Valemont – Substructure Level -3Access Point: Vault 9
The door didn't open.
It sighed.
Like it had waited too long. Like it had once been alive, and the act of unlocking it was waking something from far too deep.
Renji stood before it with the bone key in his hand, the symbol on his palm glowing faintly under the flickering fluorescent lights.
There were no guards.
No warnings.
No signs.
Just one phrase etched into the iron:
"This vault does not remember who you are. Only what you fear."
He inserted the key.
The door slid open with a sound like chains breaking in reverse.
And the cold hit him instantly.
But not physical cold.Something deeper. Older. Like standing in the presence of things that shouldn't exist anymore.
Inside: silence.
Vault 9 was not a room.It was a labyrinth of memory.
Shelves reached upward without end, but the ceiling was just a vague blur. The walls curved inward. The floor didn't echo.
And the air?
The air felt like it had weight. Like thoughts stuck to it. Like breathing it meant letting it remember you.
Each shelf was labeled with a number.No names.Only dates that didn't make sense.
One read:
10/10/2000 – Primary Rift Echo
Another:
2023 – Protocol Reversal Candidate: "Black-Eyed Witness"
Renji didn't blink.
Because there, between two inactive glyphs and a locked case with no visible mechanism, sat a folder.
His name was on it.
RENEJI KUROGANE – PRE-OMEGA RECORD (Redacted)
He didn't touch it. Not yet.
Instead, he walked deeper.
Until he found it.
The Mirror.
It wasn't glass. Not really.It was liquid. Frozen. Pulsing.
It didn't reflect his body.
Only his thoughts.
And they were screaming.
He stepped closer.
Something inside the mirror moved. A silhouette. Human-shaped, but blurred.
It pressed a hand to the other side.
And whispered, in a perfect replica of Renji's voice:
"We were not supposed to come back here."
Thirty minutes later – Archive Tower, Observation Deck
Hana waited.
She'd been told not to interfere. That Vault 9 was "safe enough" for one who'd already fractured.
But when she saw the look on Renji's face as he returned—empty, distant, like he'd been erased a little—she stood up.
"What did you find?"
Renji didn't speak.
He handed her the file.
She opened it.
Nothing but blacked-out lines.
Except for one phrase:
"Subject may be a carrier. Keep in sensory isolation if symbols begin to duplicate."
Hana read it twice.
Then three times.
"Renji," she said quietly, "what do they mean by carrier?"
He looked past her.
At the wall.
At the light.
At something only he could now see.
"I think they mean ideas," he said. "I think I'm carrying ideas that don't belong to me anymore."
That night, Renji locked his door and taped his notebook shut.
He took out the letter from Elias.
And flipped it over.
There was new writing.
In Elias's handwriting.
"Vault 9 wasn't made to store things. It was made to forget them."
"If it remembers you… run."