Silence didn’t return. It expanded a pressure, a hum, the vibration of a universe trying to decide whether it still existed. Fowler felt himself suspended in it, weightless, disassembled yet aware. Not alive. Not dead. Just… present.A soft glow pulsed in the distance. No chamber. No walls. Just a single point of light. Then a voice: Fowler. He turned though he had no body to see her. Not older Selene. Not younger Selene. Not any version he knew.This Selene was made of the Engine’s raw code, threads of light woven into a shape his mind recognized but had never seen.She stood barefoot on nothing, glowing softly, expression unreadable. “Are you…” he rasped, unsure he had a mouth, “…real?”Her smile was gentle. I’m the Core’s memory of her. Of all her. The revelation rippled through him. Not a version. Not an echo. Not a reconstruction.The source from which the Engine derived every Selene. A truth he should’ve feared. Instead, he felt only a strange calm. “You’re the heart of it,” he

He hit the world like a falling star. No sky.No wind. Just impact a hard, shuddering collision of soul and body as he slammed back into himself.Sand cushioned his collapse, warm and glowing faintly beneath him. The air tasted of salt and something sweet something metallic, something like memory still evaporating. Fowler groaned and rolled onto his back.Above him, the sky breathed. Not violently. Not glitching. Just alive, a slow inhale of gold, a soft exhale of silver, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his own heartbeat. His heartbeat.He pressed a hand to his chest, stunned by the rise and fall of breath. Heavy, human, imperfect. He was here. He had chosen this. And the world had chosen him back.A soft sound to his right made him turn. Selene lay curled on her side, hair fanned across the sand, one hand half-buried as though she had been reaching for him during whatever force deposited them here.Her shoulders rose and fell gently, each breath steady and real. He crawled toward h

Fowler didn’t breathe. Couldn’t. The new figure stepped through the wavering air like it belonged there, like the world bent itself to make room for it.The glass mask reflected the sky’s dying light, turning it into streaks of fractured gold. Selene’s fingers dug into Fowler’s arm. “Fowler,” she whispered, “that’s your voice.”He couldn’t answer. His throat locked as the figure stopped only a few steps away. It felt like staring into a future he didn’t choose or a past he didn’t remember.The mask shifted slightly, almost like a nod. “It’s all right,” the voice said his voice, but steadier, older, weighted. “I’m not here to hurt you.”Selene stepped between them immediately. “Fowler, stay behind me.”The Sentinel, the unfinished one, tilted its head toward the masked version. “Authority override detected.”The masked Fowler responded without looking at it. “Acknowledged.”The Sentinel went still then lowered to one knee, bowing its flickering head. Fowler felt the world tilt beneath

Fowler didn’t disappear. He expanded. The thing between worlds swallowed him and screamed. Not in triumph. In shock.The light around Fowler fractured into layers, each one a version of him that had almost been. The soldier who stayed. The man who left.The one who never met Selene. The one who never stopped loving her. They unfolded at once, not merging aligning.The thing convulsed. Impossible, it hissed. You are residual. You are debris. Fowler stood inside it now, suspended in a storm of broken timelines. Its core if it had one thrashed like a wounded animal.“No,” Fowler said calmly. “I’m the decision you couldn’t erase.”Outside, the sky stalled mid-collapse. Selene dropped to her knees, breath locked in her chest. She could still feel him faint, stretched thin, but there. Not gone.The masked Fowler stared, unmoving. “He’s integrating,” he said slowly. “Not dissolving.”The thing recoiled again as Fowler reached out not with force, but with recognition. Every discarded echo sna

The answer did not come as words. It came as weight. The horizon folded inward, the seam in the sky widening just enough to let pressure bleed through. Not force expectation.The kind that settled into bones and dared them to break. Fowler staggered, one knee hitting the sand. The glow under his skin surged, veins lighting like fault lines. Selene dropped beside him instantly. “Hey look at me. Stay here.”He tried to smile. Failed. “It’s… negotiating.”“That’s not better.”The presence unfurled further, no longer pretending to be distant. Consent acknowledged. Interface expanding. Identity boundaries unstable.Selene pressed her forehead to his, grounding, human. “You don’t get to disappear on me,” she whispered. “Not after everything.”“I’m not disappearing,” he said, though the words trembled. “I’m… paying.”The sky cracked wider. From the opening spilled images cities layered over themselves, timelines braided and snapping, versions of Fowler that had never met her, versions that h