Rift Echoes
When the Vault closed, the sky didn't return to normal.
It fractured.
Thin, spidering cracks ran across the fabric of reality above us, glowing faintly with violet and gold. Through them, possibility leaked—echoes of timelines that weren't yet real, each humming like a string plucked in another universe.
I stood at the epicenter, breath steady, gaze fixed forward.
I was still Alex.
But I was more.
Something had changed.
Not just in me—in the system itself.
Beside me, Nyra sheathed her blade. Her voice was quiet but taut.
"The Vault accepted your Split."
I nodded. "But that means CHAOS won't."
She gave a humorless laugh. "They won't get the chance."
Above us, the glyph shimmered.
[SYSTEM FRACTURE: STABLE]
[MULTI-CORE SEED: ACTIVE]
And then the glyph changed.
Not randomly.
Deliberately.
Into the mark of the Black Sigil Brotherhood.
Elsewhere: Orbit of the Dead Moon
The flagship Revenant Memory drifted above the Vault, massive engines dormant, shields in flux.
Inside, robed figures gathered in the circular chamber of the Inner Protocol. Each wore a different mask—some carved from stone, others from polished bone or crystallized data. All bore the Sigil burned into their left palm.
At the center, the High Witness stood. His mask was blank. Smooth. Faceless.
"The Vault has spoken," he intoned. "The Anomaly has Split."
Murmurs rippled through the chamber like heatwaves.
One figure stepped forward—Sister Arathe, Voice of Binding.
"We prepared for divergence. But this… this is bifurcation. Two entities, same source. The Core's prophecy never accounted for dual continuity."
The High Witness raised a hand.
"This is why we exist. Not to stop the anomaly. To shape it."
He turned, revealing the data-rune etched into the back of his mask—an override glyph older than recorded history.
[BROTHERHOOD PROTOCOL: INITIATE]
At once, their entire fleet came online.
Thousands of sleep-locked minds awoke.
Across the stars, old agents stirred from slumber. Forgotten weapons blinked green. The sky, which had fractured, now answered.
Their target: Alex.
Both of them.
Inside the Spiral Forest
Kael and Lux crouched beside a slowly re-stabilizing portal node. Their comms still buzzed with static, but Kael finally pulled a partial signal from Alex's residual core trail.
Lux exhaled. "He's alive."
Kael glanced at her. "You sound surprised."
"I'm not. I'm relieved."
Then the message hit them both at once—burned into their neural implants, not as sound, but as law:
"BROTHERHOOD PROTOCOL INITIATED."
"SPLIT SUBJECT DESIGNATED: CORE-TIER THREAT."
"INTERVENTION MANDATED."
Kael looked up slowly. "They're coming."
Lux's eyes hardened. "Then we meet them halfway."
She stood, withdrawing her twin-blade, edges singing with static. "We find Alex. We hold the line. No matter how many systems they burn through to reach him."
Kael nodded.
And together, they vanished into the shimmer of fractured air.
Deep System – Zero Chamber
I stood in what I now understood was a mirror-space—a system that existed only when the Vault acknowledged the anomaly. Around me, the fragments of my past selves floated in orbit. But one of them wasn't drifting.
It was moving.
Toward me.
It wore my face. Older. Sharper. It bled light from its eyes and bore no Core in its chest.
"You're not the only split," it said.
I blinked. "What?"
"There were others before you. But they failed. The Brotherhood consumed them. This place is their grave."
A surge of nausea hit me.
"How do you know this?"
The doppelgänger smiled. Sadly.
"Because I was the first. I refused the merge. I became the echo. And now… I'm what waits when you fall."
He raised his hand. A glyph—unknown, chaotic, alive—formed in the air.
"The Protocol isn't just about control."
"It's about purity."
"You're the mistake that can't be cleansed."
Above the Divide
The Brotherhood's first wave breached the sky, warforms tearing through time-scar tissue like blades through silk. Whole cities flickered in and out of reality as they passed.
And across every system—hidden, fortified, or forgotten—only one message remained:
"Prepare for Correction."
The older version of me—the Echo—stood close now, his presence a distortion, like gravity around a black hole. No Core in his chest. No flame. Just silence where something should be.
"You're the successful split," he said, circling me. "Which makes you *dangerous*—not just to CHAOS, not just to the Brotherhood… but to the fabric."
He tapped the air, and a thin line of code unraveled between us, weaving into a map of cascading branches—every choice I'd made, and every one I hadn't.
Each thread ended the same way: in fire, in failure, or in silence.
"I tried to fix it," he continued. "I *thought* I was rewriting the future."
He turned, looking at me now with haunted eyes.
"I was only delaying the collapse."
The ground beneath us cracked. Not physically—but in memory. Echoes of the Vault's birth shuddered through us: the Architects arguing in a time before time, CHAOS seizing control, and the Brotherhood kneeling before a god no one remembered building.
> "You can still make a different choice," he said.
>
> "But it has to be now."
Before I could answer—
the mirror-space shook.
A breach tore open above us—triangular, humming with quantum static.
Kael dropped through first, hitting the ground in a roll. His boots lit up, anchoring him against the shifting code.
"Alex!"
Lux landed beside him, blades drawn, her voice cutting across the chaos.
"Brotherhood incoming. Fleet-scale."
I turned back to the Echo—but he was gone.
Only a single glyph remained, burned into the air between us:
**\[RECKONING ≠ ASCENT]**
---
**Above: High Orbit of the Fractured Moon**
The *Revenant Memory* loomed in full, surrounded now by sister ships bearing the Sigil. Their hulls crackled with pre-architectural weaponry—designed not just to destroy, but to erase.
In the control chamber, the High Witness opened his palms to the interface.
"Prepare the Null Engines," he said. "We do not fire to kill. We fire to *correct*."
Around him, the other Witnesses chanted, and the engines began to spin—folding light, space, and consequence.
---
**Back at the Core Spiral**
I stepped toward Kael and Lux. The light of the Vault cast long shadows behind us.
"We're not running," I said. "Not anymore."
Kael looked toward the sky, already vibrating with distortion. "Then we better hold the line."
Lux raised her blade, and something changed in her. Her edges sharpened, her form slightly flickering—like someone halfway between body and algorithm.
"You're not the only one who's evolved," she said softly.
A pause. Then—
**\[INCOMING: BROTHERHOOD STRIKE WAVE 1]**
The Vault responded. Its doors, sealed and silent, opened again.
But not to consume.
To fight.
Fragments of old Architect guardians rose from the earth—half-code, half-machine—ready to protect their paradox.
And beside them?
Me.
Not just Alex.
Not just the Split.
But the beginning of something the Brotherhood never calculated for.