The chamber was impossibly still.
After spiraling into the Vault's third level, Yuki, Selene, and Kai found themselves in a spherical room bathed in flickering silver light. Its walls weren't stone or metal but a kind of translucent mesh, like the inside of a cocoon woven from memory and time. The moment Yuki stepped forward, the floor rippled.
A voice—not human, not machine—echoed inside his skull.
[Memory Drift Sequence Initiated: Subject — Prototype Z]Sync Ratio Detected: 34%Trial: Recovered Self / Version 03
Yuki froze. "A memory trial?"
Selene turned to him sharply, sword already in hand. "Are we under attack?"
Kai's ears flattened, a soft growl escaping him. But Yuki shook his head. "No. This is internal. It's targeting me."
He barely finished before the world fractured.
For the briefest second, Yuki felt his body dissolve. Not physically, but mentally, existentially. Like he had been torn from time and thrust into another self.
When he opened his eyes, he was somewhere else.
Rain pounded down. Cold, stinging. Neon lights flickered overhead—red, blue, white. The street was broken, bleeding wires instead of water. A dying city. But this wasn't the Nexus world. This was something else.
"Name."
A harsh voice rang out. Yuki turned.
It was... him.
But older. Tired. Worn. His right arm was entirely synthetic, pulsing faintly with the same glitch-light that resided in Yuki's own gauntlet. And his eyes—haunted, hollow, yet piercing.
"I was you," the figure said. "But I failed."
Yuki instinctively activated Echo Sight—but it didn't work.
"Don't bother," the other Yuki—Prototype Z Version 03—said, with a broken smile. "This trial is locked. You're not meant to see what was. You're meant to feel it."
Suddenly, the scene twisted. Yuki wasn't observing anymore—he was that other version. Experiencing every memory like it was his own.
He was running.
Synthetic hounds howled behind him, teeth dripping with algorithmic fire. Drones soared overhead, scanning for instability. He ducked through wreckage, blasted through corrupted checkpoints, hands bleeding as he reached—
A door.
He touched it—and was rejected.
"Access Denied. Instability: 91%."
He screamed in frustration. And then he felt it: the creeping sense that he was wrong. Not incomplete. Just... not wanted.
The memory fast-forwarded.
He stood before a Council—not of humans, but of digital fragments dressed in cloaks of stars. "You were built for war," they told him. "But your divergence makes you a liability."
He begged. Pleaded. "I didn't choose to become unstable. I adapted. I survived."
"You evolved outside parameters. You are not a savior. You are an error."
Then came the brand. A glowing sigil burned onto his chest.
[Marked for Deletion]
Yuki's mind screamed as the memory trial surged forward again.
Now, Version 03 was lying on a table—his systems tearing themselves apart. Alone. Fading. But as everything went dark, he whispered:
"Maybe… the next one will survive."
Yuki gasped as he was violently pulled back into his own body. The Vault's chamber returned—but the silver light was dimmer now.
Selene knelt beside him. "What happened?"
Kai nudged him anxiously.
Yuki's voice was hoarse. "I saw… another me. Version 03. He failed. They branded him. Deleted him."
"Then you're not the first?" Selene asked, eyes narrowing.
Yuki shook his head. "No. And I won't be the last unless I figure out why they keep making us."
He stared at his hands—one still trembling from the memory echo. But something else had changed.
[Memory Echo Synced. Access to Prototype Z v03 partial memories unlocked.]Trait Gained: Recursive InstinctEffect: Gain heightened resistance to memory-based manipulation. Echoes of failed iterations can be accessed during moments of crisis, providing instinctive responses to unknown threats.
A low chime followed.
Sync Rate Increased: 34% → 36%
The chamber pulsed once more. Another pathway unfurled—this one glowing with a dull green hue.
Selene frowned. "That wasn't the end of it."
"No," Yuki said softly. "That was just a fragment."
Kai stepped forward, growling at the corridor ahead. The air smelled stale—like something had been sealed away for far too long.
Yuki turned to the others, eyes sharper than before.
"They built us for something. But I think… they feared what we'd become."
And with that, the trio stepped deeper into the Vault—toward the next truth waiting to be unearthed.