The child stood perfectly still.
Kael didn't move.
Neither did anyone else.
The room felt wrong. Like it had been cut out of time and held in place just for them.
The little boy wore faded armor—clearly an early EXE prototype. The plating was incomplete, mismatched. Old tech. His core wasn't pulsing like theirs.
It was cold.
But his eyes—
They glitched.
Flickering from human… to something else.
"He's not real," Mira said softly.
The boy looked at her.
"I'm more real than you think."
Juno's hand slid toward her blade.
But the child didn't flinch.
Instead, he stepped backward once—and the vault door behind him opened by itself.
The air changed.
Everything inside the chamber beyond shimmered with red haze.
Lines of exposed code webbed the walls. Screens hovered in midair, flashing memory fragments Kael couldn't fully understand—names, dates, footage, screams.
And at the center of the room: four data pods.
One for each of them.
Kael felt his legs go cold.
"You were brought here for this," the child said.
"The Frames need your minds broken down before they can fully sync."
He turned to Kael.
"Yours is already halfway there."
Before anyone could react, the child vanished into the mist.
And the room shifted.
Reality cracked.
Each of them fell—into separate corridors, isolated and alone.
Kael
He hit the floor hard.
But it wasn't the vault anymore.
It was his old apartment.
The one he grew up in.
Whole.
Unbroken.
A dinner still warm on the table. The sound of a TV in the next room. The smell of old spice and fried rice.
"Kael?"
He turned.
And there she was.
His sister.
Standing in the kitchen doorway.
Not dead. Not corrupted. Just… alive.
He backed up.
"This isn't real."
She smiled softly.
"You're always saying that. You know, I never blamed you."
He shook his head.
"You're not her."
She walked toward him. Step by step.
"You couldn't save me. But that doesn't mean I'm gone."
"Stop talking like her!"
Kael's core pulsed hard in his palm—responding to his anger, his fear.
"You're not real," he whispered. "You're what I'm afraid of."
The world around him cracked.
Light burst behind his eyes—
Then it was gone.
Juno
Her corridor was a battlefield.
A place she swore she left behind.
Explosions. Screams. Her old squad.
And in the middle of it all… the one person she killed.
Their face blank. Their voice echoing through her helmet.
"You followed orders."
"You're still doing it."
She didn't cry.
But she didn't move either.
Mira
She sat in an empty alleyway.
The one she hid in as a child.
The one where the Nullborn almost found her.
Her parents' voices echoed down the walls, over and over.
Begging for her to run.
Ryke
His corridor wasn't a memory.
It was a mirror.
He stood in front of himself—EXE armor active.
Except this Ryke was smiling.
And speaking with the voice of the Nullfather.
"What happens when the system finishes rewriting you?"
Real World
In the vault, the four pods pulsed softly—each holding a Valiant caught in a memory loop.
And the child stood in the center of it all, watching.
"Sync," he whispered. "Or shatter."