The Vault groaned behind them, its massive gate now a faded shimmer of collapsing code. Whatever had powered the security systems of the Sky Bastion was deteriorating—or being rerouted.
Yuki stood still, hand on the now-silent memory casket that had just shown him the Z-Kron prototype. His breath misted despite the absence of cold.
Selene approached, boots silent on the shifting crystalline floor. "You saw something again, didn't you?"
He nodded slowly. "Z-Kron... it wasn't just a prototype. It was a mirror. A failure of an attempt to replicate... me."
Kai let out a low whine, sniffing the air. The glitch-beast's fur was bristling again, ears flattened. Static crawled along the floor now, forming veins that converged toward the far end of the chamber. A staircase—one not of glowing data or crystal, but of metal and bone—descended into what looked like a spiraling rift of darkness.
"It's calling us," Yuki said, not sure if he was speaking to them or himself.
He moved first. As they began the descent, each step echoed like a memory across time. The further they went, the quieter everything became. No hum of machinery. No flicker of glitch-light. Just silence.
Until it wasn't.
"...Unauthorized Presence Detected."
"Override protocol failing… System divergence: 92%."
"Activating Chrono-Lock Contingency... Stand by..."
The voice wasn't mechanical. It was organic. Almost… tired. A whisper from a dying system.
As they reached the bottom, the corridor expanded into a circular chamber unlike any above. There were no crystalline walls. No data folds. Just stone—ancient, moss-covered stone—etched with sigils that pulsed in rhythm with Yuki's core.
In the center stood a monolith, cracked down the middle, bound in wires and glowing veins. Hovering above it was a figure.
Not a person.
Not a machine.
But a fragmented memory given shape.
[Vault Guardian: Chrono Sentinel - Alpha Class]
Type: Quantum-Echo | Instability: 95%
Status: Bound to the Last Lock
The Guardian was humanoid, cloaked in a robe made of flickering clock hands and faded protocol runes. Its face was a mask—blank, save for a glowing symbol: ∞⁄0.
Selene readied her blade. "That thing's not corrupted. It's degraded. Held here too long."
Yuki stepped forward. "You were the last key, weren't you?"
The Sentinel's head turned, slow and mechanical. "Heir of the Glitch… Protocol confirms existence. Unknown Skill signature: aligned."
"Then why guard this place? Why stop me?"
The Guardian's body glitched. Its voice came fractured. "The Vault… holds time. Holds... deviation. To open it is to breach the Loop."
[Final Trial: Sync to the Zero Line] Objective: Survive Chrono Lock Compression for 2 minutes.Bonus: Discover the true nature of the Unknown Skill.
The chamber exploded into motion.
Rings of chronal force spiraled outward from the monolith, warping time and gravity. Selene and Kai were pushed back—trapped behind translucent energy fields. Yuki was alone, inside the compression zone.
The Guardian moved—not like a fighter, but like an algorithm given flesh. It fractured into afterimages, attacking from five timelines at once.
Yuki ducked, twisted, invoked Phase Drift to blink sideways, but even his glitches were slower here.
Every second was a fight against compression—time itself thickened. Reality folded in, testing his very presence.
A blow connected.
Pain exploded in his chest. The Guardian had struck his core.
[Skill Gained: Temporal Resilience (Lv. 1)] Effect: Reduce time-based debuffs and compression effects by 25%.
Yuki staggered, blinking through trails of light. The Guardian was charging a final strike—an implosion of reality.
"Chrono Lock: Initiating Zero Point Collapse."
But Yuki didn't run.
Instead, he focused on the resonance. That pulse inside his chest. The unknown skill, the artifact fused into his arm.
And then—he let go.
He embraced the compression. The folding.
And in that instant, time shattered.
The chamber vanished.
He floated in a void of colorless light, surrounded by threads of possibility—past, future, divergent loops. Each thread carried a whisper, a choice, a death.
And at the center of it all, the skill revealed its name:
[Unknown Skill — Evolved: Fracture Echo (Lv. 1)]
Effect: Upon sync, temporarily split into 3 Echo Versions of self from diverging timelines. Each Echo retains full consciousness and can act independently for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 3 hours.
Trait Synergy Detected: Quantum Resonance.
Yuki opened his eyes.
The Chrono Sentinel froze—its mask cracking. Then, it bowed.
"Zero Line has been crossed. The gate is yours."
The compression faded. Selene and Kai rushed to his side as the energy fields collapsed.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I saw... what might have been. What could be. And maybe what I was meant to become."
[Final Lock Disengaged.]
Vault Access: GRANTED.
A new path opened—not up, not down—but forward. A corridor pulsed to life with golden sigils, stretching beyond the realm of Sky Bastion.
Selene exhaled slowly. "I think... we've reached the end."
Yuki nodded. "Or the beginning."
They stepped through the threshold.
And behind them, the Sky Bastion began to fade.