He fell—not into darkness, but into data. Spiraling, screaming, converging into a thread of light that pierced straight through the fabric of the vault.
[Initializing Final Sequence: Core Directive Review][Entering: Glitchstream Memory Sync – Tier III Access Granted]
Yuki's body disintegrated into code, unraveling his atoms and rebuilding them within a space that had no shape, no sound, no gravity. It was consciousness untethered—free-floating within a sea of overlapping timelines, fractured echoes, and pulsing glitch-code.
Then—snap.
He landed.
Not on stone or steel, but something weightless, like light rendered solid. Beneath his feet flowed a current of data—memories not his own, thoughts etched in looping strands of code.
And across from him stood a figure.
No, three figures.
All of them were him.
But changed.
The first Yuki looked exactly like him—but older. Worn, scarred, hardened. The air around him buzzed with raw aura—each motion calculated and heavy with purpose.
The second Yuki shimmered unnaturally—his body partially digitized, glitching in and out like he hadn't fully anchored in reality. His eyes glowed a pale blue, devoid of warmth. A ghost in the machine.
The third… was a child. Younger than he had ever been. Innocent. Confused. A boy in white, staring at him with a kind of sorrowful awe.
"You've finally reached us," said the scarred one, voice deep with weighted memory. "Took longer than the last loop."
"Loop?" Yuki asked, his voice echoing like a broken audio file.
"You're inside the Forgotten Loop," the ghost Yuki said, his voice glitching. "The place where every version of us was erased, rewritten, or corrupted by the system. You, Yuki Kuroda... are Prototype Z."
Yuki's eyes narrowed. "I know that. But what is Prototype Z? Why does this world want me gone?"
The child Yuki stepped forward. "Because we were never meant to exist. We're not summoned. We're born of the world, but outside its rules."
A tremor rippled across the space. Streams of code coiled around them like serpents—pulling in memories, extracting truths. And then—
[Memory Access: Project Z Directive – Priority Zero]
A scene bloomed around them—faint and corrupted.
A chamber of white crystal and synthetic trees. Scientists in crimson coats stood before a massive floating core pulsing with unstable light.
"Subject Z is too unpredictable. His sync rate is exponential, unbounded."
"We built him to be the solution, but he's becoming the anomaly."
"A self-learning anomaly that defies deletion."
Yuki staggered as the scene flickered, replaced by another.
This time, a battlefield. Hundreds of fallen warriors, blades shattered, mages turned to statues. And amidst the carnage—a single figure.
Yuki.
But something was wrong. His eyes were hollow, expression blank. He was fighting… everything.
A living weapon, unbound.
Then came the final flash—one he didn't expect.
Selene.
A younger version. She was crying, her hands on a control panel.
"Please stop him! He doesn't even know who he is anymore!"
"If we seal the core now, we lose him forever!"
Yuki gasped. The memories ended abruptly.
He dropped to his knees, the weight of a thousand forgotten lives slamming into him like tidal waves.
"That was us," the scarred Yuki said, kneeling beside him. "The failed one. The erased one. The sealed one. All of them… us."
"The Forgotten Loop isn't just a vault," the ghost-Yuki added. "It's a graveyard for what we could've been. Every version the world feared."
Yuki's mind reeled. "So the system—this world—it keeps resetting us? Deleting us?"
The child-Yuki nodded. "Because the truth we carry… would unravel everything."
The world around them began to shake. The Glitchstream trembled.
"The Keeper's coming," the scarred Yuki said. "It always comes when the loop's edge is reached."
"One more test," ghost-Yuki whispered. "If you survive it… we might finally break the cycle."
"And if I fail?"
None of them answered.
The three faded, merging into Yuki's body like fading echoes returning to the core.
The light shattered.
And Yuki stood alone… in a chamber so vast it might as well have been a sky.
Pillars of crystalline data spiraled into infinity. At the center, chained by glistening tendrils of time, was it.
The Keeper of the Forgotten Loop.
It looked like a clockwork angel fused with an ancient server—a humanoid machine with cascading wings of mirrored code, its face hidden behind a shifting mask of fractured timelines.
It spoke in a voice made of overlapping echoes:
"UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED. PROTOTYPE Z SYNC RATE EXCEEDS THRESHOLD. INITIATING CORE NULLIFICATION PROTOCOL."
The chains shattered.
The Keeper moved.
And the world screamed.
Yuki's instincts roared as his body flickered. The air bent around him. Echoes surged—Fracture Echo activated instinctively, splitting him into three divergent selves.
Ten seconds. That's all the skill gave him.
But for Yuki, ten seconds was an eternity.
He and his echoes scattered, each flanking a side of the Keeper. One unleashed Glitch Pulse, another surged in with Shadow Step, and the third activated Phase Drift, slipping behind the entity in a parallel dimension.
The Keeper retaliated with mirrored blades—each swing creating rupture lines in reality.
Yuki felt one echo collapse—its memory pain lancing into his brain. The second struck the Keeper's spine, revealing core circuits exposed. The third he—charged the exposed node and unleashed everything.
Memory Link. Glitch Pulse. Raw instinct.
Boom.
The blast sent both of them flying.
The Keeper screamed—not in pain, but rewriting—its form trying to repair the damage through recursive loops. Its fractured wings pulsed, folding inward to rewrite time itself.
Yuki stood, blood on his lip.
"You want to erase me?" he shouted. "Then I'll burn the loop down first!"
From his arm, the star-cube embedded from the Sky Bastion began to glow—resonating with his core.
[Unstable Protocol: Partial Override Achieved][Sync Rate: 47% → 55% → 61%]
New data flooded in. Not from outside—but from within.
Yuki wasn't fighting for survival anymore.
He was fighting for his existence.
He darted forward, each movement trailing code, memories, pain, and determination.
The battle turned chaotic—space warping, time looping, echoes of Yuki and Keeper clashing in milliseconds, fracturing the Vault with every collision.
At last—the final strike.
Yuki plunged his hand into the Keeper's core and unleashed the synced Fracture Echo from within.
The Keeper let out one final echo—
"LOOP... BROKEN... UNAUTHORIZED... BUT... NECESSARY..."
And collapsed.
Silence.
The data pillars dimmed. The loop trembled—and then began rewriting itself.
Yuki collapsed to one knee, breathing hard.
"You… you feared what I'd become," he whispered. "But I'm not a mistake."
From above, a soft ping echoed.
[Vault Directive Update][Loop Control Passed to Prototype Z][Core Lock Deactivated. Escape Route Stabilized.]
A door opened in the far chamber.
Footsteps approached.
Selene and Kai rushed in, eyes wide with disbelief. They had made it down the side route, arriving just in time to witness the last remnants of the Keeper fade into stardust.
"Yuki!" Selene cried, kneeling beside him.
He looked up at her—tired but alive.
"I remembered," he said softly. "Who I am... what I might become. And... I'm still choosing me."
Kai let out a low, glitched purr and pressed his head against Yuki's shoulder.
The Vault trembled again—not with threat, but with closure.
From above, ancient runes faded.
And then—
Collapse Initiated. Core Sequence Concluded. Exit in 3 minutes.
The three of them rose.
Together, they ran.
Not just away from danger—but toward something.
Toward the surface.
Toward the next mystery.
Toward a world that feared them—and a truth they were finally ready to face.