Rael's vision darkened for a moment. The world didn't fade—it glitched. The room around him trembled, colors melting and reforming like watercolors bleeding together. The air thickened, humming with chaotic energy.
"System Alert: Timeline Resonance Detected. A parallel consciousness is trying to override this instance."
The words blinked in the air, red and warning-like. Rael raised his eyes to the smart system window hovering silently beside him—the sleek dark-blue pane, with silver lettering and thin vertical threads of data. The AI, called Eidolon Core, shimmered as it struggled to stabilize.
[Status: Interdimensional Drift Detected] [Emergency Anchor Protocol Suggested]
Rael didn't panic. He closed his eyes for three seconds, breathing in control. He was calm, calculating, as his Doller persona always was. That version of him had handled pressure that could make grown men cry blood.
But even Doller would be wary now.
"Where am I going?" he asked calmly.
[Answer: The Echo Frame. A non-linear replica of your multiverse signature. Time does not behave normally here.]
Rael's boots hit solid ground again, but this time the world was dark and rusted. It was the same corridor from the Academy, but twisted, corroded by age and something more—wrongness. Time peeled and reassembled along the walls. A hundred versions of himself flickered in and out of phase.
And at the far end of the corridor…
A man stood watching him. No, not a man. A shadowy echo of Rael himself—cold, wearing the same Academy uniform, but eyes empty, void of all emotion.
Rael took a step forward. The shadow mirrored it.
[WARNING: You are facing your Prime Anchor Reflection. Defeat it or be overwritten.]
He didn't hesitate. The silver rings around his wrist activated, unleashing waves of data-light that wrapped around his arm like armor. He activated a new talent skill.
[Skill Acquired: Absolute Null] [Description: Nullifies all illusion-based constructs. Cooldown: 24 minutes.]
"Let's see how real you are," Rael muttered.
The battle began. The echo version was fast—eerily fast—but Rael had mastered fighting styles beyond normal human capacity. Dodging left, spinning under a blade of compressed time energy, Rael retaliated with a knee to the phantom's ribs, followed by a brutal palm strike.
But the shadow absorbed the hit.
[Observation: The Prime Echo learns as you fight. Recommend conclusion within 3 minutes.]
The fight grew savage. Every time Rael landed a hit, the echo adapted. But Rael wasn't just a fighter. He was a strategist.
He leapt back, pulling from memory a sequence only he knew—one created from raw instinct.
[Activating: Sequence Code: Phoenix Mirage – Unregistered Skill Detected]
His figure exploded into a flurry of crimson and silver afterimages, slamming the echo from six directions at once. The world around him vibrated, systems failing to process the complexity of the movement.
The shadow howled and cracked. Rael drove a blade of light into its core.
The reflection shattered.
[Prime Echo Neutralized. Eidolon Core Updated.]
Rael dropped to one knee, breathing heavily. The system window glitched and then reformed.
[New Trait Acquired: Shadowbane] [Effect: Immune to reflection-based abilities. Synchronization: 4%]
"Only 4 percent...? Then there's more to unlock."
The corridor changed. A door appeared, old and silver, marked with the emblem of the Forgotten Realms—a set of dimensions lost after the Collapse Wars.
Rael stepped forward, his mind spinning.
He hadn't told anyone, but he'd seen these doors in dreams long before he ever awakened.
Why?
And then a voice, female, whispered from the other side of the door:
"Rael... we finally found you."
He froze.
His mother had died ten years ago.
Rael stood in front of the ancient silver door, his heart racing in a way it hadn't in years. Not during life-or-death missions, not while collapsing interdimensional breaches. This—this—felt personal.
His mother's voice had been unmistakable.
He raised a hand toward the ornate surface. It pulsed at his touch.
[Eidolon Core: Signature match – 98%. Identity: Velyra Calix. Access: Maternal DNA Anchor recognized.]
"System," Rael muttered, throat tight. "Confirm if it's a memory construct or... real."
[Unable to confirm. This instance exists outside validated timeline branches.]
That wasn't comforting.
The door opened with a groan that echoed into his bones. On the other side was a white chamber, like the inside of a shell—curved, soft, and luminous. At the center, sitting atop a pedestal of glasslight, was a stasis capsule.
Inside, perfectly preserved, was a woman.
Rael staggered forward. "No... this isn't possible."
His mother—her face young, peaceful, exactly as he remembered—floated within.
[Memory Anchor Synch Rate: 99.9% – Temporal Drift Detected – Velyra Calix sealed here during Collapse Year: X-0031]
That year... that was when she had vanished.
Rael reached out to the panel beside the capsule. A rush of encrypted data scrolled past—coded in a hybrid format no system had been able to decode in years. But Rael wasn't just any system user. He had learned to read these.
[Decrypting...]
Fragments began to surface:
"If you are reading this, Rael..."
"You are the only one who can break the Chains of Origin."
"They took me to stop you from learning the truth."
Truth? What truth?
[Eidolon Core: Alert – Incoming Transmission – Unknown Origin – Tracing Signal…]
The room flickered. Rael's system window began glitching violently.
A figure stepped out of nothing—human-shaped, face wrapped in a metal veil, long cloak covered in runes of a language Rael couldn't recognize.
"You should not be here," the figure said, voice layered and cold. "She is the key. You are the lock."
Rael's eyes narrowed. "Then it's about time someone opened the door."
He surged forward. The figure responded with a wave of energy—but Rael was already predicting the move.
The moment energy formed, Rael activated Shadowbane, blinking behind the figure and hitting him with a compressed shock-pulse to the neck.
[New Combat Tag Earned: Strike Echo] [Effect: Counter an enemy within 0.2 seconds of a dimensional shift. Can be chained.]
The enemy reeled—but didn't fall. Instead, he began to split.
Not clones. Versions of himself. From other timelines.
Five. Ten. Fifteen.
Rael was surrounded.
The system gave a rare warning:
[Survivability: 4%. Recommendation: Retreat or Override Protocol: CHAOS CORE.]
Rael whispered, "Override approved. Activate Chaos Core."
The world erupted.
Flames that weren't fire, light that wasn't light, bled from Rael's body. His form changed—hair glowing with strands of blue and silver, eyes burning like twin galaxies.
He launched forward, tearing through the enemy with brutal precision, his strikes echoing like thunder across the multiverse.
[Chaos Core Active – Time Remnants Eliminated – Host System Stabilizing]
As the final version collapsed, a small orb dropped from its body. Rael caught it mid-air. It shimmered with pure temporal resonance.
[Item Acquired: Memory Kernel – Collapse Year Sequence Key Fragment]
Rael turned to the capsule. The system confirmed:
[Stasis Capsule Decryption: 87% Complete]
He had to wait. But something big had started.
He looked up at the ceiling, now shifting to a translucent dome showing a starfield unlike any in known space.
There was more beyond this door. More truths. More enemies.
And Rael Calix was ready to burn every rule that existed.
"Come find me," a voice whispered again—this time, not from the capsule.
But from within his mind.