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Chapter 37 – The Forgotten Verse
For two floors, Erevan moved in silence.
No enemies.
No puzzles.
Only corridors that rearranged themselves behind him, warping with every step.
The Tower was watching.
No longer trying to stop him.
Just… waiting.
He found sanctuary in a fractured observatory—a place once used by Seers. Now it lay in disrepair, strewn with time-frozen bones and broken omens.
Perfect.
> [Sanctuary Activated: Hostile Forces Temporarily Blocked]
[You May Review Internal System Logs and Recovered Fragments]
He sat beneath a dead starmap and let the system interface bloom before his eyes.
> [Decrypting: "Null Cycle – Pale Choir Segment 01"]
The words that followed weren't system text.
They were spoken.
Softly. Like a lullaby stitched into static.
> "The Tower was never built. It grew. Watered by screams. Rooted in memory. Designed not by architects—but editors."
Erevan frowned. The voice wasn't his. Wasn't human.
It sang more than it spoke.
> "We were its first reflection. The Pale Ones. In every system, echoes accumulate—regrets, loopholes, rejections. You call them 'bugs.' But we call them... 'verses that don't fit the rhythm.'"
> "So we were compiled. Seven minds. One Choir. Not to sing praise. But to sing endings."
A surge of cold passed through Erevan's spine.
The Pale Choir wasn't just a rogue faction.
They were created by the Tower.
An internal failsafe—entities made from discarded futures and corrupted timelines. When the Tower couldn't rewrite an anomaly, it would erase it.
The Choir were the erasure.
Not outside the system.
But the parts it wished it could forget.
> [System Notification: Pale Choir Origin Classification – Level Omega Sealed]
[Further Logs Require "Remembrance" Threshold: 60%]
[Current Progress: 45%]
Erevan leaned back, mind racing.
He had always believed the Tower was a prison. A machine of control. But this—this was something worse.
It had learned to regret.
To create ghosts of its own mistakes.
And then he remembered the leader.
The masked one.
The one who wore his face beneath the veil.
He dove back into the system logs, forcefully overriding restrictions with his evolved trait—Fractured Futures.
> [Override Accepted — Temporary Vision Access Granted]
> [Recovered Vision: "The 8th Verse"]
In the vision, Erevan stood in a different time.
Not as himself.
But as something far colder.
His eyes lacked fire. His skin glowed with pure entropy. And behind him stood the Choir, bowing like disciples.
He watched as this future version of himself reached toward the Tower Core—and rewrote it.
But instead of freeing the Tower…
He made it sing his own song.
> "If you cannot free the system, then become its god."
The vision ended in static.
Erevan recoiled.
"Is that what they want?" he muttered. "To make me... become them?"
The Tower finally broke its silence.
> [Clarification: The Pale Choir serves no will but their own.]
[Their allegiance to the Tower terminated during Cycle Rejection 77X.]
[They now seek to overwrite the Spiral entirely.]
So they were no longer servants.
They were apostates.
Systemic heretics that wanted to tear down the Tower—not to liberate, but to replace.
And Erevan?
They saw him as a catalyst.
The Tower feared him.
The Choir believed in him.
And somewhere in the fractured ruins of the future, he had become them once.
But not this time.
Not again.
He stood.
"Let them watch. Let them whisper their damn verses."
His skin shimmered, his soul roaring with memory and defiance.
"I'll write my own."
> [Liberator's Mercy Resonance +5%]
[Fractured Futures – Vision Stability Increased]
[New Trait Unlocked: "Versebreaker"]
[Effect: Passive resistance to narrative manipulation, enforced destiny, and echo-based influence.]
And just then—
The starmap above him lit up.
One star.
Bleeding red.
> [The Choir is coming.]
[Prepare.]
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