The house shouldn't have been there.
It was stitched into the landscape like a scar, a seamless anomaly in a place where nothing made sense. The trees outside curved subtly away from it, as if space itself wanted no part of what was inside. The air carried that same stillness Sylah had felt earlier. Not peace. Not quiet. A pause. Like the world was holding its breath.
She and Drek approached slowly.
"This place is artificial," he muttered. "Temporal construct, threadlocked. Someone built this with precision. Time doesn't flow here, it recycles."
"Someone?" Sylah said, but she already knew. Not someone. Her.
The door creaked open before they touched it.
Inside, the warmth was immediate deceitful. Golden lamplight spilled across a simple wooden floor. A kettle steamed gently on a stove. Furniture was worn but loved. And in the center of it all, on a rug dotted with children's toys, three kids played with blocks and circuits. Two girls, one boy. They laughed softly, the sound muffled by the unnatural hush of the place.
And there ,by the hearth was her.
She stood slowly, brushing flour from her apron. Older. Weathered. But unmistakably her. Sylah froze. Drek didn't move either.
"I knew you'd come," the other Sylah said. Her voice had that same tone Sylah heard in her own thoughts, but slower, like it had carried something heavy for too long.
"This isn't real," Sylah replied, but her voice wasn't sure. The children turned, their eyes wide, pupils slightly wrong.
"They are to me," the other Sylah said, moving in front of them. She wasn't threatening. But she stood like a wall.
"We don't have time for this," Drek said, hand on his weapon.
Sylah raised hers instead. "Stand aside."
"No."
The word came sharp, like a blade. The other Sylah's hand flicked out, and from nowhere, a weapon manifested, sleek, polished, with veins of circuitry running along its edge. Time-tech. Advanced. Illegally advanced.
"You're not touching them," she said. "You think you're the one trying to break the loop. But you're just another version like me, charging in, breaking things. You have no idea what this place is."
"I know what the Tyrant made it for. To trap you. To trap me. You're being used."
The children were watching silently now, like they understood everything but didn't have permission to speak.
"I chose this," the woman snapped. "And if I didn't? If this is a fabrication? I don't care. I earned this peace. These kids, they're mine. You're not taking them from me."
"I'm not here to hurt them," Sylah said, stepping forward. "I'm here to end this. You're an anchor. Whether you know it or not, the Tyrant's feeding off your stability."
The other Sylah lunged. No more warnings.
The impact was brutal, nothing elegant or slow-motion about it. Sparks lit up from their blades as they clashed, sending bursts of heat and magnetic residue into the air. The walls of the house flickered, seams of digital static peeling at the edges of the illusion.
The kids screamed. The world flickered again.
Drek moved forward, but Sylah shouted, "No! She's mine."
The other Sylah struck again, her movements clean, disciplined. Not corrupted like the last version, this one wasn't twisted. She was determined.
"You think I didn't try?" she shouted between blows. "You think you're the first to fight him? I failed, and I chose this. I earned this."
"You settled," Sylah growled, catching a strike and twisting under her double's guard. "You folded."
"I protected them!"
The clash of blades roared as metal screamed against metal, tech flaring. Behind them, the children were frozen in fear, or were they? Their faces changed, slightly out of sync with reality, like skipping frames in a film.
Sylah saw it then. They weren't children. They were constructs. Failures bundled together, shaped into something emotionally powerful. They were memories, cobbled from a dozen timelines, rearranged to look like salvation.
The realization hit her like gravity.
"They're not yours," Sylah said. "They're meant to hold you here."
"Shut up!" the other Sylah cried, voice cracking with something close to grief.
She came again, harder, faster, striking with a ferocity that made Sylah stumble. But her blade didn't stop. She slashed forward, not at her double, but at the floor beneath the children.
A pulse of blue light exploded from the strike. The house screamed. The children let out cries that glitched, broke apart mid-sound, warping into a discordant shriek of code.
"No!" the other Sylah screamed.
But it was too late.
The illusion shattered. The room burned white-hot. And as the facade crumbled, Sylah stood amidst the ashes of memory. The other her lay slumped, breathing heavily, her blade dimmed and cracked.
"I'm sorry," Sylah said, kneeling beside her.
"You should be," the woman rasped, not angry just tired. "They felt real. I knew they weren't... but it didn't matter."
"You were strong," Sylah said quietly. "But I need to be stronger."
The other Sylah gave a weak laugh. "Then take it."
The transfer wasn't gentle this time.
Memory flooded in, messy, jumbled, vivid. She saw moments the other version had lived. A narrow escape in a desert city. A child's voice calling her "Mama." Long nights spent under false skies. The ache of knowing it couldn't last and choosing it anyway.
When the last spark of memory passed into her, Sylah rose. Her hands trembled slightly. Not from fear. From weight.
A vision snapped into place, raw and fast:
This time, it wasn't a house or a battlefield. It was a ship, adrift in orbit around a blacked-out world, hull scarred with strange runes. Inside, another Sylah sat alone at the controls. Her eyes were ringed with dark circuitry, her fingers trembling over a glowing console. She was trying to send a signal. A warning. Something worse was coming.
Sylah gasped, her breath pulling hard through her chest as the vision ended.
Drek stood close. "Another one?"
She nodded, her voice tight. "In orbit. She's sending a distress call. She knows something we don't."
"Then we find her," he said " the Tyrant… he's almost awake"