— Some truths force you to act. Others force you to become.
The roar of the shadowbeast tore through the sky like a crack of thunder. In an instant, the ruins plunged into chaos. Space itself twisted and buckled—light collided with darkness, and the boundary between reality and illusion blurred into a storm of impossible geometry.
Quinn moved swiftly, dragging Shawn with him through shattered structures and collapsing debris. Behind them, the monstrous entity howled like thunder incarnate. With each step it took, the ground crumbled, the air trembled, and the world seemed to unravel at its seams.
"That thing's not from Earth!" Shawn shouted, his voice splintering under the weight of shockwaves. "What the hell is it?!"
"A construct of the Darkwave," Quinn replied, voice like iron. "They hijack the host's consciousness through what's called the Corruption Protocol—reversing their awareness into hostile counter-entities."
A word lit up in Shawn's mind like a strike of lightning:
Cognitive Corruptor.
"It can sense the fragment inside me," he muttered, jaw clenched.
Quinn nodded grimly. "It's not hunting you. It's trying to assimilate you."
Before Shawn could respond, they dove into a half-collapsed transit shaft. Quinn slammed a command into his wrist module, and the air itself tore open—a vortex gate spiraled into existence. The moment it stabilized, a shockwave hurled them through.
Just as the portal collapsed, the shadowbeast's claw crashed down, shattering what remained of the ruins and crushing it all into dust.
Shawn hit the ground hard on the other side, lungs burning, heart thundering. He sat there, gasping, his body trembling. Slowly, he looked up.
A fractured metal tower loomed above the wasteland, cold and silent—like a monument to something long dead.
He froze.
The tower was the Oriental Pearl.
"…We're at the Yangtze Delta," he whispered to himself.
Quinn was already scanning the disturbance field around them, his expression unreadable. "The temporal barrier in this zone hasn't fully collapsed. We've got a window—it'll mask our presence from the Darkwave, but not for long."
Shawn turned toward him, eyes sharp. "You had this extraction point ready… didn't you?"
Quinn didn't deny it. "I've been monitoring the Rift's structural evolution. Once the fragments began to resonate, it was only a matter of time before they came."
Shawn stared at him, long and hard. Then, in a low voice: "You never meant to stop this… did you?"
Quinn's words fell like stones into silence. "There are things you'll only understand when you've seen them with your own eyes."
Shawn looked down at his hands. Flesh and bone… yet they shimmered with a metallic glow. The telltale sign of latent fragment energy passively awakening. Something inside him—alien, powerful—was stirring.
"…Can I still go back to being human?" he asked, barely above a whisper.
Quinn was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice carried a strange gravity. "You're no longer human. But you're not machine, either. You are… a unique energy entity."
A single word surfaced in Shawn's mind:
Soulenergy.
For the first time, he understood. His existence was never the destination—it was a bridge. A living conduit between the Source Realm and the collapsing web of fractured realities.
"Then what about Gary? Da?" His voice steadied, his fists clenched. "Were they experiments too?"
"No," Quinn said, shaking his head. "They are hosts to legacy consciousness—echoes left behind after the Great Flood, the fall of Meta Origin. Residual projections buried deep within the system. Gary embodies the Order Protocol, Da once served as the Integration Interface.
But you… you're the only fragment vessel that retained a complete sense of self."
Shawn went still. It finally made sense—why they sometimes aided him, and other times stood in his way.
They weren't enemies.
They were safeguards—correction mechanisms embedded in the old system.
"You weren't chosen," Quinn said, stepping toward the rust-streaked foundation of the Oriental Pearl. He pulled aside a warped metal panel, revealing a hidden passage beneath. His voice lowered to a near-reverent tone. "You're the final path Meta Origin left for its own error correction."
Beneath the panel lay a shaft, dark and bottomless. It swallowed light. Time itself seemed to fall silent.
Shawn's breath caught. "What's down there?"
Quinn glanced back at him, eyes darker than ever. "The Origin Thread."
Shawn blinked. "You mean… a projection of the Source Realm?"
Quinn nodded. "More precisely, that is the primordial origin of the Elemental Core. If you can complete the Core Reunification there, you will gain—the power to choose freely."
"Choose?"
Quinn's voice softened, but didn't waver. "Yes. You'll decide—restart Meta Origin, or… seal the Rift forever."
Shawn looked down into the abyss. Somewhere within that void, he sensed another version of himself watching… waiting.
His heartbeat thundered.
At last, he stood on the edge of the final question:
Who am I?
And who will I choose to become?
...
This was no longer a space of physical matter. It was a singularity born of pure consciousness.
Shawn kept descending, following Quinn. With each layer, a piece of memory was stripped away—childhood traumas, lost familial bonds, betrayed friendships, and those sealed fragments of experiments buried deep within.
At every level, he felt the urge to stop, to question, to resist, to flee. Yet each time he looked up, he saw that unwavering figure ahead.
Quinn—the mysterious and austere guide—seemed to have already crossed through every kind of suffering.
The seventh layer was an endless expanse of white.
"Your consciousness has reached its boundary," Quinn said, his voice calm but undeniable. "From here, the path is yours alone."
"You're not coming with me?"
"This is a dialogue between you and the fragments," he replied.
Shawn lifted his foot and stepped into the blinding white light.
—Instantly, countless images poured forth like a reversed waterfall of time: his birth, the icy lab chamber, Kyng's gaze, the searing pain of implantation, his former smiles, cries, anger, and struggle—all flooding back like a tidal wave.
At the center of that torrent of memory, a source of light rose gently, pulsing in perfect rhythm with his heartbeat.
Then a voice came—not male, not female, neither distant nor near—emerging from the light:
"Shawn, do you wish to become your complete self?"
He didn't answer right away.
He thought of the years growing up in solitude, of his grandfather's gentle hand ruffling his hair, of Kyng whispering "Forgive me" with eyes full of sorrow.
Then, softly, he replied:
"No. I wish to become a complete "us"."
In that moment, the light exploded—countless shards falling like stars, reweaving along the pathways of his consciousness—until they fused with him, perfectly.
He finally understood:
He was never a tool, nor a vessel.
He was the choice itself.
"I can finally look back freely, without being trapped by the past," he whispered.
Above him, the dome of the Information Palace slowly opened. A passage appeared, leading toward a higher-dimensional structure of consciousness—Shawn understood: this was the entrance to return to origin—Source Realm.
He placed his hand on the door. It opened silently.
He walked inside.
Now, integration was complete. The boundaries of his consciousness were no longer blurred. He was no longer defined by others—he was truly himself.
—Everything, it seemed, was finally falling into place.
But just as he was about to step into the next phase of the Source Realm, a hand stopped him.
—Quinn.
"Well done, Shawn. You completed this faster than I expected," Quinn said, his voice calm, almost approving.
Shawn froze. His gaze fell on Quinn's slowly outstretched palm—within it, a virtual core pulsed quietly. The energy signature was unmistakable...
It was—Shawn's fused core structure.
The Octacore.
"You… when did you—?"
Quinn gave a faint smile. A cold glint flashed in his eyes.
"From the moment you began to believe this was your own choice," he said quietly, "I knew you had completed the configuration."
"Configuration?" Shawn's pupils narrowed.
"Exactly," Quinn replied, voice steady.
"The true purpose of the Meta-Origin Program was to fully replicate a conscious entity.
And you… were the vessel for this new version."
He paused, eyes locking onto Shawn.
"And I… am the trigger."
In the next instant, the Octacore trembled violently.
Shawn's body began to unravel—streaming into strange lines of data.
His awareness slipped, breaking away from the core.
He tried to hold on, but the fused structure was already reconfiguring—beyond his control.
"You lied to me!" Shawn shouted, rage burning in his voice.
But Quinn turned away, walking calmly toward the far end of the corridor—toward a blurred exit that shimmered like a threshold to the real world.
"You'll stay here," he said, without turning back. "You'll continue refining the model… training the structure… until you're called upon again.
As for me—I must return. The real world awaits the updated version of myself."
Shawn lunged, trying to reclaim his Thunder Core—but the energy had already separated.
He watched himself dissolve from the outside, like discarded code shedding its container.
"This isn't your right!" he roared.
Quinn didn't pause. He left behind only a single, cold sentence:
"Power never belonged to individual consciousness."
The light collapsed again.
Shawn stood alone, surrounded by the infinite void.
His hands flew to his chest—where the Thunder Core had once been.
No wound.
No blood.
Only one question echoed in the emptiness—
"Who… am I?"