"Fangs of a Broken Sky"
---
> [Welcome to Mythspace: Layer 1 — The Ruin of Veyr]
> [Warning: Time is nonlinear in this zone.]
> [All memories may lie.]
---
The first thing Eden noticed wasn't the cold—it was the silence.
Not the peaceful kind. The kind that suggested something was listening.
The sky above wasn't a sky. Just an endless rift of jagged crystal shards, each one suspended mid-collapse. Below, the "ground" breathed. Living stone with veins of light and old circuitry.
Seraphine stepped beside him, scanning the environment.
Her expression tightened. "This isn't a world. This is a corpse."
Eden said nothing. But he could feel it too.
This realm had died screaming—and never stopped.
---
> [Memory Fragment Detected: "Zerith the Seer"]
[Vision unlocked.]
---
A flash tore across his vision.
A girl—young, burning with golden light—standing atop a tower of writhing runes, screaming names into the sky.
One of them was his.
But in her tongue, his name sounded like a curse.
---
He blinked back to reality.
Seraphine caught him before he collapsed.
"You okay?"
He shook his head. "Something just called me Zerith."
"…That's not your name."
"Exactly."
---
> [Quest Update: Recover the Thirteen Names of the Ruin]
> [Clue: They are not people.]
---
They ventured into the ruins. Cracked monuments loomed over them, half-machine, half-statue. Glyphs shimmered with shifting syntax—sometimes readable, sometimes… not human at all.
One monument showed a figure with twelve arms, each holding a weapon that bled time. The words beneath it translated into three things at once:
The False King
The First Eden
The Archive That Remembers
Eden felt his heartbeat double.
"…This place knew me before I arrived."
Seraphine rested a hand on her blade. "Or it's building you as you walk."
---
Far ahead, shadow moved. Not a monster—something worse.
A clone.
Or rather, a broken mirror of one.
This version of Eden wore no skin, only shattered glass wrapped in a System exoshell. Its voice scraped across dimensions.
> "You forgot to die when you were supposed to."
---
Eden stepped forward.
For the first time since the beginning, he drew a weapon—one forged from nothing but defiance and a stray myth.
The clone laughed.
> "You think you're the real one."
> "But I remember our death."
---
[Combat Encounter Incoming: Myth-Fragment Clone — Class: Echobreaker]
[Win Condition: Refuse all names it offers you.]
---
The ground split.
Time bled backward.
And the fight began—
not for survival,
but for identity.
"Names You Should Never Say"
---
> [Combat Commenced: Versus "Echobreaker Clone"]
[Mental Fortitude Check: Initiated]
[Note: This opponent does not harm the body. It deconstructs the self.]
---
The first attack wasn't a strike.
It was a memory.
Eden flinched as something inserted itself into his past—a false scene, stitched to feel real. He was ten, in a version of Earth that never existed, holding a dying man's hand and whispering, "I promise, I'll become someone."
Except… that never happened.
He blinked, and the world around him flickered.
Seraphine's voice cut through the haze. "Don't speak to it. Don't accept its story. It writes you."
The clone's head cocked.
> "Why run from the truth?"
"You are an amalgam of regrets pretending to be 'Eden.' That name is a placeholder."
> "Choose a better one: Zerith. Maviel. Rephoros."
"Or die unfinished."
---
Each name echoed like a puzzle piece almost clicking into place. Eden clenched his fists. His System was glitching. UI prompts flickered with corrupted fonts.
But one line remained stable:
> [Objective: Refuse All Names It Offers.]
Eden laughed—dry, unsteady, real. "You're not the first voice that tried to name me."
> "No," the clone said, taking a step closer.
"I'm just the first to remember you."
---
The clone moved without moving—one moment it stood still, the next it was behind him. Not teleportation. Narrative skip. An edit in space-time.
Its hand brushed Eden's shoulder.
> [Error Detected: Parallel Memory Overwrite]
[Reject: Y/N]
"Yes!" Eden shouted, and the feedback tore across his senses.
Seraphine lunged, slashing between them. Her blade passed through the clone's illusion, breaking the false reality for a breath.
"Don't think," she said. "Anchor. What's real?"
Eden closed his eyes.
The taste of burnt coffee.
The hum of an old ceiling fan in his childhood home.
The ache of watching someone he couldn't save.
He opened his eyes. The clone's face flickered.
"You're not me," he whispered.
"You're a what-if. I'm a becoming."
---
> [Successful Rejection of Name Cycle 1]
[Clone AI destabilizing…]
> [Echobreaker: "So you've grown teeth…"]
> [Phase Two Approaching.]
---
Seraphine turned to him, eyes wary. "That wasn't its final form."
"I know," Eden said, steadying his breath. "It's still holding the last name."
She raised an eyebrow. "The name you almost said when you were a kid?"
He nodded. "The one that ends me before I begin."
---
> [Environmental Shift Detected: Ruin Memory Layer — Level Two Unlocked]
[Entering: The Archive of Forsaken Names]
---
The scenery melted. The ruins unfolded like petals, revealing a void library filled with floating books bound in breathing skin. Each tome whispered.
Some cried.
Some begged to be forgotten.
At the far end stood a pedestal with an empty slot. A book was missing.
And Eden knew—it was his.
---
The clone waited at the center, holding the book in its glass-dust fingers.
> "You want to be real?"
"Then finish your story."
> "But if you open this… you don't get to change it again."
---
Eden stepped forward, voice low. "Good."
> [Decision Point Approaching.]
[Warning: Some truths may remain even when rejected.]
"What the Book Forgot to Say"
The book in the clone's hands pulsed, as if it had a heartbeat of its own. Bound in matte gray leather etched with shifting runes, it bled shadow between the seams.
> [Object Identified: "Codex of Echoed Selves"]
[Do not read it. Do not accept its contents. Do not believe it.]
Seraphine moved to Eden's side, her blade still humming from the last clash. "This place shouldn't exist. Not like this."
"It doesn't," Eden said. "It's a lie wrapped in someone's memory of truth. A trap."
He took a breath. The air was thick with whispers.
> "Do you remember the day you chose your first name?"
"No one ever forgets their first lie."
---
The clone tilted its head, smiling. "You look disappointed."
Eden kept his gaze on the book. "I thought this would feel bigger."
"It is," the clone said. "You're just smaller than you think."
---
> [Memory Sequence Resurfacing: 001 – Eden Variant "Irvin" Timeline]
Suddenly, Eden wasn't himself.
He stood in a classroom. Chalk dust in the air. A world without magic. A teacher called roll. "Irvin?" she asked.
A boy raised his hand.
Eden raised his hand.
He gasped and stumbled back, the memory dissolving. His clone's grin widened.
"That was you, once," the clone said. "A version that never made it past 17. A life overwritten the moment you accepted the System."
"You're bluffing."
> [Confirming Timeline Fragment: Valid]
The clone tossed the book. It landed at Eden's feet.
"Go ahead," it said. "Pick your favorite name. I have a thousand. But none of them are 'Eden.' You're a placeholder at best."
---
Eden knelt by the book, but didn't touch it.
"I used to want a name that sounded powerful. Like I mattered."
Seraphine watched him carefully, lowering her sword. She knew that voice—calm, level, full of something heavier than anger.
"But now," Eden said, "I want a name that can carry the weight of all the ones I've buried."
---
He stood.
And turned his back to the book.
---
> [Codex Reaction: Error — Refusal Protocol Not Recognized]
[Initiating Forced Name Cycle: "Maviel//Broken-Origin-Id"]
The clone lunged, hands wreathed in mirrorlight.
Eden met it halfway.
---
Their clash wasn't physical—it was conceptual.
The moment their fists connected, Eden fell through a dozen versions of himself:
A warlord screaming on a burning battlefield.
A child pulling a dying dog from the street.
A priest offering last rites in a city without gods.
Each identity tried to claim him.
Each failed.
---
And then—
Silence.
A memory not his own surged to the front:
> A conversation. Between Seraphine and a man in a white suit.
"He'll never make it if he doesn't decide who he is."
"Let him walk his paradox. Sometimes, it's the broken path that leads home."
---
Eden snapped back.
He roared—and this time, the echo was his own.
The clone staggered.
> [Codex Disruption Detected.]
[Eden – Placeholder Title Reinforced.]
[New Tagline Acquired: "One Who Chooses the Incomplete Self."]
The Codex burst into flame.
The clone screamed—not in pain, but in frustration.
"You had power in those lives," it hissed. "And you chose this?"
"I chose freedom," Eden said. "Even if it means walking with no name at all."
---
The ruins quaked.
Books collapsed into ash. Voices silenced mid-sentence.
Seraphine grabbed Eden's hand and pulled him through the collapsing illusion.
As they escaped, a final whisper followed them:
> "There are names you haven't earned yet…"
---
> [Ruin Memory Layer Cleared: 2/10]
[Emotional Resistance Trait: ++Gained]
[Phase Two Narrative Anchoring Unlocked]
---
Outside the ruin, the void skies of Mythspace welcomed them again.
Eden didn't speak.
But Seraphine did.
"You really burned it?"
"Not all of it," Eden replied, glancing at his arm—where a single letter had branded itself into his skin.
Just one.
But it pulsed like a countdown.
"The Letter That Waits"
---
> [Time Remaining Until Mythspace Collapse: 42:17:56]
[New Trait Acquired: Lingering Identity Burn (Locked)]
[Clone Echo Detection: Inactive — For now]
---
Eden stared at the letter branded into his forearm.
A single "M."
Not glowing. Not fading. Just waiting.
"What do you think it means?" Seraphine asked, pulling her coat tighter around her as the world's heatless wind stirred.
Eden didn't answer. Not immediately. The letter pulsed like a second heartbeat, silent but sure.
"Maybe it's not a name," he said finally. "Maybe it's a warning."
---
They walked along the shattered cliffside of Mythspace, where the sky bled constellations into endless void. The terrain was alive—crystalline flora whispered lullabies in a dead language. The path ahead was littered with symbols etched in bone, remnants of civilizations that had remembered too much.
> [New Zone Approaching: The Drift of Forsaken Theories]
[Recommended Status: Level 4+— Emotional Fortitude Required]
---
Seraphine glanced at Eden, noticing how quiet he'd gone since the Codex incident.
"You okay?"
He looked at her—and for a moment, she saw the weariness under the bravado. The kind of tired that didn't come from battle, but from remembering too many versions of yourself.
"I'm not sure," he admitted. "That ruin… it didn't try to kill me. It tried to define me."
She stepped closer.
"Want some advice?" she said.
Eden raised an eyebrow.
"Tell the next one to shove it."
---
Somewhere else, far from them…
> [Location: UNKNOWN FRACTAL BASTION — CLONE DATA CORE 001]
Clone-003 stirred from a pod of black fluid.
Status: Awake.
Directive: Observe "Eden" until deviation occurs.
New Emotion Log Entry: Jealousy.
The clone touched his chest. There was no heartbeat.
But he still dreamed.
And in his dream, Eden bled—and smiled.
---
Back in the Drift, Eden and Seraphine came to a halt before a vast gate. Metallic vines wrapped around the entrance, pulsing with runes.
A sign carved above read:
> "Library of Hypotheses. Knowledge comes at a cost."
And underneath, smaller script:
> "Your first question will cost a memory. Choose carefully."
---
Seraphine stepped back, eyeing the entrance warily. "Are we seriously doing this?"
"I need answers," Eden replied. "I need to know what the Codex didn't say."
He reached for the gate—
And paused.
A voice echoed from behind it. Quiet. Soft.
> "Eden."
His real name.
But no one was supposed to know it.
---
The gate creaked open without him touching it.
Inside, pages fluttered from invisible winds. Floating books drifted past like phantoms. Lights blinked from unread tomes. Questions buzzed through the air like flies.
Seraphine didn't follow.
She knew the rule: Only one seeker per question.
---
Eden stepped inside.
> [Memory Slot for Entry: "First Birthday"]
[Confirmation: Erased]
Suddenly, he couldn't recall what cake tasted like.
---
The book that approached him opened itself.
Only one sentence was written on its first page.
> "Who decided you were real?"
Eden stared.
And for a moment, he didn't have an answer.
---
Back outside, Seraphine closed her eyes.
She whispered, more to herself than to the void:
"Come back out. Whole."
---
Inside, the book flipped to the next page on its own.
This time, it had two entries:
1. "You are a pattern repeated with slight deviation."
2. "But deviation is all it takes to become something new."
Eden reached out—
But a shadowy hand gripped his wrist.
A second him.
Eyes empty. Voice low.
"Let's trade places."
---
> [Library Hostile Shift Detected.]
[Memory Stability Weakening.]
---
And that was when Eden realized:
This wasn't about knowledge.
It was about replacement.
"The Trade of Names"
---
> [Library Anomaly Detected: ENTITY—"Eden (Aberrant)"]
[System Alert: Synchronization Instability at 14.3% and rising.]
[Accessing Cognitive Armor: INCOMPLETE.]
---
The shadow-Eden stood perfectly still, except for the way his fingers twitched with every breath Eden took.
"I've waited," the shadow said, voice impossibly calm. "Longer than you've been alive. You took my place."
"No—" Eden shook his head, fighting the tremble in his chest. "You're a system glitch. A byproduct."
The copy tilted its head. "Am I?" A cold smile followed. "Or am I the one who never forgot who we were supposed to be?"
Eden didn't reply. He was too busy calculating.
The shadow had no system panel. No glow. But it stood tall, without instability. It belonged here. Like it had roots in the library itself.
> [Warning: Existential Identity Clash — Memory Thread Fracturing]
[Choose One: Assert Control | Offer Exchange | Attempt Dialogue]
---
Eden chose none of them.
Instead, he asked: "What do you want?"
The copy looked genuinely pleased. "To remember. Not fragments. Not corrupted reboots. The whole sequence. The version of us that didn't bend."
"Then why come for me?"
The smile faded.
"Because they gave you the name, Eden. And left me with the number."
---
The room began to shudder.
Books fluttered away. Pages screamed. The library didn't like conflict without consequence.
A pillar of glyphs rose between them. A trial, perhaps. Or a mirror.
The system chirped:
> [Initiating Memory Duel: Identity Sync at Risk]
[Both Entities Will Offer One Memory Each]
[The Stronger Memory Will Consume the Weaker One]
---
Eden reached deep—not for a weapon, but for something real.
A single moment.
Warmth. Laughter. Wind chimes on a rainy balcony.
Seraphine, pre-system, pre-everything, calling his name with a smile he didn't know he'd missed until it surfaced now.
The copy flinched.
It responded with its own memory: the black tank it was born in, the cold whisper of system code rewriting instinct, the silence of being created to fail.
---
The pillar judged silently.
And then—
> [Memory Duel Concluded: Original Holds Anchor. Aberrant Fades—Temporarily.]
The shadow hissed like static.
"I'll be back," it promised. "Not to kill you. To overwrite you."
And it shattered into thousands of whispering letters.
---
Eden stumbled back.
Pages returned to normal. The book in front of him now read:
> "You have claimed ownership of the name. For now."
"But remember, the system always remembers alternatives."
He closed the book, chest heaving.
> [Unlocked Trait: Name-Bearer (Rank D+)]
→ Your name stabilizes your existence. +10% resistance to memory-based attacks.
→ Others may attempt to inherit your name.
---
Outside the library, Seraphine looked up as the doors creaked open.
Eden stepped through, slower than usual.
She noticed something was missing from his expression: the usual edge. The quiet confidence. Something had shifted—fractured or grown, she wasn't sure.
"What did it take?" she asked gently.
He stared at her, then down at his hand.
"I don't remember the sound of my mother's voice."
Seraphine flinched.
But he smiled softly. "But I remember yours."
---
Behind them, the library doors sealed.
And one last page fluttered loose, caught by the wind.
It read:
> "A name, once broken, can be stolen. A self, once cracked, can be rewritten."
Far above, beyond the drift of stars, a second clone opened his eyes.
And smiled.
"The Guild That Hunts Possibility"
> [Global Echo Detected — Identity Anomaly Pinged Across Upper Planes]
[Three Entities Responded: Crownless Guild, Archive Herders, and Nameless Depths]
---
Somewhere far above Earth's fractured orbit, in the floating bastion city of Yvhael, a masked man opened a data scroll etched with living runes.
The scroll blinked. Not once. Twice.
"An unsanctioned Name Claim," he muttered. "Inside the Grand Library?"
His subordinate, a silver-haired woman with ink bleeding from her fingertips, looked up. "Unheard of since the Collapse."
The man set the scroll down. "Then we must hear of it. Prep the intercept team. Crownless doesn't sit idle."
---
Meanwhile, in a hollowed-out moon orbiting Mythspace, an eyeless librarian stirred.
The Archive Herders had felt the anomaly too.
"Query ping… 'Eden'? That name doesn't belong in this cycle," rasped the being, its body woven of neural cords.
With a touch of a psychic stylus, it summoned a projected thread of possibilities.
The thread writhed—chaotic, unformed, dangerously elastic.
A temporal echo whispered: "He has not yet chosen. Which makes him dangerous."
---
And deep below the cursed ocean of Aeth'rath, within the abyssal walls of the Nameless Depths, something stirred with hunger.
A black mask drifted in murky blue — a clone prototype long discarded, but never truly dead.
> "He took the name."
"We take the price."
Thousands of fish-like clones chanted in perfect unity, "Rewrite the bearer. Replace the soul. Reset the record."
---
Back on the surface, Eden sat beside a glowing campfire in the remains of an overgrown tower.
Seraphine dozed quietly nearby, her breathing steady, but her fingers still wrapped around her soulbound weapon.
He didn't sleep.
Couldn't.
> [System Update: New Factional Interest Detected — Threat Level Scaling Up]
[Incoming Mission Thread Unlocked: Hunter and the Hunted]
---
"Three factions," he whispered. "And none of them know me."
But they would.
Whether as threat, anomaly, savior—or error.
---
> [Faction Profile Unlocked — Crownless Guild]
Motto: "No soul shall ascend without being seen."
Power Structure: Espionage, assassination, paradox resetters
Goal: Prevent unregistered evolutions, protect timeline stability
Special Title: "Judges of Echoes"
---
> [Faction Profile Unlocked — Archive Herders]
Motto: "Memory is law. Forgetting is rebellion."
Power Structure: Timeline librarians, reality scribes, system regulators
Goal: Record and control ascension trees
Special Title: "Scribes of the Eternal Draft"
---
> [Faction Profile Unlocked — Nameless Depths]
Motto: "If no name exists, no death can claim us."
Power Structure: Clone experimentation labs, identity leechers
Goal: Steal, copy, or erase unique souls
Special Title: "Void-Reflections"
---
Eden closed the logs.
Three new enemies. Or three mirrors, depending on how one saw it.
They were watching now.
That meant…
"I can't grow quietly anymore," Eden whispered, standing. "I either choose the path—or they'll choose it for me."
---
And from the shadows behind the tower, a fourth presence watched silently.
Not a guild.
Not a faction.
Just a girl with ghost-pale eyes and a broken emblem stitched to her cloak. The mark of someone who had failed system awakening. Someone who shouldn't exist.
Her lips moved.
"He woke the echo," she said. "So the ruin will whisper again."
Then she vanished.
---
> [Mission Branching Activated]
Choose:
→ Go underground and upgrade in secret via rogue systems.
→ Trigger a minor clash with a Faction Hunter to test your stability.
→ Return to Seraphine's homeland for reinforcement and legend-digging.
→ Seek the forgotten tower where clone anomaly archives began.
"The Guild That Hunts Possibility"
> [Global System Notice: Anomaly Stabilized — Temporarily]
[Mythspace Library Layer: Access Flagged]
[High-Level Observation Protocols Activated]
---
Elsewhere in the mythspace sector, far from Eden's trembling breath and Seraphine's worried glance, The Guild That Hunts Possibility awoke.
Or rather — it remembered.
In a citadel carved from conceptual ice and paradoxical heat, thirteen chairs aligned in a perfect circle flickered with life. Only nine were filled. None spoke first. They never did. Speech was for the impatient.
Instead, the glyphs above their heads pulsed.
> [ERROR-CODE: HORIZON BREACH]
Subject: "Eden"
Class: Vagrant Tier Undefined
Risk: Variable – Trending Upward
Result: Potential Cascade Event
A feminine voice, lacquered with boredom and cruelty, finally broke the quiet. "The name stabilized."
A man with a rusted helm nodded. "He chose memory over power. That's rare."
The youngest among them, eyes still human and wet with guilt, whispered, "Does that make him… one of us?"
"No," said the voice from the center. "Not yet. But soon."
---
> [Lore Drop: The Guild That Hunts Possibility (Rank: SSS)]
Formed during the Third Collapse. Mandate: Eliminate any who skew probability beyond predicted bounds.
Internal Hierarchy: Chairbound, Scribes, Nullseekers.
Core Weapon: The Clockwork Tomb – a mechanism that deletes failed timelines from all cognition.
---
Back in Eden's camp, the others hadn't noticed the ripple yet. Most were preoccupied with navigating their own ruins, system anomalies, and the emotional scabs the tutorial still hadn't stopped picking.
But Seraphine noticed.
"Someone is watching," she said.
Eden didn't look surprised. He only asked, "One of them?"
"No." She shook her head. "Not clones. Observers. The ones who get nervous when someone breaks symmetry."
He touched his chest where the system message had branded him with the Name-Bearer trait.
"They've noticed."
She nodded. "They always do."
---
At that moment, elsewhere in the sector, a lesser adventurer stumbled on a temple built sideways into an impossible fold of time. He touched an altar he shouldn't have.
And just before he was erased from this timeline completely, he heard a voice say:
> "Possibility is a resource. You spent too much."
---
Back in camp, Eden paced slowly, dragging a chalked circle in the dirt — a habit from a previous life he didn't remember but trusted instinctively.
"Then we prepare," he said.
"For what?"
Eden met her eyes.
"For the day the Clockwork Tomb opens."
---
Mini Reflection — Eden's Log Fragment [Locked/Recovered]:
"I once thought power was simple: train, fight, level up. But when names bend reality, and memory can be stolen or traded, the truth gets heavier. I don't fear death. I fear being overwritten by a version of myself who stopped believing I was worth becoming."
"Echoes of the Clockwork Tomb"
---
> [System Advisory: Probability Divergence Detected]
[Anchor Point: Eden (Designation: Memory-Bound Variable)]
[Contingency Layer IV Decryption in Progress…]
---
Eden couldn't sleep.
The fire cracked softly beside him, echoing too loudly in a silence charged with invisible weight. Seraphine had fallen into an uneasy rest, but her brows still furrowed, haunted by whatever intuition she'd stirred.
The mark on Eden's chest—it pulsed when he thought of the past. Or when he remembered something the world had supposedly erased.
Earlier that evening, a single whispered phrase had surfaced in his thoughts unbidden:
> "The Tomb turns. Let none outrun its hour."
He didn't know why that frightened him more than death itself.
---
> [System Lore Insert: The Clockwork Tomb]
Type: Relic-Concept (Class: SSS+)
Allegiance: Unknown / Multiversal
Function: Annihilates causality branches deemed "unsustainable" by a governing Guild
Side Effect: Time scars, identity bleed, unpredictable system hallucinations
Nickname (among Wanderers): "The Janitor God"
---
Somewhere above the moonlight's edge, the skies of Mythspace rippled. Not storm. Not heat. But recalibration.
As if something unseen was adjusting variables. Testing outcomes. Preparing to erase.
Back in camp, Eden turned toward the dirt symbol he'd drawn — a recursive spiral of memory-thread glyphs with a single phrase at its center: "This self, this time."
He'd written it half-consciously, as if guided.
He whispered now, "Will they come for me too?"
A soft voice answered, not from Seraphine, not from anyone visible.
> "Only if you begin to matter."
---
Far from them, a Guild Nullseeker entered a ruin-city made of cracked mirrors and fossilized regrets. She carried no blade, only a black scroll with Eden's name on it.
She stopped.
The city whispered "Too early."
The Nullseeker grimaced. "Tomb says he's not a fracture yet."
A floating glyph beside her flickered.
> [RECOMMENDATION: OBSERVE — DELAY REAPING]
She left, but not before marking the ground.
When Eden eventually reached this place, the ground would greet him not with traps, but a message:
> "We know your name now. Make it worth remembering."
---
Back at camp, Eden finally sat down again. Not to rest. But to write.
In his battered system log, he scrawled notes—not power builds, not stat logs—but memories. Names of people he might have lost. Words they might have said.
And beneath them all, a question:
> "Can I remain myself in a world designed to rewrite me?"
---
Mini Reflection — Seraphine's Personal Entry (Encrypted, Hidden Thread):
"He's changing, and the world is watching. I don't know if I'm supposed to protect him… or if I'm just a passenger on the last version of him that still believes in peace."
"Echoes of the Clockwork Tomb"
---
> [System Warning: Cognitive Load Threshold Approaching]
[Name-Bearer Status Instability Detected]
[Do you wish to fragment thought? Y/N]
Eden's breath hitched. The message flared in his vision, but he didn't respond. Couldn't. Not when the sound had started.
A low, metallic chime — not of metal striking metal, but of inevitability ringing across probability.
He gritted his teeth, staring at the old ruin ahead. Moss-covered statues stood like forgotten sentinels, their features worn away by time, or maybe by the refusal of history to remember them. Above them, the sky warped subtly, like a page being turned too quickly in a divine book.
Seraphine stepped beside him, her eyes narrowed. "That's… a temporal hum. You hear it?"
"Yes," Eden murmured. "It's calling something buried."
"Or someone."
Behind them, the others were still assembling a perimeter. They didn't hear it. Only Name-Bearers and Clones, only those connected to the anomaly thread woven into Eden's fate, could hear it.
Eden stepped forward.
The air thickened. Time... resisted.
---
> [Lore Drop: The Clockwork Tomb]
Created by the first Null Architect. Not a place, but an inevitability. Appears only when a variable breaks narrative law.
Purpose: Remove the paradox by absorbing it — or replacing it.
Key Sign: Temporal hum.
---
Eden stepped through the broken archway.
Inside, the ruin was cleaner. No dust, no rot. As if time refused to acknowledge decay. In the center, a gear floated midair — a single massive cog, rotating counter to reality's clock.
Around it, ghostly images flickered: other Edens.
One with bloodstained armor and hollow eyes.
One with Seraphine's head in his lap, crying.
One burning a world from the sky.
And one — smiling — wearing the robes of a Judge of Probability.
All turned to look at him.
Only one spoke.
"You're behind schedule."
---
Eden froze. "What is this?"
The smiling clone stepped forward, tapping the floating gear. "This is what happens when possibility overreaches its mandate. When a single 'you' tries to become too many things."
He looked sad, almost kindly.
"You're the one who still thinks choice matters. That makes you dangerous."
"I don't—"
"I'm here to overwrite you."
---
Seraphine darted in, weapon drawn — a blade humming with chronal resistance — and slashed through the apparition. But it didn't vanish.
"He's a shadow," Eden whispered. "One cast by the Tomb itself."
Another version of him, shaped by decisions never made, now weaponized by the system that couldn't tolerate ambiguity.
"Why me?" Eden asked. "Why do I fracture, when others level up?"
The shadow smiled again.
"Because you didn't start here."
---
> [Mini Reflection — Seraphine's Memory: Fragmented Dream]
"He was smiling even then, before we met. In the dream, he held a city in one hand and a child in the other, unsure which to save. I woke up crying before he chose."
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A tremor ran through the ruin.
The gear spun faster.
And outside, the sky cracked like glass under pressure.
The Clockwork Tomb was activating.
"Those Who Watch From the Rift"
The crowd's cheers continued to echo through the Broadcast Halls, yet somewhere beyond the noise—beyond the static of celebration—a signal pulsed. A flicker within the system's deepest lines of code. Not part of the game. Not part of the show.
Something else was watching.
In the sealed Archives, where Eden's sealed memories were housed like time bombs wrapped in stillness, a single thread blinked to life. Not released, not broken—but touched. As if an invisible hand had brushed the edges of a sleeping god's eyelid.
And somewhere, in a void uncharted by Tutorial logic, a humanoid clone twitched.
This one wasn't part of the official count.
Not registered. Not tethered.
Its eyes snapped open.
And it whispered Eden's name.
Back in the training chamber, Eden's body stood perfectly still. He'd just completed the ten-minute evaluation gauntlet, and the system drones were deconstructing the arena into particles of gray code. But Eden… he hadn't moved since the last opponent dropped.
He was thinking.
"Seven minutes ahead of median," a voice announced. "Newcomer Ranking: Apex Initiate Tier. Awaiting designation."
But Eden didn't care about the titles. Something had shifted. A noise had cracked through the system—not loud, but true. And truth, he had learned, was always the most dangerous frequency.
He clenched his jaw.
"Just a flicker. Or a warning," he muttered.
He stepped forward, boots echoing on synthetic steel.
From the crowd's view, the screen showed only a perfectly still teenager. Genius. Calm. Collected.
But in Eden's head?
A fragment of memory whispered through. A dream that wasn't a dream. Of war. Of betrayal. Of something buried in a void—watching.
Meanwhile, inside System Relay Channel 7—unauthorized traffic was detected.
A clone file identified as E-Class Null//Omega had broken standard protocol.
And it was transmitting... directly to itself.
System Moderators were dispatched.
They would not survive.
Far from Earth's skyline, on a fragment of the Tutorial World sealed behind a "Not Yet Available" tag in all global indexes, a mechanical ruin stirred. From within it, vines made of living metal curled through frost. Something ancient. Something older than even the Tutorial's design.
The shard's name in system code: YGG-00L//VANHALLA-RIFT.
Translation: Root of Ruin.
A man made of ash stepped forward from the frost. He wore no face, only shadows.
He smiled.
"They always think it's about the quest. About levels. About power."
He looked up, where stars in the wrong shape were blinking into place.
"But it's about choice. And Eden's about to make his first one."