Refraction Point

The beams of light that emanated from Riven's containment thread didn't just vanish—they traced paths through the very architecture of the chamber, etching glowing trails along the walls and ceiling until they converged on the far side of the vault.

Six directions. Six locations. Six remnants of something lost.

Patch raised an eyebrow. "Okay, who else is getting spooky orphan-energy from this? No one? Just me?"

Fry ignored him, sweeping her Karnyx across the beams. "These aren't simple coordinates. They're recursive vectors—mixed Real-space and echo-lattices. These places might not even exist fully in one timeline."

Zayn stood silent, his gaze fixed on the farthest thread.

"Riven said they were like her," he murmured. "Which means they're more than echoes. They're... forgotten people. Deleted. Buried."

"Suppressed," Althea added. "Like Riven was."

Fry nodded grimly. "And if they're still partially alive inside recursion, they might be leaking memory instability into the Real."

Patch popped his last ration biscuit. "Yay. So either we rescue them or get eaten by glitch-ghosts. Cool. Who's first?"

Zayn turned toward the door. "We go to the closest signal. East quadrant."

Their journey took them to a dead zone—a place known simply as Hollow Trace.

A flat expanse of barren stone, covered in an ash-like substance that never settled. Wind moved sideways. Shadows stretched in directions that didn't align with any light source.

Althea checked the Karnyx. "Thread stability's lowest here. Whatever's buried... it's old."

They reached a cracked basin at the heart of Hollow Trace. In its center lay a stone structure—half-collapsed, circular, marked by six claw-like spires reaching toward a sky that wasn't there.

Zayn stepped into the basin.

The moment his foot touched the ground, the wind stopped.

A voice whispered.

"We were never children."

Patch flinched. "Okay, that's comforting."

The structure pulsed once. Then again.

And a thread ignited above it.

This one didn't take the shape of a girl.

It was a boy. Maybe fifteen. Bald, his skin marked with runic scars that shimmered faintly. His eyes opened slowly—and fixed on Zayn.

Zayn stepped forward. "What's your name?"

No answer.

But then the thread twisted. Flashed.

"Designation: Echo-Null. Role: Memory Purge Conduit."

Althea gasped. "They used him to burn recursion."

Fry shook her head. "Not just burn. Redirect it. He's a siphon. A living firewall."

Patch muttered, "Now that's a resume builder."

The boy's mouth opened—but instead of words, static spilled out. A high-pitched resonance that made the group stagger.

Zayn clenched his jaw. "He's in pain. Still processing."

The shard in his hand began to glow again—reacting.

Zayn stepped forward and pressed the shard to the thread.

The noise stopped.

The boy looked up. For a moment, his eyes cleared.

And he spoke one word:

"...Laziel."

Then the thread vanished.

But not into nothingness.

It curled into the shard.

Althea stared. "It's becoming something else. A compass. A collector?"

Zayn held it up. The shard now had a faint second glow within—flickering like a heartbeat.

Patch squinted. "So... six kids, one magic rock. We playing recursive Pokémon now?"

Zayn didn't smile, but his voice held quiet steel.

"We find the next one."