The collapse wasn't instant.
It staggered.
Reality didn't simply disappear—it glitched, rewound, distorted.
One second, Kieran was standing in Calloway's sterile, metallic chamber. The next, he was somewhere else entirely.
A corridor.
No, a memory of a corridor.
The walls flickered, shifting between smooth metal and something older, more industrial—rusted beams, flickering fluorescent lights, damp concrete.
The air was thick with the scent of machine oil and something else—something sharp, like burnt circuits.
He had been here before.
Not just in another life.
In all of them.
Kieran stumbled forward, his mind fracturing and reforming all at once. His legs felt real, but his body felt… displaced, as if it wasn't fully synced with where he was.
He turned.
Calloway was gone.
No alarms. No guards. Just silence.
But Kieran knew better.
This place—this liminal space between collapse and reset—wasn't empty.
It was full of ghosts.
He walked forward. His footsteps echoed unnaturally, bouncing in directions they shouldn't. The corridor stretched endlessly, yet he knew—somehow—he was close.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
His voice.
"If you ever make it this far… find me."
The memory slammed into him like a freight train.
FLASH.
A hidden room.
A dark screen.
A message encoded in the system itself.
A warning.
From himself.
FLASH.
Kieran's breathing quickened.
His past selves hadn't just fought for survival.
They had left behind breadcrumbs.
And he was finally following the trail.
The corridor flickered again, distorting. He ran forward, chasing the echoes of himself.
Doors lined the walls, stretching endlessly into the darkness.
But only one was real.
Only one would lead him to the truth.
Kieran's eyes locked onto a single door at the end of the corridor. It wasn't metal like the others.
It was wood.
A relic from a world that no longer existed.
His heartbeat hammered as he reached for the handle.
The moment his fingers touched the surface—
The world shattered.
And everything rushed back.