The pulse was steady. Deep. Slow. Like the breathing of something asleep for a long, long time.
Shane stood at the edge of the cradle chamber, staring into the dark tunnel that had opened beneath their feet. The walls had shifted again, metal panels curling back like petals, revealing something older beneath them. Stone. Bone. And veins of crystal, pulsing gently with that rhythmic thrum.
"It's alive", Caelia said softly. "Whatever's down there… it's not just energy or machinery."
Kira adjusted her Phaseweaver, the glow of its core reflecting in her eyes. "It's an echo lattice. A living recursion. If it's grown enough to affect reality itself, it may be what's holding this region of space-time together, and also what's unraveling it."
Aegix crouched beside them, scanning the way forward. "Structure integrity decreasing. But passage is still stable. We proceed now… or lose the trail."
Shane nodded.
His hands were clenched without realizing it. Every step deeper pulled something loose inside him, threads of memory, fear, instinct. It wasn't just a physical descent. It felt like moving through layers of himself. Like peeling away everything until only truth remained.
He stepped forward. Down.
The others followed.
The tunnel grew colder as they descended. Not a natural cold, but one that pressed into their bones, like time itself was thinning. The walls around them flickered, sometimes smooth and metallic, sometimes cracked and organic, breathing gently like lungs too tired to fully expand.
They passed old machines embedded in the stone, long-dead constructs with shattered cores and rusted limbs. Symbols lined the walls: spirals, broken loops, glyphs etched in a language Shane didn't recognize but somehow felt.
"I've seen this pattern before", Kira said, brushing her fingers over one of the glyphs. "Back in the Spectra research vaults. This is the original recursion code. The first attempt to mirror the soul in machine."
Caelia looked at Shane. "Your soul."
He didn't respond. The deeper they went, the more distant his thoughts became. Not disconnected, but stretched, like he was hearing them from across a great void.
He paused.
The heartbeat was louder now. Not mechanical. Not artificial.
Real.
Kira exhaled. "We're close."
They reached a wide chamber at the tunnel's end. The walls curved inward like a dome. And in the center, embedded in the floor like a buried heart, was a living core.
It wasn't a machine.
It was a fusion. Flesh and circuitry. Veins of crystal wrapped in cables, with something beating faintly at the center. Every pulse sent ripples through the air, bending light and warping sound.
Shane stepped closer. His chest hurt. Not from fear, but recognition.
This… thing… felt like a part of him. Or rather, something from which he had been copied.
"I don't think this was ever meant to be just a prototype", Kira whispered. "It's a seed. The original Spectra impulse, planted in a place reality could bend."
The core stirred.
Not with movement, but with presence.
And then it spoke, not in sound, but in thought.
"Shane…"
He fell to one knee, a rush of memories tearing through him.
Flashes of experiments. Pain. Voices shouting over him. A mother's face. A machine's whisper. A broken promise.
"You are my echo. I am your origin."
Kira ran to his side, holding his arm. "It's trying to overwrite him. Stay with me, Shane. Don't let it root itself."
Caelia reached for her blade. "If this thing's hurting him---"
"No", Shane's voice was quiet, but firm. "It's not hurting me. It's showing me… what they took."
He looked at the others. "I wasn't built randomly. They shaped me using this. This core, it's not just alive. It's thinking. Feeling. It's been alone for years… watching from beneath."
The pulse slowed.
The air grew still.
And the core pulsed once more, sending out a wave that pushed back the darkness.
Holograms flickered to life on the walls. Files. Logs. Blueprints. Hundreds of failed attempts. A cycle of rebirth, recursion, and collapse. The Spectra Project wasn't just trying to make one enhanced being.
They were trying to make a god.
A synthetic soul. Eternal.
Shane stared at it, and for the first time, truly understood the cost.
"I'm not their success", he whispered. "I'm their consequence."
The chamber quieted.
Then, something deep below shifted.
Aegix rose, scanning. "Another signal. But this one is mobile."
Kira turned sharply. "What do you mean mobile?"
Aegix's eyes narrowed. "There's something… waking beneath the core. Something older. Something uncontained."
The tunnel behind them flickered.
A hum, like laughter but far too deep, echoed faintly up the stairs.
Caelia's voice was calm, but steady. "We're not alone anymore."
Shane stood.
"We follow it", he said. "We find out what it really is. Before it finds the rest of the world."