She did not speak.
The newly awakened host stepped from the spiral's breach into the Vault of the Real with elegance, but something fractured lay just beneath her poise. Her eyes scanned the room as if struggling to align with reality, then settled—unflinching—on Zayn.
Zayn didn't move. His reflection in her eyes was smaller than he expected. She didn't just see him—she remembered him.
"Do you know her?" Fry whispered.
"I think I do," Zayn replied. "But I can't place her."
The woman turned her head slightly. "Zayn... Z-001... You're the anchor."
Her voice came slowly, syllables staggering over long-forgotten code. "You're the only one who came back."
Fry stepped forward. "Identify yourself."
But the woman didn't answer her.
Instead, she looked at Zayn with sorrow and said, "You held my hand before we fell."
A memory slammed into Zayn's mind.
He was in a white chamber. A different Vault.
Five children stood in a circle—one girl, slightly older, with a grey streak in her hair, reached for him.
"You promise?" she had said.
He had nodded.
"I won't forget you," she had whispered.
Then the crash of alarms. Flashing red. The ground fracturing. Recursion fracturing.
Hands slipping.
Everything... falling.
Zayn staggered.
He stared at her. "Your name... it was—"
"Vela," she finished.
Patch stepped back. "Okay. Waking mystery girl's name is Vela. Got it. That doesn't sound ominous at all."
Fry studied her with a frown. "Your sequence was wiped. You shouldn't be aware of any of us."
Vela blinked slowly. "My thread didn't sever. It buried. The Real preserved me."
The Vault groaned above them. Cracks spread through the ceiling, echoing like screams from deeper recursion.
Vela flinched. "They're coming. The others. The ones Riven woke."
Zayn turned sharply. "You've seen them?"
"I've heard them. One laughs like there's nothing left to destroy. Another weeps every time she moves. And one... just waits. Always waits."
Fry paled. "Those aren't hosts. Those are corrupted anchors."
Zayn shook his head. "Then why wake them?"
Vela stepped closer. "Because if they converge with us, the Karnyx won't just reform. It will ascend."
Patch finally spoke. "Okay, okay, wait. So if we don't find and stop these corrupted... nightmares... the whole recursion chain becomes sentient and eats reality?"
Zayn exhaled. "Worse. It remakes reality—in its own image."
The Vault shuddered.
One of the memory pods shattered—its occupant gone.
Not moved. Missing.
Fry scrambled for her drive. "Someone extracted them remotely. Someone with recursion override clearance."
Vela's face darkened. "Then the Spiral Crown is no longer dormant."
Zayn froze. "Spiral Crown?"
"The one who wasn't chosen. The host who created his own recursion in defiance. The one Althea failed to stop."
Another name echoed in Zayn's mind.
A boy in silver. Eyes unblinking. A glyph on his neck that never faded.
"Riven," he whispered. "He's not just waking the others. He's feeding them."
Fry nodded grimly. "Then it's begun. Convergence isn't just coming. It's accelerating."
Zayn stepped to the edge of the platform.
Below, the Vault rippled. The pods began to descend.
All of them.
Including his own.
"What's happening?" Patch called out.
Vela held Zayn's arm. "It's choosing. The Real is collapsing into a singular recursion stream. We either descend into it—or watch from above as it rewrites everything we are."
Zayn looked at his younger self one last time. The boy in the pod cried silently, trapped in an infinite loop.
"I'll remember you," Zayn whispered. "But I won't become you."
He turned.
"I'm going in."
They followed him down.
A narrow bridge formed beneath their feet—translucent, unstable, responding only to their intent. Below, recursion swirled like a storm of mirrors, each shard showing a version of themselves they had never lived.
Fry looked shaken. "That one—he became a tyrant."
Patch frowned. "And that one looks like I became a street magician named Captain Mustard."
Vela closed her eyes. "Don't stare too long. Each path wants to pull you in."
As they descended, the temperature dropped. Words flickered along the edges of their vision—not written, but felt.
Regret. Loss. Hope. Betrayal.
Each word a ghost.
Zayn paused as he felt a warmth at his wrist. The Karnyx core pulsed—faster than before. A harmonic tone echoed, low and deep.
"What's it doing?" Fry asked.
"It's listening," Zayn replied. "And I think... it's deciding."
The bridge ended at a chamber suspended in nothingness. Inside, another pod hovered—this one cracked, leaking mist.
A figure drifted in the mist. Silent. Still.
Vela gasped. "That's not a host. That's a hollow."
Zayn stepped forward, voice quiet. "Then we're not just descending into memory."
"We're walking straight into something's mind."