Planet Earth. Hidden location. Kairus's virtual domain.
Once again, Ivor slips into the reality woven from code and divine will.
But this place is more than a program.
It breathes.
It watches.
It escapes you the moment you try to name it.
The sky—an endless, liquid blue, as if the oceans themselves had risen to drown the horizon.
No clouds. No boundaries.
Just wind—rushing in his ears, tearing away the last fragile scraps of thought.
Leaving behind… emptiness.
The same emptiness that echoes inside him.
He walks forward, though he no longer remembers why.
Only that weight.
That dull, unrelenting pressure—
like a stone nailed to his chest.
The boy.
He's here again.
He's the key.
I can't forget. I don't have the right.
He's tied to Terma.
To her secret.
To her return…
When will it come? When will those preserved be reborn?
A flicker of unease flares in his chest.
The air thickens—storm-dense.
He knows: no distractions.
Not a step.
Not a breath.
And then—
a silhouette.
Far off, half-veiled in haze, standing on the slope.
Almost indistinguishable from the landscape—
but Ivor knows.
It's him.
The boy.
Their eyes meet.
Time stalls.
The world—
gone.
No Earth.
No people.
Only this stare, cutting through Ivor like a blade of ice.
Cold.
Devastatingly clear.
He knows.
He knows everything.
He is the answer.
But before Ivor can move—
the boy vanishes.
Dissolves into mist, like a dream woken from too late.
"Wait! Don't go!" Ivor shouts, his voice cracking with desperation. "You know! You know everything!"
But the silence—
thicker than death—
swallows the words whole.
They don't echo.
They drown.
He runs.
His legs sink into the ground like wet wool.
Every step muffled, the world turning viscous, as if resisting him.
I have to catch him. I must. It's my path… or my trap.
**
In the next instant, he's home.
Standing before a mirror.
His reflection—
worn.
Drained.
But in his eyes—
Something still burns.
A flicker.
The ember of a will not yet extinguished.
He stares at himself.
And the questions tear through his mind.
"What's happening to me?" he whispers. "Am I alone again? Or is this… just another layer of the illusion? Another loop? A cage?"
He can't stop the trembling.
A puppet.
In someone else's hands.
Kairus… did you imagine all this? Am I just a line of code? A simulation inside a simulation?
He lowers his head.
Closes his eyes.
Thoughts tighten, knotted and raw.
Why the boy? Why always him? Every time I think of Terma, he appears. Like a ghost. Like a beacon.
It's not coincidence. It's a signal.
He breathes in.
Remembers Vikaar.
I promised him… something. But what? Why is memory fog? Why do I remember faces, but not words?
His heart clenches.
Meaning lives in fragments.
Meaning—lurks in the void.
But what if there's nothing behind that void?
He whispers, barely audible:
"You knew…"
He's not speaking to the mirror.
But to the silence.
To Vikaar.
To the past.
"Why didn't anyone tell me? Why didn't they stop me?"
He walks to the console.
His hand hovers over the interface.
He can't bring himself to press it.
Doubt—heavy as concrete—presses down.
What if everything I'm doing means nothing?
What if all this is just part of someone else's plan?
Kairus's?
A god's?
My own?
He clenches his fist.
"Why me?" he breathes.
"What the hell is going on?"
He is alone.
Among mirrors.
Among voices no longer heard.
And yet—
he feels it.
Somewhere deep beneath it all…
Something is coming.
And with that feeling—
he waits.
For the next answer.
For the next encounter.