Clyde stood in the aftermath of their clash, breathing heavy, the digital winds howling around him. The Architect had been pushed back—but not defeated. Not yet.
Beneath the cracked floor where Clyde's hands had struck, something stirred.
A hatch.
Nova stepped forward. "What is that?"
Rhea narrowed her eyes. "A failsafe…"
Clyde reached for it and, with a grunt, pried it open. A staircase descended into nothingness—pitch-black and humming with forbidden code. Without a word, he jumped in.
They followed.
The descent was long and cold, like slipping deeper into the mind of a dying god. The walls weren't made of metal, or even data—it was memory, frozen in time. Snapshots of past rewrites lined the corridor like tombstones. Some showed worlds that had thrived, others... twisted, broken.
Nova paused at one. "This… this was Earth?"
"No," Rhea whispered. "A version of it."
Clyde pressed forward until they reached the core.
It wasn't a machine. It was a person.
Suspended in a cocoon of glass and light was a girl, barely older than Clyde. Wires snaked through her arms, into her spine, into her mind. She was asleep—or pretending to be.
"The Architect's origin?" Nova asked, stunned.
Clyde stared. "No. She's the original Rewrite."
As if hearing them, her eyes flicked open.
"Protocol: Legacy… reawakened."
A shockwave burst from the chamber, and the Architect's voice echoed all around them.
"You shouldn't be here."
Suddenly, screens lit up across the room—showing every move Clyde had made, every thought, every glitch, every failed version. It had all been monitored… recorded… designed.
"You weren't fighting to escape," the Architect said. "You were being tested."
And Clyde realized the truth: This wasn't just a war.
It was a selection.
The final rewrite… was never meant to survive.
It was meant to choose.