Kieran's fingers flew across the panel, his cybernetic interface linking with the core system. Lines of raw code scrolled faster than human eyes could process. The simulation was fighting back—corrupting inputs, distorting pathways, trying to seal itself from his access.
But he wasn't here to break it.
He was here to overwrite it.
The command the First Kieran had given him wasn't an attack. It was a rewrite protocol—one that wouldn't just dismantle the system, but replace it with something new.
"You don't break it… you overwrite it."
Kieran's breathing steadied.
His past selves had failed because they had fought the system, trying to destroy what was too deeply embedded. But destruction was never the way out.
The only way to win was to become the system.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The words flashed across the screen.
The core door unsealed.
Kieran stepped forward, entering a vast chamber filled with pulsing light.
In the center of the room was the Heart of the System.
A floating construct of shifting data, shaped like an intricate geometric sphere. Every strand of information, every fragment of rewritten memory, every cycle— all of it was connected here.
And now, it was his to control.
Kieran reached out. His cybernetic hand merged with the data stream, light flooding through his neural pathways.
The moment he connected, the system's true history unraveled before him.
The Truth.
A long-forgotten war.
A catastrophic experiment.
A secret buried so deep, no one was meant to find it.
Kieran's existence—all seventy-two versions of him— was never supposed to happen.
He wasn't just an anomaly.
He was a glitch in time itself.
A fragment of a long-erased past that the system had desperately tried to contain.
And now, he was rewriting all of it.
Reality Shift: Begin.
Kieran's mind expanded as the core trembled. The simulation shattered, rebuilt, shifted.
For the first time in countless cycles, the reset didn't happen.
Because this time, the system wasn't erasing him.
It was becoming him.
Kieran's last thought before everything went dark—
Was that he had finally won.