The boy with golden eyes stood in the smoking crater, barefoot, staring at a night sky that didn't seem to belong to any galaxy known to memory.
He didn't know his name.
Didn't remember why he fell from the sky.
Didn't know who "her" was—only that he had to find her.
And something in his chest hummed with unbearable urgency.
He looked down at his hands. Pale, trembling. Calloused from a life he couldn't remember.
Something shimmered on his wrist.
A burned-in mark: ∞ fractured in half.
He touched it.
Visions crashed into him.
A girl with dark eyes full of stars.
A laugh he once lived for.
A scream swallowed by a loop.
His knees buckled.
And for the first time since he opened his eyes, he realized something was missing.
A name.
His.
Across galaxies, in the Sobo Belt's fractured timelines, Maya staggered out of the spiral's echo with blood on her lips and fire in her gaze.
"Where is he?" she shouted into the void. "KAE'LUAN!"
No answer.
Only the hum of the broken hourglass, spinning endlessly where he had vanished.
Juro limped up beside her, his left arm torn and glowing faint blue from a wound he couldn't explain.
"He's not here," Juro said. "He triggered Reversal... but it didn't restart the loop. It splintered it."
Maya turned to him slowly. "What does that mean?"
Juro wiped blood from his cheek, staring at the horizon of stars.
"It means... he might still exist. But not here. Not in this version."
"Then we go to him."
Juro nodded, even though doubt darkened his eyes. "You realize... we might not recognize him. Or he might not know who we are."
Maya clenched her fists. "He doesn't have to remember me. I'll remember for him."
She looked to the shattered loop code swirling in the air.
"I want out of this spiral, Juro."
"Then let's find the fracture door."
Back in the crater, the golden-eyed boy wandered through a ruined valley of silver dust and broken machines.
He had no memories, but his instincts guided him.
He moved like a fighter.
Like someone who'd been chased most of his life.
He touched a broken drone and it lit up under his fingers.
Its eyes blinked red.
Scanning...
"Identity unknown. But signature reads: Loop Residual — Class: Fractured."
The boy blinked.
"Fractured," he whispered. "Is that... what I am?"
Suddenly, something darted overhead.
A shape.
Wings of obsidian.
He ducked instinctively.
A shadow hunter swooped low — synthetic, intelligent, deadly.
The boy sprinted toward the ruins.
The drone called out again.
"Warning: Fracture signature attracts Outside Harvesters."
Outside.
That word...
It triggered something.
A woman's voice. "The Outside didn't bring me back. You did."
He froze.
Who was she?
And why did her voice sound like home?
The harvester landed behind him, snarling, its bladed limbs scraping rock.
He turned.
And as it lunged—
Something awoke in him.
Time slowed.
Not as a power—but as a memory.
He moved before he could think—grabbing a broken pipe, sliding under the harvester's blade, and plunging the metal through its eye.
It collapsed in sparks.
He gasped, panting.
And whispered to no one, "How the hell did I do that?"
On the edge of the Praton galaxy, in an old outpost untouched since Loop 2.3, Juro and Maya arrived through the gate.
The air stank of rust and regret.
"This place," Maya whispered, "It used to be a refuge... before Prime corrupted it."
Juro looked around. "It's off-map. Hidden in the time cracks."
They walked through shattered control rooms, echoing with faded memories.
And then—
They saw it.
A mapboard still flickering weakly.
Maya stepped close.
Dozens of spirals showed failed loops, all marked red.
But one spiral—one—was flickering blue.
Timeline 0.0B7.
The only non-loop.
"That's where he is," Maya breathed.
"And he doesn't even know it," Juro said grimly.
"Can you open a gate?"
"Only one way," Juro replied. "If we use it, we'll leave the loop entirely. No backup. No reruns. No resurrection."
Maya nodded without hesitation. "Then burn the bridge behind us."
Juro gave her a long, quiet look. "You love him more than you fear the end, don't you?"
She smiled faintly. "I loved him before the beginning. That's deeper than time."
He activated the gate.
It screeched open like a dying god.
They stepped into the light.
Back on the silver dust planet, the boy built a fire out of drone wreckage and watched the flames dance.
The word Kael had started to echo in his mind.
Kael.
Kael...
He whispered it out loud.
It tasted right.
Not complete—but close.
Then he heard something move behind him.
He turned quickly.
It was a girl.
Dark braids. Eyes that carried entire galaxies in them.
She froze.
He did too.
Maya's voice broke. "Kael...?"
He blinked. "Do... do I know you?"
She smiled through her tears. "No. But you will."
And then—before anything else could be said—
The ground beneath them shook.
A massive loop rift opened in the sky.
Someone was coming through.
But it wasn't Prime.
It was worse.
It was something Prime had sealed outside of time.
A creature made of failed loops and lost versions of Kael. It had his face—but corrupted, stretched across five timelines at once.
Its voice was made of static and sorrow.
"Give... me... the original," it moaned.
Maya stepped in front of Kael.
"You'll have to go through me."
The beast roared.
It was called The Collector. A thing that fed on memories, on identities erased by the loops. It had been waiting for the spiral to weaken.
And now it was hungry.
It charged.
Kael didn't know who he was.
Didn't know why this girl would risk her life for him.
But when the creature raised its arm, and Maya screamed—
Something snapped inside him.
Flashes.
Maya in his arms.
Juro laughing in a prison cell.
The first time he broke a loop.
The last time he whispered goodbye.
His hands glowed.
Energy surged.
And for a moment—just one—he remembered his name.
"Kae'Luan."
He raised both hands.
And unleashed.
A pulse tore through the valley, blasting The Collector back into the rift.
Silence fell.
Maya collapsed.
Kae'Luan caught her.
She looked up at him, bleeding but smiling. "You came back."
He held her close.
"I never left."
But far above, the rift stayed open.
A voice echoed out:
"YOU UNLOCKED THE FINAL GATE."
Kae'Luan looked up.
And saw the spiral of all possible selves unfolding—
Thousands of versions of him.
Some alive.
Some dead.
Some evil.
And in the center?
Kael Prime.
Waiting.
To be continued…