Darkness lingered.
Not oppressive. Not empty. Just... waiting.
Kael remained in the chair as the sequence loaded.
One breath.
Two.
Then, a pulse.
A shimmer.
—
The room peeled away.
Not disappeared. Not collapsed. Just… shifted.
Walls into stars.
Ceiling into sky.
Chair into platform.
He was in-between.
Between times. Between versions of himself.
—
A voice emerged. One he hadn't heard in a decade.
"Do you remember this place?"
He did.
The scorched horizon. The twin moons.
The ruins where he first broke protocol.
—
Kael stood now.
No gear. No briefing.
Only instinct.
Only the weight of memory along his spine.
—
A figure approached.
Armor patched. Eyes familiar.
Not an enemy. Not an ally.
Something else.
"Kael. You're late."
He nodded.
— I always am.
"But not too late."
—
The mission wasn't about erasing the past anymore.
It was about facing it.
Fracture by fracture.