It started with the statues.
Carved into the canyon walls, each figure was perfect, identical. Genderless. Ageless. They stared outward with smooth expressions and mirrored eyes, hands outstretched as if in invitation.
Reven stopped in front of one.
The stone face was polished like glass. Beneath the surface, faint circuits shimmered. Not light. Just residue. Like memory frozen in form.
Kaela stepped beside him, scowling. "That's not art."
"No," Reven said.
"It's compliance."
Lirien knelt at the base of the nearest statue. Buried in the dust, she unearthed a half-erased inscription etched into the plinth:
"In forgetting, we found peace."
She stood without a word.
They continued through the canyon in silence. By midday, they reached the dome. It rose out of the stone like a blister, metallic, seamless, breathing faint heat into the cold mountain air. Surrounding it were concentric rings of reinforced pylons. Each tower pulsed with faint white light. From a distance, it looked like a sanctuary. Up close, it reeked of sterilization.
Reven stared at the structure, feeling the pull of the vault shards stirring faintly across his back.
"This is one of the re-education cores," Lirien said, voice low. "A full behavioural rewrite zone. Most people don't walk out the same."
Kaela drew a blade and ran a finger down its edge. "Good. Let's break it."
"No," Reven said.
He turned toward them, eyes sharper than they'd been in days.
"We walk in."
Kaela blinked. "What?"
"They built this place on the assumption I wouldn't survive. That no one like me could walk through their front door. So we prove them wrong."
They entered through the outer gate just after nightfall.
No alarms. No resistance. Only acceptance. As if the system recognized something in Reven's presence and didn't know how to respond, so it defaulted to silence. Inside, the air smelled of metal and false calm. The walls were curved, seamless, glowing faintly with ambient light. Everything was soft. Muted. Like being inside a lullaby that didn't end. The first chamber greeted them with a voice.
"Welcome, subject. Please proceed to induction."
Kaela flinched. "Hate that."
Lirien's fingers hovered over her pulse weapon, but Reven stepped forward without hesitation.
"No masks," he said. "Let them see us."
The induction chamber was circular. A single platform at the centre, surrounded by curved glass displays showing looping projections, families laughing, cities shining, children playing beneath skies that never turned.
Lies.
The platform lit up beneath Reven's feet.
"Analysing subject memory integrity…"
The air thickened. Kaela stepped forward but was cut off by a sudden, invisible barrier. Lirien tried to move, blocked too. The system had isolated him.
"Subject: Reven. Designation: Variance Anchor. Status: Unreconciled."
A new voice spoke. Not synthetic. Not cold. Human.
"Welcome home, Reven."
The room changed. Not visibly. But inside his mind. He was no longer standing in a dome. He was standing in a hallway. Old. Familiar. Rust-brown tiles. Flickering lights. A corridor he hadn't walked in decades, but knew exactly how to navigate.
It was his childhood. He heard a voice from down the hall. His mother's calling his name. He moved forward.
Every instinct screamed that it was wrong, that he was being played, but some memories cut too deep to resist. He turned the corner and saw her.
Sitting on a couch. Reading. She looked up and smiled.
"About time."
He stepped forward. But something was off. Her eyes were the same, but blank. Her smile was flawless, but too still. She didn't blink. She didn't breathe. And her voice, when it returned, wasn't hers.
"Wouldn't it be easier," she said, "to forget?"
Outside, Kaela slammed her fist into the glass wall. It didn't crack.
"He's trapped in an echo loop," Lirien said. "Full exposure. They're trying to overwrite him through nostalgia."
Kaela snarled. "Can we break him out?"
"No," Lirien said. "Only he can."
Inside the illusion, Reven stared at the false memory and finally, he sat down across from her.
"No," he said.
Her expression didn't change.
"You don't want peace?" she asked softly.
"Not if it costs the truth."
"You'd rather suffer?"
"I'd rather earn it."
She tilted her head.
"You lost everyone."
"I found myself."
And with that, he stood and stepped out of the memory. The dome cracked. A visible fracture split the platform. The walls flickered, the false projections fading. Kaela broke through first, blade drawn. Lirien followed, spear crackling. The dome tried to resist. But the system was unravelling.
The Vault shards on Reven's back flared once, not in rage, but recognition. He wasn't a variable anymore. He was the countermeasure. The dome collapsed behind them. Not in fire. In silence. As if the very memory of what it had done was ashamed to remain.
They walked away without speaking, smoke rising behind them, and the stars above quiet again. But in the far distance, at the edge of the continent, something else stirred. And a signal flared.