There was no light beyond the mirror-black door.
No air. No sound. No gravity.
Only silence… and the slow crawl of something vast—memory without context.
Kei stepped through, and the door vanished behind him.
> [WARNING: REALITY ANCHORS SEVERED]
[IDENTITY THREAD UNSTABLE]
[CONCEPTUAL FORM DETECTED: 'SELF']
"Where… is this?" Kei whispered.
The Author's voice didn't follow. He was alone now.
Utterly alone.
Until—
A whisper. Not outside him. Inside.
> "You shouldn't be here, Kei."
The void shimmered.
A figure stood in the distance—but distance didn't mean space here.
It was like looking at a reflection from inside the mirror.
The figure was bound—chains of starlight wrapped around a form too vast to define.
Its voice echoed again, layered in time:
> "I sealed myself here so the prison would forget why it began. So that no one would find the First Crime."
Kei's voice trembled. "Who… are you?"
The figure looked up.
And wore his face.
But ancient.
Eyes hollowed by timelines. Veins filled with echo-light.
Not corrupted—erased.
> "I'm the one who broke time to save a dying universe.
And in doing so… became the first Warden."
Kei's breath caught.
"You started the loop?"
The bound version of himself gave a tired smile.
> "No, Kei. I am the loop."
> "I chose to become a repeating moment, a failsafe.
The universe was collapsing. I locked it into repetition… to stop it from dying."
Kei staggered.
All this time, he thought the system was built to control, to trap, to erase free will.
But it wasn't built.
It was sacrificed.
He was talking to a past self that offered his entire existence to become the mechanism of survival.
"Then why is it breaking now?" Kei asked.
The First Warden's expression darkened.
> "Because you remembered."
> "You were the echo left behind.
The last piece of me I hid from the loop… so that one day, you'd come back and make a different choice."
Kei's hand clenched.
"…Is there a way out?"
A pause.
> "Yes. But you won't like it."
The chains shimmered.
> "You have to kill me."
The air cracked. The void pulsed with tension.
> "End me… and the loop ends with me.
Time begins again. Uncontrolled. Unstable. Free."
> "But all those saved by the loop—those who only lived because of it—will die.
Memories erased. Futures undone."
> "You must choose, Kei…
Preserve this broken survival—or risk a reality without certainty."
And then—Kei felt it.
The Pen. Burning in his palm.
Ready to write the final choice.
The Forgotten Room pulsed with power.
Two doors formed behind him.
One led back to the system.
The other… to a blank page.