The crossing ended without sound.
No fall. No flash. No weight shift.
Just absence—then presence.
The sky was violet.
The ground, flat stone etched with symbols none could translate. A breeze blew, but it carried no scent. They weren't in a world—more like a boundary.
A space between.
Lyra ran a scan. "This isn't a planet. It's a stabilized field. Artificial. Gravity holds because something wants it to."
Frost whispered, "Then something's here."
The map from the projection floated again, hovering beside them. The blinking point moved.
Guiding.
They followed the path into a city with no angles.
Buildings twisted as if grown, not built.
Streets had no curves or lines, yet directions felt clear. Every few steps, flashes of memory struck—brief, invasive.
Trey gasped. "Saw my father."
Maya blinked. "I just saw myself as a child... but happy."
Signal exhaled sharply. "This place isn't neutral. It's testing us."
Juno stared at the air. "The deeper we go, the more it knows."
Then came a voice.
"Welcome back, Echoes."
It echoed from nowhere and everywhere.
A figure stepped from the stone—tall, cloaked in stitched ashglass, face obscured.
"You were the first to leave. Now you've returned."
Frost raised his hand. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Threadkeeper."
They entered a chamber beneath the city—a globe of light suspended in orbit around a black core.
"This," the Threadkeeper said, "is the center of recursion. Not the loop you broke—but the place it was written from."
Signal stepped forward. "What is Thread Zero?"
He turned slowly.
"It's not a what. It's a who."
The core pulsed.
And then, out of it, stepped a girl.
Same face as the one at the gate.
But now older. Eyes silver. Hands trembling.
"My name is Vara," she said. "I made the first recursion."
Silence.
Then Trey stepped back. "You're saying you built the loop?"
"No. I was the decision," Vara said. "The one all versions of me had to make."
Maya asked, "What was it?"
"To forget."
Vara walked toward them, barefoot. "I was the first memory broken. The original deletion."
Signal stared. "Why?"
Vara pointed to the Threadkeeper. "Because I saw something no recursion could hold."
Lyra's voice cracked. "What?"
Vara held out her hand.
They saw it.
A world that never began. One where no choices were made. A blank script. White space.
Trey whispered, "A universe with no memory."
"The recursion wasn't made to fix," Vara said. "It was made to contain."
Juno asked, "Contain what?"
"The blank. The erasure."
Frost paled. "The anti-thread."
Vara nodded. "And now… it's awake."
The stone above them cracked.
The sky turned.
Not dark—but absent.
Shapes moved within it, unraveling stars, rewriting the edge of existence.
Vara fell to her knees.
"I waited here to stop it. But now it's coming through."
Signal looked around.
They had crossed timelines, broken loops, rewritten memory itself.
Now, they faced what predated memory.
A shape descended—vast and impossible.
Not form, but undoing.
Signal gripped her sidearm.
"Everyone get ready."
Maya moved beside her.
Trey locked his rifle.
Frost whispered, "We're not enough."
"No," Vara said. "But you're not alone."
From the outer city, more figures emerged.
People they'd never seen—but recognized.
Versions.
Reflections.
Past selves.
Future echoes.
All armed. All ready.
The recursion hadn't just broken—it had remembered.
And memory had teeth.