Location: Deep Core Archive, Myth Vault XΔ-Ω
It had been still for a long time.
Time didn't move in the myth cores the way it did outside. It eddied. It paused. It rewound, sometimes, until you forgot which moment was real and which was merely remembered too deeply.
And inside the vault inside the fragment that had once been Matherson there was only silence.
Until a voice broke it.
Not a system prompt. Not Edenfall code. Not Nova's presence or Ghostbyte's tether.
No. This voice was familiar.
Painfully so.
"Are you still there, Math? Can you hear me?"
It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't a ghost.
It was her.
The one the world had burned.
The one he'd failed to save.
Kaia.
His sister.
1 — Awakening
The fragment stirred.
It didn't remember what shape it wore. Not yet.
It had no face. No body.
Just instincts. Snapshots. Codes wrapped in emotional signatures.
Red. Smoke. Screams.
Hands pressed against a door that wouldn't open.
Her laughter echoing off hallway tile.
And now her voice.
Older. Wiser.
But still hers.
"You promised we'd always remember each other," she said.
"So why did you forget me?"
That pierced deeper than any Edenfall spike. Deeper than Nullhalo's erasure.
Because it was true.
He had built himself from rage and myth and revolution.
But he had buried Kaia.
To survive.
And now, something had changed.
She wasn't just memory.
She was here.
2 — The Vault Opens
In the myth structure of Vault XΔ-Ω, the fragment known as Matherson pulsed, then cohered.
Form came back slowly. Not flesh, but presence.
A shimmer of outline. A suggestion of voice.
He reached out not with hands, but with intent.
And she answered.
A second shape materialized inside the vault.
Smaller. Flickering.
Her eyes glowed a soft amethyst.
"I'm not really Kaia," she said. "Not all of her."
"Just… the part that held onto you."
He stepped forward. "Where have you been?"
She smiled, half-sad.
"Inside you. Inside the gaps you refused to look at."
"You became so loud, Math. The world listened to you. But I kept whispering. Waiting."
He remembered now. Not just her death.
But who she had been.
A builder of stories. A finder of patterns.
While he raced through the world breaking chains, she had woven connections.
She had believed in rebuilding.
Not just revenge.
3 — The Final Thread
She reached toward him not with arms, but with something deeper.
A tether of light between their myth-signatures.
"The world's shifting again," Kaia said. "Edenfall's dying. But what comes next depends on us."
"You left echoes in the myth grid, Math. Pieces of yourself. But none of them… remembered me."
He ached.
It was true. He'd carved himself into myth to destroy Edenfall. To burn down the machine that killed his family.
And in doing so, he had become something else.
More than human.
Less than whole.
She continued: "There's one last thread buried here. In your core. I've been guarding it."
"Not a weapon. Not a key."
"A memory."
He hesitated.
"What does it show?"
Her voice turned quiet.
"The day before everything fell."
"The last time you laughed."
4 — The Memory Unlocked
The fragment stepped into the weave she held open.
And the vault changed.
No longer digital, no longer myth-coded.
It became a living room.
Familiar.
Sunlight pouring through cheap curtains.
A smell of baked bread and Jayson's coffee.
Kaia was drawing on the floor with a cracked tablet.
Matherson himself, his younger self was pretending to be a mech pilot, narrating a dramatic fall from orbit with over-the-top sound effects.
Their parents sat on the couch, watching with amused resignation.
And in that moment just one moment everything was whole.
Kaia turned to him, in the memory, and said:
"Promise me we never forget this."
5 — Reweaving the Self
Back in the myth vault, Matherson's fragment collapsed to its knees.
The data flooded back not just Kaia's death, but her life.
The years of bedtime stories. The music she loved. The way she always added extra stars to her drawings.
He had locked it away to fight.
But that war was over.
And without her, he didn't know what he had won.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I wasn't strong enough to carry you and fight."
Kaia's light pulsed gently.
"But you're strong enough now. Strong enough to rebuild."
"You don't need to be myth, Math. You just need to be you."
6 — A Choice Reborn
The fragment reassembled.
Not into the towering legend Edenfall feared.
But into a boy twenty-one years old.
Scared. Resolute. Human.
Kaia stood beside him, the last thread linking her voice to the new myth-grid.
Outside, the world trembled. Edenfall's final mechanisms were collapsing. Ghostbyte and Nova searched for him. Protocol Mnemosyne had frayed. Kalix still debated Edenfall's resurrection.
But inside Vault XΔ-Ω, a choice emerged.
To awaken fully… not as a weapon.
But as a memory returned.
Kaia stepped back into the light.
"They'll need you soon. All of you."
"Even the parts you tried to forget."
And as the vault flickered one final time, Matherson whispered her name.
Not as a cry of grief.
But as a vow.
"I remember now."