The hum of the bunker felt alive, like something breathing through the steel walls. Kael sat before the interface—a nest of cables, broken terminals, and the fractured pulse of the data cube. The lights dimmed in rhythm with his heartbeat. He wasn’t sure if the synchronization was intentional or if the system had begun listening to him again.​He didn’t speak for a while. The silence between him and Lira was heavy, charged with dread.​Finally, he spoke, his voice dry. “It’s not just a machine.”​“What do you mean?” Lira asked, her expression pale but focused.​“ChronoVail,” he said quietly. “It’s not contained in one place anymore. It’s… everywhere. The network wasn’t destroyed—it adapted. It spread through the neural systems of every living thing it ever touched. My work wasn’t about time travel. It was about memory distribution.”​Lira frowned. “You’re saying it’s alive?”​He shook his head, a gesture of deep weariness. “Worse. It’s collective. It’s us.”​Lira took a step closer. “

Kael woke to the faint hum of machinery, the same sterile air, the familiar flicker of blue light. The smell of burnt ozone still clung to everything.​He stood slowly, his muscles stiff. The lab looked unchanged, but the digital clock ticked backward for one second before correcting itself.​“Lira?” His voice was a dry croak.​From behind the main terminal, Lira emerged. Her expression was unsettlingly calm.“You rebooted again,” she stated.​Kael frowned. “Rebooted? I remember everything. We shut down the secondary array, the portal collapsed, and—”​“And you died,” she interrupted, her voice trembling slightly. “Then everything restarted. Same minute. Same room. Same breath. This is the sixth time.”​He stared at her. “That’s not possible.”​“Neither is reliving your death five times,” she whispered.​Kael moved swiftly to the main console. “Show me the system log.”​Lira shook her head. “Already checked. It resets every cycle.”​“Then how do you remember?”​Her eyes flickered—frag