[POV: Lira]
Lira's pulse hammered in her ears. The air around her shimmered with broken light—fractured systems spinning out of control. The girl—her sister—was gone, swallowed by the same darkness that had consumed everything else.
She stood alone now. The world around her flickering between realities, each one a glitch, a misstep.
Her hand still throbbed with the sigil—burned in place like a forgotten memory. It felt like a brand.
Her heart ached.
Why now? Why after everything?
Clyde wasn't supposed to be here. This wasn't his fight. Not anymore.
But the corrupted version of him had stepped through the portal, eyes locked onto hers, a twisted smile on his face.
"I'm here to remind you," he said, his voice colder than the code he bled through, "of who you really are."
Lira's stomach dropped.
"Shut up." She raised her gun—steady hands, but her heart was anything but.
"Don't you remember?" he continued, stepping closer. "You were part of the rewrite. You were supposed to be erased."
She didn't speak.
His grin widened.
"I'm what's left of the girl they tried to turn you into. I'm the original."
Lira's fingers tightened around the gun.
"I remember now, Lira. You always did. Always."
The walls trembled.
[POV: Clyde]
Clyde's heart raced. The corrupted version of himself grinned wider, growing in strength with every passing second.
"I can't let you do this," he said, the words heavy. "You don't get to erase me. I get to erase you."
Clyde felt the weight of his own memories crash into him—broken timelines and twisted reflections of everything he had once believed in. But the world around him wasn't just breaking—it was rewriting.
No. Not again. He wasn't going to lose himself again.
"You think you can stop me?" the corrupted version of him mocked, his voice slick with malice.
Clyde stared him down.
"I don't have to stop you." He took a step forward, holding his ground. "I just have to outlast you."
The corrupted Clyde lunged—but Clyde was already moving. His mind raced faster than his body, pulling on every part of his hacking skills, every corner of his fractured memories.
He tore through the code—rewriting it from within. He didn't just resist the reset. He bent it to his will.
But the more he did, the more it felt like he was the one being rewritten.
[POV: Echo]
Echo watched it all unfold from the corner of the fractured reality. His mind swirled in confusion, trying to piece together where he fit in this mess.
He wasn't supposed to be here either, not really. Not after the last memory wipe. But there he was—trapped between choices, between lives.
His fingers hovered over the control panel, his pulse quickening as the systems crackled.
This wasn't the mission.
It wasn't about finding the source code anymore.
It was about keeping them all alive.
He turned, hearing a faint hum in the air.
The walls of this place—the space between—shifted like breathing stone. Each change made him feel more disoriented. He tried to focus, but the glitches were worse than before.
"Lira… Clyde…" he whispered, his heart heavy with the knowledge that neither of them had the answers they needed.
But there was one thing he knew for sure:
He had to stop the rewrite.
He didn't know how—only that if he couldn't, they were all going to be erased.
A final line in a system that didn't care.
[POV: Arden]
Arden paced the edge of the platform. There were no edges here, no boundaries. Just empty space and fractured memories floating like stars—twisting, fading.
He clenched his fists, the pain from his earlier wounds subsiding but not forgotten.
He'd felt the Observer's power—that strange, cold, dispassionate force—but the thing that haunted him wasn't that.
It was the nagging truth: the sense that something bigger than them had already decided how this was going to end.
He looked at the strange pattern of light filling the sky—stars rearranging into patterns that made no sense, like broken code scattered across time.
"Where is she?" he muttered, his eyes flickering over the starry fractal.
The Observer had spoken of Lira.
Something about her wasn't right.
He was about to turn back when a strange sound rippled across the space—a voice that didn't belong.
Arden spun to face it.
A figure materialized before him—Lira, or someone who looked like her. She was younger. Her eyes were full of sorrow and confusion, a mirror of the girl he had seen in the data before. But there was something else there. Something deeper.
"Lira?" Arden asked, voice full of disbelief.
The figure nodded, but her face was twisted with anguish.
"You were never supposed to be here, Arden," she said, her voice trembling. "Neither of you were. This isn't our fight anymore."
"What are you talking about?" Arden demanded, taking a step forward.
The figure shook her head. "The system didn't just reset us. It erased us. You're just echoes of a version that shouldn't exist. But there's still a way out. For one of you."
Arden's heart stilled.
"What do you mean?"
The figure's face softened. "Find the heart of the system. Find where it began—before the first rewrite. Before the Architect."
And then—she disappeared, leaving nothing but the ringing sound of her last words in the silence.
[POV: Lira]
Lira's head throbbed. The corrupted version of Clyde still stood before her, a twisted reflection of everything she had ever known.
"You can't hide from what you are," he sneered. "You were part of this system from the beginning. Don't you remember?"
"Shut up," Lira growled, her grip tightening on the gun.
"Remember the name they gave you." His voice was colder, more insistent. "You were always the system's perfect candidate. The first rewrite—the sister program. The one meant to help them control everything."
Lira's mind reeled, trying to push the memories back.
"No," she said, more forcefully this time. "You're lying."
He laughed. "I'm not lying. You were never supposed to escape. You weren't meant to have a choice."
Lira fired.
[POV: Clyde]
He watched as the corrupted version of himself staggered back, smoke curling from the bullet wound in its chest. But there was no satisfaction in the victory.
It wasn't enough. It never would be.
The corrupted Clyde hissed, blood drenching his hands. "You think you can rewrite your future? You're a part of this. Always."
Clyde stepped forward, his mind screaming for him to fight back, to finish this once and for all.
But instead, he raised his hand to the air.
"No," he whispered. "It's not over yet."
And everything around him—everything—shattered.