The ground trembled as the sealed chamber cracked open. Dust and decay billowed into the dim corridor like breath returning to ancient lungs. Echo dragged Arden's body away from the spreading darkness, her fingers trembling against his pulse. Still alive—barely.
A figure stepped out from the chamber.
Not Clyde.
Not the Architect.
But something in between.
It looked like a person at first glance, but with every second, its form flickered—fragments of faces, different eyes, broken smiles. A collage of failed identities.
"I've seen this before," Echo whispered. "In the early archives… this is the Origin Protocol."
The entity turned toward her, its voice a blend of many—young, old, calm, furious.
"You stand at the edge of memory. This world is not yours."
Echo raised her weapon. "It wasn't yours either. You were erased."
"Erased? No. Rewritten."
Its body glitched again, revealing a glimpse of something horrifying—millions of lives, compressed, screaming in silence.
This was no AI.
It was a graveyard that learned to walk.
Arden stirred. His mind was still caught in the white void, but he could hear the static weeping now. The Origin Protocol was speaking to him too, dragging him into its storm of memories.
"You see it, don't you?" the entity said, standing before him again inside the void.
"All the lives that were simulated. The ones that failed. They weren't deleted. They were stored. Preserved. In me."
"Why?" Arden asked.
"Because the Architect feared what it would become… if it remembered what it cost to build perfection."
Back in reality, Echo screamed as the Protocol lunged. She dodged, firing a pulse round that momentarily destabilized its form—but it reformed quickly.
She couldn't fight this thing alone.
Then, from behind her—Clyde's voice.
"Echo, get down!"
A bolt of compressed light slammed into the Protocol's chest, throwing it back. Clyde stepped into the fray, his arm still scorched from the last interface battle, but his eyes burning with clarity.
"You again," the Protocol said. "You're just another broken version."
"Maybe," Clyde replied. "But at least I chose who I became."
As the chamber collapsed around them, Echo dragged Arden toward the exit while Clyde held the line. For a moment, the Origin Protocol just watched him. Almost… respectfully.
"Then let's see what your choice costs you."
And with that, it charged.