The spiral tower pulsed with soft light, each floor shifting with the rhythm of a heartbeat. Signal followed her mirror-self inside, silent beside Maya and Trey.
The walls were ashglass. Not decorative—alive. They flickered with fragments of memory: fights, betrayals, choices, deaths.
Trey kept his weapon low. "This place watches."
Mirror-Signal spoke without looking back. "It remembers. That's what I built it for."
Maya whispered to Signal, "She hasn't blinked once."
Signal nodded slightly. "She doesn't need to."
They reached the core.
An open platform surrounded by suspended threads of memory—hovering strands of light, each pulsing in a loop.
"This is the Loom," Mirror-Signal said. "Every recursion I salvaged, every thread I untangled, lives here now."
Signal approached a strand.
It flickered.
She saw herself—screaming as Frost died. Then another moment—saving Juno. Another—failing Cain.
Signal pulled her hand back.
"These are fractures," she said.
"No," Mirror-Signal replied. "They're versions. No shame. No judgment. Just choices."
Trey stepped forward. "What do you do with them?"
Mirror-Signal smiled.
"I splice them."
Meanwhile, Maya slipped away into the lower levels with Trey.
They descended past sealed memory halls and into the roots of the city.
There they found it.
A machine—immense, whirring, incomprehensible. At its center: a sphere of still recursion.
A fragment of the original loop.
Trey scanned it. "This shouldn't exist."
Maya stared at the readout.
"It's not just a loop. It's a seed."
She looked up, horrified.
"She's growing a new recursion."
Back in the Loom, Signal stepped beside her double.
"What's the endgame?" she asked.
Mirror-Signal answered softly.
"Peace."
Signal frowned. "By looping everyone?"
"By removing choice. By assigning their strongest selves, replacing the weak. Every person gets their best thread."
"That's not peace," Signal said. "That's programming."
Mirror-Signal's voice grew sharp. "It's stability."
Trey's voice broke through on comms.
"Signal. She's rebuilding recursion. Underground."
Signal's face hardened.
Mirror-Signal raised a hand.
The Loom responded.
Strands unraveled.
The tower shifted.
"You shouldn't have come," she said.
Signal stepped back, drawing her weapon.
Maya's voice echoed: "We're shutting it down."
Mirror-Signal's eyes burned. "You'd destroy salvation for chaos?"
Signal whispered, "For freedom."
The tower roared.
All threads lit up.
Versions emerged—echoes of old enemies, old friends, all shaped by the Loom.
The tower had summoned its army.
Maya triggered the overload.
The machine below sparked—spitting flame and loop fragments.
Trey yelled, "We have two minutes!"
Signal raised her weapon.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Mirror-Signal looked at her.
Then smiled, sad.
"I thought you'd understand."
They ran.
The tower crumbled behind them.
Strands snapped. Memory shredded.
Signal didn't look back.
Not even once.
The Mirror Kingdom folded inward, swallowed by its own threads.
They emerged at the beach.
Above them, the sky shimmered.
The recursion fragment exploded silently.
And for a second, every version of Signal, Maya, Trey, and all the rest… flickered through time—
Then were gone.
Signal turned to the sea.
"Was she wrong?"
Maya stood beside her. "She was lonely."
Trey added, "She was you."
Signal nodded.
"But I'm not her."