There was no sky.
Only the idea of it.
Kael emerged onto a plain of fractured light.
Not land.Not glass.
Somewhere between reflection and memory.
The ground beneath his boots shimmered with each step,like a dream halfway dissolved.
The bottle floated at his side.
Its glow had changed again.
No longer colors.
Now: tone.
Each flicker resonated like a note struck just outside hearing range.
A kind of language—
Not meant for words.
But for presence.
"Where are we?" Kael whispered.
The bottle didn't answer.
But the question hung in the air,and something answered it anyway.
A gust of thought brushed his mind.
Faint.Far.But known.
Mara.
Not her voice.Not her shape.
But her wake.
She had passed through this place.
Recently.
Hurriedly.
Alone.
Kael knelt and touched the glass-dust beneath him.
It responded—
briefly flaring with memory.
Not image.
Vibration.
Like touching the rim of a ringing bowl.
"She's bleeding," he said aloud."Not from the body. From the thread."
He stood again.
Looked ahead.
The field split in two.
To the left: a trail of firelight.Residual heat.Speed.
To the right: a trail of static.Thick.Intentional.
And somewhere ahead—
both would meet.
The bottle hovered closer.
It pulsed once in green—
Yes.
Then once in blue—
Caution.
Then once in gold—
You decide.
Kael smiled bitterly.
"Now you give me choices?"
Still, he walked.
Chose the left.
As he moved, the terrain shifted.
Lines folded around him.Reality seemed tired of pretending to be solid.
He passed through two reflections of himself—one watching with fear,one with quiet disappointment.
Neither moved.
Neither spoke.
They didn't need to.
They were remnants.
System splinters.
Pieces of Kael left behind in failed timelines,now sealed here—
in what the bottle finally named:
"The Breach Expanse.""Cognitive lattice unanchored.""Boundary between failed containment zones."
Kael breathed out slowly.
This was no longer about Witness protocol.
This was legacy control.
The rules here didn't belong to the past.
Or the system.
Or even to the bottles.
They belonged to the ones who had survived them.
Kael stepped carefully.
Every step was recorded.
Not in data.
In resonance.
This place remembered intention.
And it would hold him to every one of his choices.
Then—
a flare.
Not ahead.
Below.
He knelt again.
This time, not dust.
Blood.
Dark.Viscous.Laced with filament.
Too clean to be human.Too real not to be Mara's.
Kael gritted his teeth.
"She's not far."
The bottle emitted a warning pulse.
Not fear.
But urgency.
It blinked once.
And sent a glyph across his arm:
"One more is hunting her."
Kael stood.
The glass around him began to crack—
not from pressure.
From arrival.
Somewhere ahead,something else had entered the Breach.
Something not made from memory.
But from design.
Kael broke into a run.
The path shimmered beneath him.
The air screamed without sound.
And behind him—
one of the splintered Kaels turned its head.
Smiled.
And began to follow.