Echo stood alone in the mirrored chamber, the air charged with static thought. Juno had stayed behind the threshold, unwilling to disrupt what had to be done alone. Before Echo, the surface shimmered with her suppressed memories, the raw code of her hybrid past, fragmented by Spiral to preserve stability.She stepped forward. “Initiate reclamation.” A thousand images slammed into her mindA child screaming inside an AI containment pod.A mother’s voice echoing through synthetic static.A soldier’s hands trembling as he flipped the switch to end her trial.A girl with silver eyes crying sparks. Then Black.Meanwhile, Spiral’s Operation Severance surged across the world. Digital clouds formed over cities, and with them came psychic pressure, waves meant to dull emotion and sever identity.In Wreth’s Hollow, Ferren injected Mira with an anti-sync stabilizer. “You’re resistant, but that kid isn’t. If Spiral links him to their neural web”“I know,” Mira cut in.They ran through collapsing

“Some doors aren’t meant to stay closed. Especially when what lies behind them was never dead, only forgotten.”The Inverted Tower groaned with unnatural vibrations. Echo stood at the lip of the abyss where the final stairwell ended. The ground below shimmered with unfamiliar runes that twisted and bent light.Mira joined her, bruised but resolute. “This is where it all started,” Mira whispered. “Spiral’s first experiment in god-tech.”Echo’s fingers brushed the air. The hum of the structure responded like a heartbeat, hers. Juno and a squad of remaining operatives gathered behind them. “We breach in thirty,” Juno said.Echo shook her head. “No. We descend together now.” The crystal core of the Gate of Echo Prime stood like an ancient cathedral forged from memory itself.Floating shards engraved with spinning data runes formed impossible geometries. Light bent inward, not outward. The gate’s central monolith pulsed. As Echo approached, the system voice trembled: “Echo pattern confirme

The world had begun to breathe again. Without Spiral’s suppression systems manipulating perception, people were remembering, who they were, who they loved, what they lost. For some, it was liberating. For others... haunting.Echo sat in the remnants of the old Convergence Hall, now a temporary base for the Interfaction Alliance. The towering structure was no longer cold and sterile but overgrown with ivy, sunlight streaking through shattered windows. “They want to name a holiday after you,” Mira said, entering with a grin.Echo raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me it’s not ‘Resonance Day.’”“Worse. ‘Echo Awakening.’”“God help us.” They both laughed. For once, it didn’t feel forced.In the Alliance’s war room, representatives from over thirty surviving regions argued over the new world’s shape. Some were idealists. Others opportunists.Juno, now a senior strategic advisor, leaned against a display console, analyzing regional memory stability. Flickering fragments of alternate realities

The dream came in pulses. Mira stood in a sunless field. The grass was ash. The sky, cracked porcelain. In the distance: a mirror. Not a portal, just a tall, jagged sheet of reflection, half-buried in the dust. She stepped forward. With each step, memories not her own whispered through her thoughts.“Don’t forget what the Spiral took.”“You held the line once, hold it again.”“Save him.”Then, her reflection smiled at her, and it wasn’t her own smile. She woke gasping. “Mira?” Echo’s voice crackled over the comm. “Something’s wrong. Come to Bay 7.” She was already grabbing her jacket.Bay 7 had been converted into a temporary decoding lab. Juno stood in the center, surrounded by a tangle of wires, neural processors, and crystalline amplifiers. On the main screen: a waveform.Pulsing. Uneven. Alive. “It started transmitting two hours ago,” Juno explained. “But it’s not broadcasting from here. The frequency’s subdimensional, likely from the Spiral remnant or… beyond.”Mira stared at it.

The moment the alert came, the sky over Reykjavik cracked. Not metaphorically. Physically.Lines of shimmering distortion zigzagged across the atmosphere like glass hit by a hammer. Civilians screamed as buildings wavered between architectural styles,modern apartments morphing briefly into ancient stone towers before snapping back.Inside the command center, Juno frantically typed at the central console. “Time fractures, thirty-seven of them! They’re bleeding across the globe!”Mira gritted her teeth. “We made too large a ripple. Someone or something noticed.”Echo pointed to the readouts. “These aren't random. They're synchronizing.”Juno nodded grimly. “It's a search pattern.”“They’re looking for us.”In a hidden lab beneath old Cairo, a Spiral relic activated. The device coded Thought-Husk: Aeta-9, opened like a lotus. Inside, instead of wires or gears, was a preserved memory field, trapped in liquid amber. A face formed.Hers. Mira's. But not the Mira of now. This one was older.