The stairway of shifting light unfolded above them, vanishing into a haze of humming silence. Each step pulsed beneath Yuki's feet—not stone, not code, but something in-between. The kind of material that seemed to remember every soul who'd passed through it.
Yuki placed a hand on the curved wall beside him as he ascended, feeling its breath. Yes, breathe. The Sky Bastion was no ordinary fortress. It was conscious. A being. A relic from a time when systems weren't built—they were born.
Kai moved beside him, unusually quiet. His glitch-lined fur flickered in rhythm with the stairs, his glowing eyes never leaving the ascending path. Selene followed behind, blade half-drawn, eyes scanning the flickering glyphs crawling across the walls.
"Another memory guardian?" she murmured, her voice low.
"No," Yuki replied. "Something else. I think this part of the Bastion isn't corrupted. It's watching."
At the top of the stairwell, a great gate of fractured crystal awaited. It parted without a sound as they approached, revealing a chamber unlike any they'd seen before.
It was spherical—dozens of floors stacked in concentric rings, each lined with glowing terminals and floating platforms. And in the center, suspended in a web of light threads, was a figure.
Not alive.
Not dead.
A humanoid shell.
It rotated slowly, face veiled behind a smooth mask of obsidian glass. Runes spiraled outward from its chest—ancient, undecipherable. The same ones Yuki had seen in flashes during his memory syncs.
"That's…" Selene stepped closer, brows furrowed. "A Prototype."
Yuki stared, breath catching in his throat. It looked just like him.
Only older.
Fused deeper.
More complete.
[Resonance Link Detected.][Initiating Memory Echo Playback…]
The room shimmered. Light flickered. The walls dissolved into a kaleidoscope of data as the memory engaged.
Suddenly, Yuki wasn't standing in the Bastion anymore.
He was back. Somewhere... metallic. A lab. A place filled with cold humming machines and glass pods.
A voice, calm and clinical, echoed around him. "Prototype Z failed synchronization. Memories rejected. Splintering occurred during Phase Drift trials. Subject must be reset."
Another voice—sharper, urgent. "No! Not reset. Not yet. This one… it's reacting. Look at the quantum resonance data."
A scream—his scream—and then silence.
The vision ended. The chamber snapped back into form.
Kai growled softly. Selene placed a hand on Yuki's shoulder.
He didn't shake it off.
"They were going to wipe me," he whispered. "Erase it all. But someone stopped them."
He stepped toward the suspended prototype.
And that's when the whisper began.
Faint, crackling through the static haze in the air.
Not all were erased. Some… were hidden.
Yuki's eyes widened. The whisper wasn't in his mind. It was coming from the prototype itself.
He reached out. The moment his fingers brushed the mask, energy surged outward. Threads of light connected him to the construct, scanning, syncing, recognizing.
[Data Sync Engaged: Experimental Shell ZC-X][Extracting Encrypted Module…]
Yuki stumbled as new information flooded him—not memory, but potential.
A vision of a realm outside space.
A place where the Bastions met.
Where thought became matter and echoes shaped time.
A phrase scrolled across his vision:
"Echoes of the First Breath are not just memories. They are blueprints."
Yuki's Unknown Skill flickered again.Something tried to awaken.But not yet.
The light receded.
The prototype remained motionless.
Selene exhaled sharply. "Whatever that was… it wasn't part of the Nexus. It predated it."
Kai barked once, tail lashing. His instincts flared again.
Suddenly, the floor rumbled.
From beneath them, a glyph lit up.
A defense system? No. A guardian.
But it didn't attack.
Instead, a voice echoed—deeper, synthetic, old.
"Echo Protocol Initialized. Prototype Z: Access Level Advanced. Pathway to the Core permitted."
The center of the floor parted, revealing a deep descent—an elevator formed of radiant threads.
Yuki's heart pounded.
They were being led deeper.
Not as intruders.
But as heirs.
As he stepped onto the platform, Selene gave him a sidelong glance. "You're not just syncing with memories anymore. You're rewriting them."
"No," Yuki said softly. "I think I'm fulfilling them."
The platform dropped.
The air grew denser.
Lights flickered like dying stars.
And somewhere far below, something pulsed.
Not hostile.
Not divine.
But ancient.
Waiting.