The two Kades stood locked in a silence thick enough to collapse time itself.
Marei didn't move. She couldn't. Not when the system was actively scanning reality for a truth that refused to be known.
**System Status: Memory Thread Divergence Detected.**
**Initiating Cross-Sync...**
**Warning: Truth-Level Exposure May Be Lethal.**
"What's it doing?" Marei asked quietly.
"Something it shouldn't be able to do," said the replica—no, the *other* Kade.
The real Kade took a step forward, blade still drawn. "Tell me what you know."
"Alright," the copy said. "You want the truth? Here it is."
He lifted his hand, and from his palm, a shard of pure black data emerged. It pulsed once, and the room shifted—*glitched*—as if something ancient had just *noticed* them.
"Kade," Marei warned. "That shard's not Catalyst. It's—"
"It's Anti-Memory," the copy said. "The fragments they tried to delete. The ones that expose what the system *really* is."
He tossed the shard forward.
Kade caught it—and the world *stopped*.
---
He wasn't in the lab anymore.
He stood in a chamber of mirrored infinity. Reflections of himself. Of versions. Of timelines. Some dead. Some still in progress.
A voice, older than anything he had heard from the system, echoed all around him.
"You were never chosen."
"I built this system," Kade hissed.
"You built a weapon. We turned it into a leash."
Kade turned.
A *third figure* stood behind him now—draped in code, face obscured by glitching light. Not the replica. Not a memory. Something deeper.
"Who are you?"
The being smiled.
"We're the Archivists. The true designers of the Reset. Catalyst was just our delivery system."
Kade's heart raced.
"You mean… all of this? The resets, the power…?"
"Controlled," the Archivist said. "Given to you in doses. Not to help you save Earth—but to see *what kind of king* you'd become. You were an experiment."
Kade stepped back. "No. That's not true. The memories. The mission—"
"Planted. Fragmented. Edited. Rell was never your betrayer. She was your failsafe."
His mind buckled. Every timeline he remembered—every death—began unraveling in his head like threads torn from truth.
"You don't get to *choose* the future," the Archivist said.
But Kade clenched his fists. "No. But I get to *rewrite* it."
He crushed the Anti-Memory shard.
And the world roared.
---
Back in the lab, Marei screamed as power cracked the air around Kade's body.
The replica was gone. Vaporized. Deleted.
Kade collapsed to his knees, steam rising from his skin, eyes glowing with unstable light.
Marei caught him. "Kade—what happened?!"
He opened his mouth. But his voice was not his own.
"New protocol detected," said the system through his lips.
**Forbidden Access Unlocked.**
**Legacy Rewrite in progress.**
**Catalyst has chosen a new directive.**
And across the ruins of the lab, reality *shivered.*