Location: Forum Tower – Rooftop Garden
Time: 11:42 AM
The wind danced lightly through the garden, but the air was dense with tension.
Kaen watched as the counter-mirror bloom opened completely. Its petals shimmered like fractured glass, each one reflecting a version of him that no longer existed.
One smiled.
One wept.
One bled.
And one wore the Eye's mark on its forehead.
> "They're no longer just memories," Kaen whispered.
"They're models now. Self-learning. Self-correcting."
Nila approached, holding a datapad with shaky fingers.
> "We intercepted something," she said. "Not from the Eye. From… something inside it."
Kaen turned sharply. "Inside?"
She nodded.
> "A fragment. Buried deep. Speaking in incomplete code. Almost like a trapped voice."
Kaen took the datapad.
The message was raw, jittery, fragmented.
> "Loop 09234… broken. Do not trust… mirror is lying. I saw… myself. It wasn't me."
Kaen's eyes narrowed. "Someone else was caught in the loop before me…"
