"It's waiting."
The voice made one final declaration:
"PRIMARY SUBJECTS UNCONTAINABLE."
The remaining pods along the walls began ejecting their occupants at once.
Thousands.
All white-eyed.
All turning toward the siblings.
Lyra's light flared brighter than before — no longer pulsing, but radiating steadily. The air around her hummed with warmth and something dangerously close to hope.
Kael's fists clenched as gravity itself seemed to bend subtly toward him.
Caelum stepped forward, calculating trajectories, outcomes, deaths.
Three destinies.
One ruined society.
No memories.
Only each other.
Or so they believed.
As the white-eyed masses advanced in perfect silence, Caelum spoke softly — so softly only the other two could hear.
"There's something you both need to understand."
Kael didn't look at him. "Now isn't the time."
Caelum's eyes reflected the broken crown on the horizon.
"Oh," he said gently.
"It absolutely is."
Behind them, unseen in the chamber's highest shadows, something ancient shifted in its containment.
It had been waiting for this awakening.
For them.
And as the first of the white-eyed reached the base of the siblings' platform, the creature in the shadows opened one eye.
It was not white.
It was familiar.