I gazed at the corpse for a long time.
It was not the blood that unsettled me. Not the position of the limbs. Not even the look, though it was unnaturally serene — as though death had come to terms with him rather than the other way round.
What unsettled me was the armor.
I'd never worn anything like that. pale gray plates edged in black, each piece inlaid with old writing I didn't understand, but it felt familiar. Like it had been mine. Like it had been stolen from me.
Or perhaps I'd stolen it from him.
"You said this was me," I murmured.
Kael did not flinch. "It was."
"But not anymore?"
"That depends on what you believe you are."
He stepped around me, looming over the memory as a mourner at a funeral he'd been to more times than he could count. The wind wasn't blowing his cloak there wasn't any inside the vault. Only shards, flickering possibilities, all whirling around the corpse like insects swarming around a flame long extinguished.
"This Kevin," Kael went on, "was the first to refuse the Loop's control. Not by chance. Not by survival. By choice."
Nevertheless, I heard the words hit me like thunder on my skin. Refused to forget. That's what the Loop required every loop: forgetting. The cost of rebirth. A cleansing. And he'd refused it.
That meant he bore every loop voluntarily.
"But that would shatter anyone," I said.
It did."
I stood there, and Kael stared at me. "And it constructed something else in his stead."
I knelt next to the body.
It didn't seem like a construct. The skin was authentic. The blood still warm. But the loop energy around it… it remained active.
"He's not rotting," I realized. "Why?"
"Because he isn't dead in the way you mean."
"Then what is this?"
"A sealed memory."
Veyne moved forward. He had remained quiet since we got there, but his voice was now soft, torn now.
"This body is something more than history. It's an anchor."
"To what?"
"To the paradox that began you."
Kael waved his hand over our heads.
The sky rippled.
And for an instant just a flash I saw them.
Dozens of versions of me. Struggling. Burning. Running. Laughing. Screaming. Some in armor, others half-dried out by Loop scars. Some of them young. Others. much, much older than I am now.
"These are shadows?" I said.
"Echoes," Kael said. "Born from this anchor. When he died, the Loop shattered around him, attempting to repair what could not be erased. Each time it attempted to rewrite him, it created a new version instead. A deviation."
"You mean clones?"
"Not clones," Veyne said. "Refractions. You're one of them."
I stood slowly.
"So which number am I?"
Kael's face darkened. "We stopped counting after seventy-one."
The silence crushed the air around me.
Seventy-one.
I wasn't even the second. Or tenth. Or twentieth.
I was a mistake of a mistake, spiraling farther from the original every time. The weight of it sank into my bones like stone.
"Did any of them survive?" I asked.
"A few," Kael said. "But they disintegrated."
"How?"
"Loop bleed. Memory loss. Identity collapse. One actually tried to kill all the others."
"Did it work?"
"No," replied Veyne. "Because you killed it."
I stilled.
"I… what?"
He now regarded me. Not with condemnation. Just with that cool, impassive determination he always wore when the truth was most painful.
Loop 51," he said. "You were the only one who reached the vault before the others. And you made a choice."
"What choice?"
You cleansed every unstable reflection you were able to find. To defend the core."
"The body?"
"No. Yourself."
The air around us trembled.
Because somewhere within this vault, the memory of that cleansing had stirred.
And it was returning.
The lights above changed.
The other me's faded away.
Except for one.
One remained.
He emerged from the fog as if he'd been waiting all these years.
Same face. Older eyes. A scar that ran from his neck to his cheek. His right hand emitted loopfire raw and uncontrolled. His left hand clutched a broken mask.
He smiled.
Not like a friend.
Like a predator.
"It's been a long time," he said.
"'You're one of me," I panted.
"Was," he replied. "You destroyed me. Burned me out of the chain. Thought I couldn't figure my way back."
"Who are you?"
He let go of the mask.
It exploded.
"I'm what remains of the Kevin who accepted the Loop."
Kael and Veyne both stepped back.
The air distorted.
Because what was before us wasn't simply a memory.
It was an infected version of me.
A Kevin who resigned himself to the Loop's control who gorged on reset after reset, became a vessel of the system, and allowed it to inscribe new rules into his bones.
"Why are you here?" I asked.
"To finish what you started," he said. "And maybe… reclaim the path you stole."
"I didn't steal anything."
"Didn't you?"
His hand flashed. The earth cracked.
And behind him, more shadows appeared.
Not iterations of me.
Not echoes.
Loop-forged creations copies of those I had previously not been able to save. Drazin. Astra. Even Lirae.
But not actual.
Tainted duplicates.
"This is your last recursion," he told me. "Finish it. Or I will."
I glanced over at Kael.
He didn't reply.
Veyne stiffened.
And I knew then: no one could save me now.
This was not a battle of memory.
This was a battle of right to be.