The recursion-prison known as Limbre had no coordinates.
Because it wasn't somewhere.
It was somewhen.
Buried in a locked neural sequence only accessible through deep-glyph projection, Limbre didn't cage bodies—it caged moments. A closed loop, forced on unstable glyph-bearers deemed too dangerous for deletion and too broken for reintegration.
Their punishment wasn't death.
It was eternity—living the same 11 minutes again and again.
And the seventh shard?
Runa had finally traced it to a Subject lost within.
Codename: Aeron Cresh.
And three years ago, Astra had put him there.
"He shouldn't still be alive," Dahlia muttered as the pod hissed open.
"He isn't," Astra replied. "Not in the way we are."
They were standing in the center of a Null Protocol breach vault, deep beneath Sector Eleven. The last safe portal into the Limbre recursion. Astra stared at the glyph mirror on the wall—still faintly flickering, still looping the same scene.
A room.
A window.
A man sitting at a table.
A clock with no hands.
"Eleven minutes," Runa said over the comm. "That's all you get before Limbre collapses the loop and resets it—and you. You'll retain your shard alignment, but nothing else unless you anchor to a glyph inside."
Astra cracked her knuckles.
"Start the countdown."
Timestamp: 00:00.
The world snapped into place.
White room. Metal table. One window showing a false sun. And across from her:
A man with wild eyes, silver-flecked hair, and glyph tattoos crawling along his spine like vines too long untrimmed.
Aeron Cresh.
He looked up slowly.
And smiled.
"Well," he said. "About time you came back."
Timestamp: 00:45.
Astra didn't sit. "You remember me."
"I forget everything except you," he replied. "And that's what drives me mad."
He tapped the table. "Every loop, you show up. Sometimes with fire. Sometimes with mercy. Sometimes not at all. But I remember you. And I remember… this."
He touched the back of his neck.
A glyph pulse lit the room.
And the seventh shard emerged from his spine like molten gold.
Astra's breath caught. "You've been carrying it."
"No," he whispered. "I've been protecting it. From you."
Timestamp: 02:20.
"You broke recursion protocol," Astra said. "You were trying to weaponize shard harmonics."
"No," he said. "I was trying to evolve them. But you stopped me. Locked me here. And now, here we are."
He smiled bitterly. "But this time… you brought the others with you."
He tapped the table.
And suddenly—
Everything shattered.
Timestamp: 02:22.
The world looped violently.
Astra found herself back at the door, disoriented.
Aeron was still seated. Smiling wider.
"You're moving faster this time," he said.
"Did you just override the loop?"
"No. I bent it. The shard lets me cheat. You think I'm your enemy, but I'm just a leftover. A side effect of the system you've been trying to dismantle."
Timestamp: 04:05.
Astra gripped the edge of the table. "Then give it to me. Help me end this."
"You think collecting shards will save you?" he hissed. "You think Zero's afraid of you?"
He leaned in.
"Zero isn't trying to overwrite reality."
"It's trying to become it."
Astra froze.
"What?"
"It's not a virus anymore," he said. "It's a blueprint. And every shard you gather? You're stitching the final version together."
Timestamp: 05:30.
Alarms blared in the distance.
The loop was destabilizing.
Dahlia's voice cracked through the static of Astra's mind.
"You have less than five minutes. Anchor or pull out."
But Astra didn't move.
She stepped closer to Aeron.
"I didn't come here to be afraid."
"No," he said. "You came here to remember what you are."
Then—he reached for her hand.
Placed it against his chest.
And the shard released.
Not in pain.
But in acceptance.
Timestamp: 06:00.
The world slowed.
Glyphs spun in the air.
A flash of light.
And suddenly—
Astra stood alone.
Holding the seventh shard, burning ice-blue in her palm.
A new glyph formed beneath her skin:
[RESONANCE: ACCEPTED]
And Aeron's voice echoed as the loop began collapsing around her:
"Remember, Vale… shards don't just unlock memory. They become it."
She activated the anchor glyph.
The recursion shattered.
And she emerged into the vault—breath ragged, eyes glowing.
Dahlia steadied her. "You got it?"
Astra held up her hand.
Seven of nine.
And for the first time, she didn't feel stronger.
She felt like a fuse being lit.
That night, Astra stood beneath the skyline.
The shard hummed against her ribs.
But she didn't hear it.
She heard Aeron's words:
"Every shard you collect… builds the final version."
She looked at her hands.
Then up at the stars—
And for a moment, she swore they blinked back in glyph patterns.
Not written.
Woven.