Veyne did not say anything for the first minute.
Neither did I.
We were standing in the lifeless stillness of the Reset Scar a gray, windless expanse where the Loop had previously imploded in on itself and swallowed everything whole. The air was charged with old rules struggling to recall how to be. And the silence? It wasn't calm. It was the sort that anticipated a choice being made.
He eventually lowered his blades. Slightly.
"You lasted Durnhal," he told me. "More than most of your iterations."
"You've seen them?"
"Enough to know what you're becoming."
His tone was devoid of hate. Relief, either. There was calculation in it instead — as though he was weighing which Kevin I'd be like in the next ten seconds.
"You waited here for me," I said.
"I waited here for someone," he corrected. "Didn't know if it'd be you. Or a memory of you. Or a consequence."
He stopped, then added with a glance, "Maybe it's all three."
Veyne was attired like a hunter red and black cloak divided at the hem, twin daggers tied to opposite sides of his belt, both etched with mirrored glyphs. His hair was black, cropped, slicked back by ice, and his eyes. weren't normal.
They flickered.
Not with light with loop residue.
Which only occurred when someone had killed a version of themselves.
Or been compelled to recall one they had let die.
He knew me.
He recalled more than he acknowledged.
And I remembered something else at that moment: I had trusted him once. Seriously. Perhaps even prior to Astra.
But I couldn't recall when.
"..."
"You going to try to stop me?" I asked.
He smiled without affection. "No. That's not my job anymore."
"Then what is?"
"Balance."
His blades rustled as he tucked them away. "And now? Killing you would weigh the balance too heavily in her favor."
"Astra's?"
"No," he replied. "Lirae's."
That name stung more than it ought to have.
Lirae the Synthetic Warden. The one who was meant to lead, or incarcerate, me. She had vanished three resets previously. The last I'd noticed her, she was smiling in the fire, advising me not to come after. And now she was returning? Navigating the board?
"She's still active?" I asked.
"Active," Veyne said cautiously, "and perhaps no longer aligned."
That hurt. Lirae had always operated between guardian and jailor. If she'd finally decided on one side and it wasn't mine then someone had manipulated her code beyond what even she thought was in control.
"Then why are you assisting me?" I said.
"I'm not."
He began to walk.
"I'm leading you. There's a difference."
"To where?"
"..."
"To someone who is familiar with the next point of collapse."
"Who?"
"..."
He turned and stopped. And I saw it the hesitation.
"Kael."
The name fell between us like a memory too heavy to bear.
Kael, the Unburnt Recorder.
The one who recalled all that the Loops attempted to delete.
And the one who, not so long before, had almost left me when he saw what I could become.
"He won't talk to me," I said.
"Then don't talk," Veyne said. "Listen. He's found the fracture you created three loops back. The one that never healed."
It could only be one event the Ashvale Incident. The loop reset too soon, saved nobody, and perhaps made a copy of myself I'd never established was gone.
Veyne was already moving.
I followed.
The ground cracked and slanted. Time seeped away at the edges one half of the path jerking along like a snagged film reel, the other half jumping forward too quickly. My breathing stumbled to keep up, my body slowing down by a second or two, then recoiling. Not enough to make a difference, but enough to tell me I wasn't supposed to be here.
And then we arrived.
The memory vault.
It wasn't a structure.
It was a wound.
Cut into the world's skin like an open gash that refused to heal. Within it glimmered an upside-down reality buildings held upside down, discussions in suspended reverse, flames suspended mid-burn.
Kael stood at the precipice, coat flying in an unreal wind.
His expression, as ever, was impassive. But his eyes clutched mine and they were alive with fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of what I was about to remember.
"You crossed the Scar," Kael said.
I didn't reply.
"And Astra let you live."
Still no reply.
"Then it's started."
He faced the vault.
> "Come in, Kevin. You've come this far. You deserve to see what's been hidden."
"You said I shouldn't unlock anything else."
"You already did."
"Then what is this?"
Kael regarded me. Really regarded.
"This… is where you died. For real. The first time."
My blood iced.
He pointed into the vault, where icy memories whirled.
And there straight in the middle I saw it.
My body.
Dead.
Not moving.
Clad in armor I'd never worn. Wielding a sword I'd never held. Dying in a location I'd never been.
"This isn't possible," I said.
Kael remained silent.
Because it wasn't about possibility any longer.
It was about origin.
This was the original Kevin.
And the rest of us… had come from him.