Harvie walked alone.
The sky above Solistra had turned gray—quiet, still, like the air was holding its breath. Behind him, the shattered door of the Chamber of Echoing Crowns stood open, letting the echoes of dead kings fade into the world once again.
He had passed the trial.
But something inside him felt broken.
"I killed Edna again and again… even if it wasn't real, I felt it," Harvie whispered. His voice was soft. Empty. "I let myself die to break the Seal. But why do I still feel… trapped?"
The pain of the vision stayed in his bones. His hands still shook.
That chamber had shown him something worse than death: a future where his own power destroyed the person he wanted to protect the most.
He looked at his hand. It glowed faintly. The power of time, still there. Still active. But less stable.
Every Seal he broke twisted the world more.
And now… the world felt like it was looking back at him.
---
Edna waited outside the ruins of the castle. Her clothes were burned and torn from the battle before, but she smiled when she saw him. Her smile faded quickly.
"You don't look okay," she said.
"I'm not," Harvie answered honestly.
She walked beside him as they left the cursed chamber behind. The Queen had told them the Seals would test his soul. But this—this felt like it was testing reality itself.
A few hours later, Harvie's system pinged.
> [Hidden Memory Detected – Sync in Progress]
[Origin Fragment: The Buried Core]
[Warning: Memory Sync May Cause Identity Shift]
He froze.
"Edna… I think I found something. Something deep," he said.
She looked worried. "Should you open it?"
Harvie didn't answer. He just touched the seal embedded in his chest—the strange mark that had glowed ever since the first day he arrived in this world.
He closed his eyes. The system activated.
And the world fell away.
---
[Memory Sync: Begin]
It was dark.
No… not dark. Just empty.
He floated in a space that felt like the space before time. There was no ground. No stars. Just whispers.
And then—a voice.
> "Chrono rejected the loop. We must forge a patch… a core that can twist the flow back."
Another voice replied:
> "But the loop will resist. We need something that's not from this world."
Harvie saw it—himself, still forming. A shell of flesh, bone, and code.
His soul didn't come from a mother. It wasn't born. It was inserted. Planted like a seed from another timeline. No childhood. No roots.
He saw a giant machine—a cracked pillar marked with the symbol of the Buried God.
The machine glowed with symbols. It injected something into the timeline. Into him.
> "He is the core. He is the fail-safe. If Chrono fails, this one will burn the script."
Harvie saw flashes of his memories—dying in the real world, meeting the system, entering the game world—but now they looked different. Arranged. Staged.
"None of this… was random," he breathed.
He wasn't chosen.
He was created.
---
[Memory Sync Complete]
> [You have gained: Fragment of Origin – The Buried Core]
[System Update: Stability Decreased | Self-Override Unlocked]
[Warning: Identity Fracture – 27%]
---
Harvie gasped as he returned to his body. He fell to his knees.
"Harvie!" Edna ran to him and caught his shoulders. "What happened?"
His eyes glowed faint blue. Cold. Lost.
"I'm not from here," he said, voice cracking. "I was never real, Edna. My soul… my soul was made like a tool."
She looked shocked. "What are you saying?"
"I'm not even a player… I'm a patch in the timeline. A piece meant to fix something."
Silence.
Edna didn't move for a long time.
Then she said quietly, "Is that why you don't cry when you die? Why your memories are strange?"
"I think so. Maybe all those deaths weren't just rewinds… maybe they were resets. Like I was rebooting."
Harvie looked up at her.
"Am I even human?"
Edna bit her lip. Her eyes shook.
"I… I don't know," she admitted. "But you feel real to me. You chose to protect me. You fought for people. That matters."
"But what if the Buried God is just using me? What if I'm part of a bigger trap?"
"Then we break the trap together," she said.
---
That night, Harvie sat alone again.
He didn't sleep. He couldn't.
The stars above Solistra pulsed strangely—like a clock ticking faster.
He felt his identity cracking… like he was more code than soul now. More function than feeling.
But he remembered Edna's words.
"You feel real to me."
And for now, that was enough.
Tomorrow, the world would hunt him.
Tomorrow, the system would call him a mistake.
But tonight… he was just Harvie.
And he was still standing.