The air was thick with the weight of silence. Clyde lay still, his body aching from the strain of the battle, the surge of energy that had torn through him when the Soul Core shattered. It had felt like a moment of transcendence—his connection to the core, to the facility, to everything he once knew—had snapped. And with it, the world had begun to shift, to change, like a map being redrawn by invisible hands.
But the silence… it was almost unbearable.
Clyde's eyes fluttered open, and he found himself in an unfamiliar place. The room was bare, the walls smooth and white, almost sterile. The hum of technology, the buzz of the facility, was gone. All that remained was a cold stillness. The kind of stillness you would find in a place that had once been full of life and had now been abandoned.
He struggled to sit up, his muscles stiff from the impact of everything that had happened. His mind was still trying to process it all—what the woman had said, what he had done, and the voice of his other self, the twisted reflection of his being, that had taunted him until the very end.
"What… what happened?" Clyde muttered to himself, his voice hoarse. His hand pressed against his forehead as a dull headache lingered, the remnants of the energy that had been released when the Soul Core was destroyed.
The woman from before—her face still a mystery—was sitting in the corner of the room, her back to him, looking out into the void. The same cold, impassive expression remained on her face. But there was something different now. Something fragile in the way she held herself, as if the burden of everything they had gone through had caught up to her.
"You're awake," she said softly, her voice quieter than before.
Clyde tried to speak, but his words caught in his throat. He needed to understand what had happened, what this new world meant for him, for everyone else. The rewrite was over, but was it really over?
"What happened to the facility? Where are we?" Clyde asked, his gaze searching the sterile room.
She finally turned to face him, and there was a flicker of something—regret, perhaps?—in her eyes. "The facility is gone. The Soul Core has been destroyed. The rewrite is finished, Clyde. But the cost… it's more than just the facility. The reality we knew, the world you fought to protect… it's all gone. We're in the aftermath now."
Clyde's heart sank. "You mean… this is all that's left?"
She nodded. "Yes. This place… it's a remnant. An echo. It's all that remains of the world we once knew."
He ran a hand through his hair, trying to process the weight of her words. "So, what now? What happens to me? To us?"
The woman stood up slowly, her eyes scanning the desolate surroundings. "We rebuild," she said, her voice steady but with an undercurrent of uncertainty. "We start again. We create something new. But we'll have to do it from scratch. Everything we knew, everything we were, is gone. But maybe… maybe we can make it better this time."
Clyde looked around the room again. The silence still hung heavy in the air, and the emptiness of it all gnawed at him. He had just destroyed the very thing that had been keeping the rewrite intact, but now there was nothing left to hold onto. No direction, no plan, no purpose.
He felt the weight of the world pressing down on him.
"I don't know if I can rebuild this," he whispered. "How do you even begin after everything we've lost?"
The woman looked at him, her expression softening. "You don't have to do it alone."
Clyde looked up at her, confusion in his eyes. "What do you mean?"
She stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We're all here, Clyde. The remnants, the survivors. We're not the only ones left. Together, we can rebuild. We can create something new. It'll take time, but we'll find our way."
Clyde nodded slowly. A part of him felt like giving up, like the fight was over and there was nothing left to do. But another part of him—the part that had kept him going this long—refused to accept that.
Maybe they could rebuild. Maybe they could find a way forward, even in a world that had been rewritten beyond recognition.
"We'll figure it out," Clyde said finally, his voice gaining strength. "Somehow, we'll figure it out."