The air was thin in Praton's lower orbit—too high to breathe, too low to die quietly.
Kael lay against the curved wall of the wrecked freighter, blood dripping from a gash above his right eye. The dim red lighting from the emergency core pulsed like a slowing heartbeat. Maya crouched beside him, her fingers trembling as she tried to adjust the shattered transmitter on his chest plate.
"You need to stay awake," she said. Her voice cracked.
"I'm trying," Kael murmured. "The room's just... spinnin' like a damn sobo wheel."
"We need to move. The ship's bleeding out oxygen."
Kael blinked once. Then again.
That was when he realized it wasn't just the room spinning.
The stars outside the fractured hull were moving.
"Maya," he whispered. "We're falling."
She didn't answer. Instead, she looked up at the curved viewport, where what remained of Praton's second moon glimmered faintly in the distance. Static hummed through her ear-link—no signal, no backup, no Juro. Just silence.
They were alone.
Kael tried to sit up. "The engine—"
"It's dead," Maya said flatly. "Stolen. Or ripped out. Someone did this."
She didn't need to say who.
They both knew.
Hours earlier.
The freighter had jumped clean through the Hallux Corridor—a crack in folded time that hadn't existed five days ago. Kael, Maya, and Juro had followed a ripple—a breach that shouldn't have formed near Sobo's system. Their ship, The Threader, had detected signals inside the corridor, echoes of a lifeform that registered only as: "NULL."
At first, they thought it was a trick.
But the signal was too familiar. Too human.
Juro had been the one to trace it. "The frequency—it matches Kael's biometric trail."
"Past or future version?" Maya asked.
"Neither," Juro answered. "This... this is a Kael who was never born."
Now, Kael gripped his chest as he breathed shallowly.
"What does that even mean?" he rasped. "A Kael who wasn't born?"
Maya kept her eyes on the rotating stars. "We don't have time to untangle timelines."
"We always have time," he said. "We make time."
She looked at him, sharp. "Like you made time for the Sobo breach? Like you made time to tell me that Prime carved part of his mind into your spine before he died?"
Kael flinched.
"I didn't ask for his memories," he said.
"No. You just carry them. Like ghosts."
He was too tired to argue.
A low creak echoed through the metal.
The ship groaned as if mourning itself.
Then something new happened.
The temperature dropped.
Not just cold—this was impossible cold. A frost so deep it coated their breath in shards. Maya's hands went to her pistol, but the power cell had already frozen. Useless.
And then...
The door opened.
Not physically. But somehow, it opened.
A rectangle of nothing appeared at the end of the corridor—a blacker-than-black doorway that didn't belong to physics or reality. It didn't open like a machine. It unfolded like skin.
And someone stepped through.
Not someone.
Something.
It wore Kael's face.
But younger.
And wrong.
The hair was white. The eyes fully black. And where Kael had scars, this version had symbols etched into his skin—burned into his neck, down to his clavicles.
"Who—" Kael began.
The copy smiled. "My name was erased. Stolen when I refused the loop."
Maya raised her broken pistol anyway. "What do you want?"
"To return what I took," the thing said.
Kael sat up fully now, despite the pain. "What... did you take?"
The copy stepped forward.
And the walls behind it crumbled.
Kael suddenly felt it. A part of himself missing. Not memory. Not strength. But something deeper.
His name.
He blinked. Tried to say it out loud.
"I'm... I'm Ka..."
But the word wouldn't come.
Maya turned sharply. "Kael?"
He tried again. "I'm..."
The other version smiled. "Names are currency in the loop. And yours is mine now."
Kael gasped.
He wasn't just forgetting. He was disappearing from his own mind.
"Why?" Maya shouted. "Why do this?!"
The thing turned to her. "Because he survived when I didn't. And the loop only rewards the broken."
Maya aimed her useless weapon, rage burning in her eyes. "If you touch him again, I swear—"
"I've already touched him," the being said gently. "I am him."
Kael's vision blurred again. His body trembled.
Not from pain.
From something... deeper.
He saw images—cities collapsing in slow motion, clocks spinning backward, a version of Maya crying as she stabbed someone in a corridor of mirrors. He saw Juro dying—again—and again—and again—until he didn't.
The loop had shown him all this before.
But now?
Now, it was giving him options.
"What are you doing to me?" Kael whispered.
"I'm reminding you," said the version with no name. "You aren't the only Kael that mattered."
The frost deepened.
And then, the being vanished.
Just... gone.
But the damage remained.
Kael slumped forward.
Maya caught him.
"I can't—remember who I am," Kael whispered.
"You're Kael," she said fiercely. "You're my Kael."
"Then tell me," he said, eyes wide. "Tell me everything you know about me."
She paused.
And for the first time, she hesitated.
Not because she didn't know.
But because she wasn't sure anymore.
The ship lurched violently.
Maya looked up, confused.
Then something huge collided with them—outside.
And then—
The hull opened.
Not broke. Not cracked.
Opened.
As if something had peeled it from the outside like fruit.
Wind. Light. Screams.
And a massive hand reached through the broken airlock—gray skin, eight fingers, each tipped with a glowing brand.
Juro's voice blasted through the comms. "MAYA, GET OUT NOW! IT'S A NAME-EATER—!"
But he was too late.
The hand grabbed Kael.
And in an instant—
He was gone.
He awoke falling.
Not through air.
Through space.
No gravity. No motion. Just... descent.
He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.
Because his name was gone.
He was no longer Kael.
He was no longer anyone.
Just a hollow echo in the loop's design.
And falling...
Into a place even the loop feared.
The Outside.
Where only the forgotten survive.
To be continued...