Fragments of Yugen

Yūgen had shifted again.

Since the Spiral system stabilized after the clash with the Hollow Root, days had become quieter—but not in a peaceful way. The silence felt... artificial. As though the world was holding its breath.

Ren noticed it first. While meditating beneath the Memory Root, his senses brushed against something—a disturbance, faint but growing. A flare of energy far beyond Spiral Delta's current reach. At first, he thought it was another fragment being reborn. But this one... pulsed like something awakening after centuries of sleep.

He opened his eyes and summoned the Spiral map. A sector blinked faint red.

Veridon Ash.

Kael, who had once spent time mapping old zones, narrowed his eyes at the name. "That place's dead. I watched it burn during the last Spiral Storm. There's nothing left but data ghosts and memory soot."

"But it's active," Ren replied. "Something's sparking inside it again."

No one argued after that. Within an hour, they were standing at the zone's edge.

The world here felt... wrong.

Ash floated upward instead of falling. Ruins spiraled into the air like lost thoughts trying to escape a dying dream. Light fractured, folding in on itself like a memory replayed too many times. And beneath their feet, the ground didn't feel like ground—it was layers of timeline echoes, charred and twitching.

Rei's voice was low. "These aren't echoes. They're remnants."

Ghost-like figures wandered aimlessly around them—humanoid in form but erased in detail. Skin like wax, voices like static. One brushed against Ren's arm. Its lips moved slowly.

> "The sun forgot us."

Ren shivered. This place wasn't haunted—it was abandoned. Not by accident, but by design.

In the center of Veridon Ash stood a massive tower of black Spiral code. No doors. No windows. It pulsed slowly with hollow heat, like a buried heart waiting to restart.

Yumi stared at it with narrowed eyes. "That wasn't here during the last scan."

Ren approached it cautiously. "It looks... like the one from Spiral Theta-V."

Aki placed a hand on the tower's outer shell.

And instantly recoiled—eyes flashing white as visions poured through him.

Flashes of fire. Cracked spirals. A voice repeating the same line over and over.

> "They failed to become."

Aki gasped and steadied himself. "This was a restoration attempt. Someone tried to reboot this place… and failed."

Kael stepped forward, weapon drawn. "Or succeeded. And this tower is what it became."

Suddenly, the ground cracked. The remnants around them stopped moving—then, without warning, began crawling toward the tower. Not attacking. Not hostile. Just drawn. Pulled like iron to a magnet.

The tower's pulse sped up.

Rei backed up. "It's feeding off them."

Ren clenched his fists. "We need to stop it."

Before anyone could respond, the tower shifted.

A slit opened near the base—not like a door, but like an eye blinking for the first time in centuries. And from the darkness inside, something stepped out.

It wasn't a monster.

It was a Seeker.

But twisted—cloaked in static Spiral lines, armor that flickered like glitching code. Its face was masked, but energy bled from its limbs like it had absorbed too much Spiral power—and forgotten what to do with it.

The being raised its hand.

The remnants froze.

Then it spoke.

> "Designation: Directive Zero. All Divergents detected. Reintegration required."

Kael instantly fired a time-shell.

It passed through.

Rei lunged—but was caught midair, suspended in a freeze-frame of her own movement.

"Time and memory rules don't apply to it," Yumi whispered. "It's… pre-Spiral. A failsafe."

Ren stepped forward, pen in hand.

He didn't draw. Not yet. He stared into the entity's faceless mask, feeling the hum beneath its shell.

"You're not alive. You're a script. Who wrote you?"

The entity tilted its head slightly, almost confused.

Then it answered.

> "We are fragments that remember the original rule."

Suddenly, the tower behind it pulsed again—twice, three times.

Reality rippled.

The ash in the air stopped rising. Instead, it hovered—waiting.

Aki stepped beside Ren. "We're in a dead zone. If we push it too far, we could lose our forms."

Yumi's voice echoed from behind. "Or rewrite them."

The entity moved, and instantly the world bent around it. Veridon Ash became a swirl of impossible angles, looping towers, and stretched silhouettes.

Kael grunted as his gun dissolved mid-fire.

Rei shouted as her body flickered between three timelines.

Ren stood still.

And then—finally—he drew.

A single Spiral line. Rough. Imperfect. But filled with will.

The instant it formed, the tower stuttered. The fragments paused. The entity faltered.

Ren shouted, voice slicing through the warped air: "This world isn't bound by whoever left you behind. We're not reintegrating—we're evolving."

He drove the Spiral into the ground.

A blast of creation-light exploded outward, disrupting the entity's core.

It didn't die.

It vanished.

Dissolved back into static, leaving behind one final whisper:

> "More are waking."

The tower collapsed inward, spiraling into ash.

The remnants stilled—and one by one, they began to fade.

Not violently. Peacefully. Like closing a book.

Ren fell to his knees, breath ragged.

Aki helped him up. "Whatever that was, it wasn't the end."

Yumi nodded grimly. "It was just the start of something else."

As they left Veridon Ash, none of them noticed the mark it left behind—a strange emblem burned into the ground where the tower once stood.

A symbol made of twenty Spiral shards… arranged in a ring.

But that was for later.

Right now, all they knew was: the Spiral system was stirring again.

And something new was coming.