Ayra had barely stepped out of Vault Archive Zero when the sky turned red.
Not with sunset—but with system code unraveling.
The air shimmered like static. Trees shook. And then the signal came.
[Global Broadcast: All Devourer-Class Vaultbearers]
[Subject Target: Vaeren Echo Holder – Codename: AYRA]
[Order: Total Rewrite – No Return]
Lirien's eyes widened. "They're sending a kill command."
Zayen cursed under his breath. "We're exposed. They know exactly where we are."
Ayra clenched her fists. Her skin felt too tight, like her body couldn't hold the Vaults inside anymore. Since giving up the memory, she'd changed. Not weaker—just more dangerous.
And the world could feel it.
They didn't have time to hide.
They didn't need to.
The first Hunter arrived within the hour.
He stepped through the veil of corrupted mist like a ghost pulled from a broken memory. Tall. Barefoot. His face cracked with scars of erased history. Eyes black as the Null Core itself. No weapon. No armor. Just presence.
[Hunter-Class Rewrite Agent Detected]
[Name: Malkir – The Forgotten Blade]
[Former Identity: REDACTED]
[Current Echo Type: Erasure Manifestation]
[Threat Level: LETHAL]
Ayra didn't wait for him to speak.
She launched forward with Vareth's flame in one hand and Kael's chains in the other. But the moment she struck, the world bent sideways.
She was standing beside Lirien again.
No—she never attacked.
Time skipped.
Zayen grabbed her wrist. "He's not just fast. He's rewriting the fight before it happens."
Malkir tilted his head, voice low and dispassionate. "Ayra Vantheir. Vault of Vaeren. Your existence is a fracture. You must be unmade."
"Then do it," she growled, stepping forward again.
He moved faster than light—and yet he never moved at all.
Lirien cried out. "He's untethered! His memory thread has no anchor point!"
Ayra blinked—and Zayen was gone.
Then she blinked again—and he was back, bleeding.
"What—?" she started.
"He cut me in a memory I didn't live," Zayen gasped.
Malkir advanced slowly, dragging the memory of the earth behind him like ash. "This is not vengeance. It is correction."
Ayra activated the Reversal Flame.
[Vault Trait Engaged: Reverse Present]
[Effect: Temporarily unweave incoming reality scripts]
Malkir flickered.
For one breath.
Enough.
Ayra lunged and struck true, flame sinking into his chest.
He hissed.
But didn't fall.
Instead, his cracked skin peeled away—and what remained was code. Glowing lines shaped like veins, pulsing with system commands.
[System Notice: Malkir is no longer fully human. Echo Core is permanently merged with Rewrite Directive.]
Zayen roared, "We can't kill him like this. He is the system."
Lirien knelt and slammed her staff into the ground, casting a memory net—her final ace.
It wrapped around Malkir's feet like chains made of thought.
Ayra reached into herself.
Not just one Vault this time.
All of them.
Vareth. Kael. Nameless. Vaeren.
She merged them.
[Echo Fusion Attempt — Unstable Merge Detected]
[Temporary Trait Created: Burning Memory Cage]
[Effect: Target becomes trapped inside their own past.]
She cast it.
And Malkir froze mid-step.
The light in his eyes dimmed.
Then he whispered.
"Ayra…?"
She froze.
That voice.
Not robotic. Not rewritten.
Human.
She stepped forward. "You know me?"
Malkir stared at her, a flicker of pain crossing his face. "You… were the first to survive."
"What?"
He trembled. "We… were test subjects. I failed. You lived."
Zayen hissed. "They used people to make the Vaults?"
Ayra felt her chest tighten. "I didn't remember. Until now."
Malkir smiled, faint and broken. "I remember you."
Then the system took him back.
He screamed once—and then vanished in a blink of red code.
Gone.
Lirien fell to her knees. "He remembered just long enough to break."
Ayra stood still.
Zayen placed a hand on her shoulder. "They're not sending machines anymore. They're sending ghosts of us."
She looked toward the sky, now riddled with static clouds.
"We need to find the other Vaeren echoes before the system does. Before more of us are turned into monsters."
And the wind carried a new whisper.
[Hunter-Class Agent #2 en route.]
[Codename: Mirror of Ayra.]
They moved camp that night, deeper into the Nullwood—a forest so corrupted by lost data that even time lagged behind. Zayen marked their trail with echo shards, Lirien kept a dream field up to shield their presence, and Ayra tried to silence the trembling in her bones.
She could still feel him—Malkir—the pain in his voice when he remembered her. The fact that he knew her from a time she no longer held. The system wasn't just hunting her anymore.
It was unearthing everything she had buried.
That's why when the silence broke, she was already half-expecting it.
[Incoming Signal Detected: Echo-Class Entity — Codename: Mirror of Ayra]
[Match Level: 94.8%]
[Warning: Subject carries partial Vaeren code.]
Zayen stepped forward. "Another hunter?"
Lirien's voice was barely a whisper. "No… a clone."
The trees bent. The shadows split.
And then Ayra saw her.
Same hair. Same eyes. Same scars—only mirrored, flipped like a reflection. The girl wore chainmail laced with memory silk, and her arms glowed with a Vault aura nearly identical to Ayra's own.
She smiled faintly.
"I wondered what I'd look like if I survived."
Ayra stepped forward, heart pounding. "You're not me."
"I was you," the Mirror said. "Until they took what they needed and left me in the Rewrite Chamber."
Zayen raised his blade. "She's a fragment copy."
"No," the Mirror corrected. "I'm the control version. The original prototype. You were the accident that broke free."
Ayra narrowed her eyes. "Then why are you here?"
"To take you back," she said. "And if I can't… to overwrite you."
She moved faster than any human should, matching Ayra's flame with one of her own. Vareth's wrath clashed against itself. The air hissed and curled around them.
Lirien and Zayen tried to intervene, but the dreamfield rippled—sealing Ayra and her mirror self in a pocket space.
A private war.
Ayra struck with chain and fire.
The Mirror countered with void and echo.
Each blow hurt.
Not because of the impact, but because every movement felt like hitting a forgotten version of herself.
"You don't remember what they did," the Mirror hissed. "The tests. The days in the white halls. The names they gave us before they erased them."
"I don't need to remember," Ayra said. "I survived. That's enough."
"No. You escaped. I was left behind. And now I'm all that's left of the girl who screamed your name while you forgot it."
Ayra paused mid-attack.
The Mirror surged forward—and landed a hit.
Ayra fell to her knees.
[Warning: Vaeren Echo Fragment destabilized.]
[Trait Conflict Detected.]
The Mirror placed a blade at Ayra's throat.
"You were the dream," she said. "But I'm the reality."
Ayra closed her eyes.
And smiled.
"Then I guess it's time I wake up."
She activated the Reversal Flame.
Not outward—but inward.
She burned the connection between them.
The Mirror screamed as the chain between their souls snapped—severing the shared code.
[Echo Link Severed.]
[Subject: Mirror of Ayra — Degraded to Incomplete Form.]
The reflection began to glitch, her body cracking like digital glass.
Before she vanished, her voice broke.
"I… only wanted to know what it felt like… to be free."
Ayra whispered, "I'm sorry."
And then her mirror self was gone.
The dreamfield shattered.
Zayen caught her as she stumbled.
Lirien's eyes were full of questions—but she didn't ask.
Ayra whispered, "They made another me. But they didn't give her a life. Just a mission."
Zayen looked away. "And now they know they can't beat you with power."
"They'll try something else," Ayra said, standing again. "Something worse."
She looked to the sky.
A signal burned above them.
A countdown.
[New Directive Incoming: Rewrite War – Phase 2.]
[Time Remaining: 72 Hours.]