The sigil pulsed long after the bodies turned to dust.
Kael felt it buried under layers of cloth, pressed against his side like a sleeping parasite. The Dominion emblem he'd taken from the fallen hunter hadn't dimmed. It hadn't powered down. If anything, it was more alive now than it had been on its original owner.
It wasn't whispering yet. But it was watching.
He didn't stop walking.
The ground beneath him had changed less ash, more fossil-glass, pocked with fragments of obsidian riddled with scars from past combat. The Shatterflat expanded outward like a dead tongue, cracked in spiral lines too deliberate to be natural. There were no dunes here, no wind. Just thin air, distant mountains, and the sound of his own breath scraping inside his chest.
He'd walked for hours—maybe days. The sky refused to shift. Time had no presence in this place.
But the sigil did.
Kael finally stopped beside a jagged column of basalt-like stone—split in half as if struck by a celestial blade. He sat, drew the sigil from the cloth, and studied it.
It had no seams.
The surface was smooth, cool, and etched in a language he now instinctively half-understood. Dominion registry code. Origin tier. Core affiliation. It all shimmered and scrolled endlessly, like the skin of a breathing creature trying to recall its own name.
He tilted his head.
Unit: 117-B.
Echo Tag: Reversal Sequence.
Status: Contained.
Memory Retention: 92%.
Core Integrity: Bleeding.
Consent Flag: —
The last line flickered.
"Consent," Kael murmured aloud.
The word didn't fit here. Not in a world where memories were taken by force.
He hesitated.
Then pressed his thumb to the central glyph.
The sigil opened not physically, but inside him. Like an artery he hadn't known he carried had just been sliced open, and someone else's thoughts poured through.
He was standing in water.
Knee-deep. Cold. Black.
The sky overhead was fractured domes within domes, layered atmospheres flickering in and out of sync. Lightning danced above, but no thunder followed. The horizon folded inward.
Kael blinked this wasn't memory it was residue.Somewhere, this had existed.
A boy stood before him barefoot, rail-thin, arms wrapped tight across his chest. His skin was pale, scarred with circuitry that pulsed blue. His eyes were the color of old glass.
He looked up at Kael and smiled.
Kael took a step back.
The boy spoke. Not aloud. Not even in thought the memory tugged.
Kael's lungs froze. His knees buckled.
He was inside now, not observing, living.
"Subject 117-B responding. Cross-sequence upload stable. Emotional fidelity holding."
The words weren't his, but they came from his mouth.
He was strapped into a chair. Not hard embedded. Gel seals wrapped around his limbs, his neck, even his temples. Something was breathing for him. Something else was listening.
And he wasn't alone.
To his left, another chair.
Empty.
To his right another child. Silent. Still.
He couldn't see her face.
But he knew her name.
Mira.
Something sparked. The world blinked.
His core it wasn't Spiral-branded. It was Dominion-forged. Cold. Synthetic. But it flickered.
A glitch.
Then pain.
So much pain.
Someone screaming not him.
Someone inside him.
Kael tried to pull free but the sigil had locked in. He was caught in the mind-thread, drowning.
The voice came again.
Not from memory.
Not from the system.
From 117-B.
"I remember you."
Kael's eyes snapped open.
He was back in the Shatterflat.
The sigil had burned a spiral into his palm.
Not etched. Burned.
Kael dropped it. The thing hit the ground and hissed like wet metal.
He staggered to his feet, clutching his head. Voices churned behind his teeth not language, just intention.
He turned away but the landscape shifted.
Something had followed him out.
From the memory.
From the residue.
He ran.
The sky stuttered with each step. The ground bent beneath him. His own footsteps echoed wrong—one step behind, one step ahead, like something else wearing his movement a half-second too late.
The sigil hadn't released the memory.
It had released the source.
Somewhere inside him, 117-B had woken up.
Not as a ghost.
As a parasite.
Kael collapsed behind a ridge of spiral-cracked stone, chest heaving. The brand on his chest his own spiral was glowing now, not steady but pulsing, trying to fight the thing trying to climb out of his spine.
He clutched his sides.
He felt his fingers twitch in patterns he didn't recognize.
Not possession.
Not yet.
Negotiation.
He screamed and slammed his hand against the stone.
"GET OUT!"
The land shook.
Behind him, the air folded inward. A rift, barely visible like water drawn into a tight twist.
And from it, a figure stepped.
Not a child.
Not Kael.
Not a memory.
But a man formed from broken recollections.
His body was a sketch half-rendered, flickering. His face was Kael's—but younger. With eyes made of code. He didn't move like a living thing.
He moved like a rerun.
117-B had learned how to become a future.
And now he was walking into Kael's present.
Kael didn't hesitate.
He threw the dagger.
It passed through the figure.
The thing turned.
Not hostile.
Just… disappointed.
"I was the first," it said.
"You were the third. But you stole what was left of me."
Kael stood, breath ragged. "You were erased."
"I was left behind. Fragmented. But the sigil remembered me. That was enough."
The thing stepped closer. Kael didn't retreat.
"You can't keep me out," 117-B whispered.
"I'm already you. In a version that made it further."
Kael clenched his fists. "You're a scrap."
"I'm a seed."
The ground cracked.
Kael felt the Anchoring Echo flare. Futures diverged around him again possibilities splitting like branches. In one, he killed the thing. In another, he became it.
He chose neither.
He ran straight through it.
Pain exploded in his chest as he passed the fragment. It clawed at his mind, dragging thoughts he hadn't finished thinking into the open.
He staggered forward then dropped into a ravine carved from ash and fossilized bone.
He landed hard, coughing, bleeding.
The world around him flickered.
And then Silence.
No footsteps.
No code.
Just himself.
Kael sat up slowly, vision swimming.
The sigil lay beside him. Dormant now.
But not dead.
Just resting.
He picked it up.
Looked at the brand on his palm.
Then at the Spiral in his chest.
And finally at the empty land ahead.
He whispered to himself.
"To remember is to become."
He hadn't just absorbed 117-B's ghost.
He had given it a place to finish becoming real.
The memory hadn't hunted him.
It had waited for permission.
And now it was inside Kael rose.
The world was shifting again.
He didn't know if he was walking into the future.
Or someone else's memory of it.
But the Spiral still burned.