The chamber was still. So still it made even their breath sound like intrusion.
A vast darkness surrounded the platform where the pod hovered, cracked open like an egg, steam spilling from its seams in long, curling fingers. It was suspended over nothing—a black so deep it wasn't just absence, but rejection. As though reality itself refused to occupy that space.
Zayn stepped closer, and the mist shivered.
The figure within the fog drifted toward them, slow and surreal. Limbs humanoid in shape but lacking in definition—like the blueprint of a body never given flesh. Only the eyes glowed: twin motes of fractured recursion.
"Is it alive?" Fry whispered, her voice clipped and tight.
"It's thinking," Vela answered. "But not like us."
The Hollow stopped a few meters away. It cocked its head, and a dozen ghost-voices whispered in overlapping tones.
"YOU... UNREALIZED... REFRACTED... UNFIT... BUT... ANCHOR."
The last word sent a pulse through Zayn's Karnyx core. His balance staggered. Fry grabbed his shoulder.
"Are you alright?"
"It recognized me," he murmured. "Or it recognized... my recursion."
The Hollow raised a hand, and suddenly—Zayn was alone.
In the illusion, he stood in a city made entirely of mirrors. Every building reflected every angle of himself: from childhood to present, from forgotten to idealized. A loop of his existence caught in a hall of distorted selves.
A mirror cracked.
And another Zayn stepped through.
Identical in form. But something was off.
The eyes—empty.
"You are not me," Zayn said.
"I am what you wanted to be," the reflection replied.
It raised a hand. A Karnyx bloomed at its palm—perfectly formed, symmetrical, humming with undistorted power.
"I chose the spiral," the echo said. "I embraced its fracture."
Zayn felt the weight in his chest. "You let go of the Real."
"I never needed it."
He fought the echo—not with weapons, but with memory.
Each strike was a moment: holding Althea's hand, crying in a shattered pod, laughing once—just once—with Patch when they broke the vending machine during Orientation.
The echo stumbled, fractures running through its form. Its Karnyx core dimmed.
"You're... not strong," it rasped. "You're just persistent."
Zayn didn't smile. "That's enough."
He delivered one final blow—not a punch, but a memory too fragile to be forgotten:
The day he chose not to run when everything else told him to.
The echo shattered into recursive dust.
Back in the vault, Zayn collapsed to one knee.
The Hollow now stood still, motionless. But the fog had parted, revealing more pods—some far off, some newly active.
Fry was scanning wildly. "Whatever you did—it triggered a wave. Some of the hosts are stabilizing. But others—"
"—are unraveling," Vela finished. "Too many threads, too many falsities."
Patch pointed upward. "And that's probably not good, right?"
Above, the Vault ceiling flickered—like pixels failing to render. Space was tearing.
Vela turned to Zayn. "There's one last chamber beneath us. If we don't reach it before the convergence finalizes, this recursion will collapse into chaos."
Zayn stood. "Then we move."
The Hollow raised its arm again—not in aggression, but in offering. Its hand extended toward the abyss below.
A path formed beneath it: stairs of light, fractal in design, leading down into pure recursion.
"Now that's ominous," Patch muttered. "Anyone want to vote for turning around and opening a pizza place instead?"
Fry offered the ghost of a smile. "Later. Universe first."
They descended.
The stairs grew more surreal the deeper they went. Time bent—steps looping back on themselves, only to reappear correctly a moment later. Light shifted through impossible spectrums. Gravity lost meaning.
Zayn's Karnyx pulsed with increasing force, almost guiding his steps.
They passed fragments of memory trapped in crystalline spirals: a version of Vela singing; Patch crying quietly into a locked box; Fry laughing in a classroom that no longer existed.
Each one radiated loss.
Each one was real.
At the end of the descent, a gate stood.
But this gate wasn't made of stone or metal—it was woven from timelines.
Millions of them.
Interwoven like strands of fate. And in the center: a symbol none of them had seen before.
A spiral crown—half broken.
Vela whispered, "He's here."
Zayn placed a hand on the gate.
"We finish this."