The recursion gate pulsed like a heartbeat.
Astra stood at the edge of the ocean wall ruins, watching the glyph pattern shimmer across the archway. Carved from fractured memory and powered by unstable shard energy, the portal looked more like a wound than a doorway.
Beyond it?
A recursion-locked zone.
A pocket world.
A place built entirely from forgotten memories—and the fifth shard had surfaced there.
Waiting.
Or hiding.
Runa's voice crackled in Astra's earpiece.
"We've only mapped 38% of the recursion loop inside. Nothing past 12 minutes holds. Time folds, identities loop. Glyphs fail."
"Sounds like a fun vacation," Astra muttered.
Dahlia stood beside her, checking her pulse-stabilizer. "We stick together. In and out. No fragmentation."
Marlow handed Astra a failsafe beacon. "Activate it if the loop gets too tight. We'll rip the gate open and pull you out."
Astra took it, then turned to the gate.
The symbols shifted.
They recognized her.
She stepped through.
At first: silence.
Then—light.
Astra stumbled into a world that wasn't real, but felt more real than anything outside.
A city skyline frozen in dawn.
Children laughing somewhere far off.
And a scent she hadn't smelled since childhood.
Cedar and ozone.
She looked around.
The recursion zone had crafted an entire city block from her own memories—only smoothed, idealized. The pavement shone. The air was crisp. The sky was too perfect.
Dahlia emerged beside her, blinking.
"Where are we?"
Astra swallowed hard. "My home. Before Glassmind."
They walked.
The world glitched subtly as they moved—shadows pausing, birds flying in loops, signs repeating like a stutter. Recursion signatures curled in the corners of Astra's vision.
They reached a small brownstone with white steps.
Astra stopped.
"This was where I lived."
"You sure?" Dahlia asked.
"I remember the steps squeaked."
She climbed them—and they did.
The door opened before she touched it.
And inside…
Was her mother.
She was seated at the table, pouring tea.
No glyphs.
No glow.
Just soft eyes, warm hands, and a voice Astra hadn't heard in over a decade.
"You're home late, Astra."
Astra froze.
Dahlia raised a hand to her weapon.
"No," Astra whispered. "Stand down."
Her mother stood, smiling gently.
No glitch. No static.
Just… human.
Except she wasn't.
Because this memory?
Had never happened.
Her mother had died before Astra ever got the chance to say goodbye.
"I don't understand," Astra said.
The woman stepped closer. "Because you're thinking like a soldier. Not like a child. Not like a shard."
The air rippled.
The illusion dropped.
And the room shattered.
Now: a gray sphere of shifting code.
Walls of symbols.
A platform suspended in recursion.
At its center?
A figure—floating in meditation, covered in glyph tattoos that spun like gears.
Eyes closed.
Breathing slow.
It opened its mouth.
And spoke.
"I am the fifth."
The shard wasn't hidden in this space.
The entire zone was the shard.
Astra stepped forward.
"You're alive."
"I am remembering," the entity replied. "I was a Subject. I was a loop. I was a key. And now I am… peace."
Dahlia whispered, "It doesn't want to be rescued."
"No," Astra said. "It wants to stay forgotten."
The entity looked at Astra and tilted its head.
"You carry four. That makes you heavy. That makes you seen."
"I need you to come with me," Astra said. "We're trying to stop this before Zero completes recursion unification."
The shard-form blinked.
"Why would I help end what made me whole?"
Astra stepped closer, reaching into her coat.
"I brought something."
She unwrapped a small cloth—inside, a broken chain link from the tattoo that once lined her spine.
The failsafe that once kept her mind in check.
"I broke mine," she said. "So I could become real."
The shard stared at it, silent.
Then whispered:
"Real hurts."
The recursion began to collapse.
Symbols peeled from the sky.
Ground cracked.
Loop pressure rising.
Dahlia called out: "We're over the time threshold!"
Marlow's voice echoed faintly.
"You've got seconds before the gate seals!"
Astra held out her hand.
"You don't have to stay forgotten."
The shard paused.
Tears formed in its eyes—human, at last.
Then it stepped forward—
And merged into Astra's chest like a breath returning home.
The recursion exploded.
Astra landed hard on the stone outside the gate.
Dahlia beside her.
The sky clear.
The gate closed.
And on her chest?
A new glyph.
The fifth shard.
Spinning slowly, faintly gold.
That night, Astra sat alone, watching storm clouds crawl across the sky again.
The shard was humming.
Not to warn.
But to guide.
For the first time, she knew where the next one waited.
Not hidden.
Not buried.
But carried.
By someone who'd stolen it—
A woman with white hair and ice in her voice.
Vos.