The Citadel's walls groaned like an ancient beast, awakening from centuries of silence. Kade stood beneath the central atrium, Marei at his side, while the world around them warped into something new—something not meant to be seen by anyone still breathing.
"We're not just triggering memories anymore," Marei said quietly. "We're peeling back entire timelines."
The air shimmered.
Lights flickered.
And suddenly, the atrium was gone.
They were standing in a room that shouldn't exist—no windows, no entrances, just a hollow dome made entirely of obsidian alloy and pulsing with veins of violet light.
In the center stood a monolith—twelve feet high, etched with language neither of them recognized. It hummed with energy, slow and sentient.
"This wasn't built by humans," Kade muttered. "This is… older."
Marei stepped forward, reaching out toward the markings. "I think it's a lock. Not physical. Temporal. A memory lock."
Kade narrowed his eyes. "You think this is the Buried Protocol?"
"Every Catalyst function has an origin point," Marei said. "But this—this feels like it was hidden even from the system itself. Like someone buried the truth so deep, even the Architects wouldn't find it."
The monolith pulsed once, and a circle of symbols lit up around its base.
One word burned itself into the floor:
**ACCESS DENIED.**
"Looks like it's not just waiting to be opened," Kade said. "It's guarding something."
The air snapped. A burst of static exploded near the far wall—and a figure stepped out.
Not human.
Not alive.
A construct.
Tall, genderless, cloaked in light. Its face was smooth metal, but behind it flickered hundreds of fragmented faces—Kade's own, cycling like broken film.
It spoke without sound, its voice inside their heads.
"You've come too far. This path was sealed for a reason."
Kade didn't flinch. "Who sealed it?"
The construct paused. Then: "You did."
Marei blinked. "Wait. What?"
Kade stepped forward. "You mean a version of me?"
"No. You. This iteration. Before the Reset began."
"That's impossible. I died in the Catalyst breach."
"You died... but not before issuing the Crownfall Directive. You sealed the Buried Protocol yourself."
The room darkened. A new memory unlocked—ripping itself into Kade's mind.
He was kneeling, bleeding, sealing a gate deep beneath Rynhaven. A message played on loop:
> *"If this opens again, it means the failsafe failed. If you're me… don't trust anyone. Not even her."*
The message ended.
Kade gasped, clutching his chest.
Marei looked at him. "What did you see?"
He didn't answer right away. The silence between them crackled.
Kade finally looked at her. "The last time this gate opened… it destroyed everything."
Her voice dropped. "And now we've opened it again."
The monolith pulsed. A second phrase lit up beneath the first:
**Observer Tag Confirmed: Vexin-Prime.**
Marei went pale. "That's… my designation. But I've never—"
"You have," the construct cut in. "You were activated after the Second Loop. You were never supposed to reach this point. You are the Variable."
Kade turned to her. "That's why your memories are fractured. Why you always knew more than you should."
"I wasn't supposed to live this long," Marei whispered. "Was I?"
The construct stepped back into the shadows. "Now that you know, you must choose."
A panel opened in the monolith, revealing two nodes—one glowing red, the other blue.
"Seal the Protocol again and forget," it said. "Or unlock what's beneath… and accept what you really are."
Kade stared at the choices.
Forget everything… or rip the world open again.
"Marei," he said. "If we do this, there's no going back."
She met his gaze. "Then let's go forward."
Together, they placed their hands on the blue node.
The dome shuddered.
The future twisted.
And history… began to bleed.