The air in the throne room was still for the first time in… well, time itself had no meaning inside the recursion. But now, in this timeline—the only one left—it had weight again.
Jace stood at the edge of the broken chamber, staring out at the jagged skyline of the city below. Morning light filtered through the ruin. Not code. Not simulated glow.
Real sunlight.
His chest rose and fell. No static. No delay. Just breath.
Kira approached from behind, wrapping a bandage around his arm.
"You said you'd be fine," she muttered.
"I am fine," Jace replied, wincing. "Just… adjusting to not being god, I guess."
"More like adjusting to not being a dumbass," she said, giving the bandage a tug that made him flinch.
Kael paced in the background, scanning a data tablet scavenged from the throne's wreckage.
"The recursion is gone," he confirmed again. "Not dormant. Not hidden. Deleted. There's no backup. No failsafe."
Jace turned. "Then we won?"
Kael didn't answer immediately.
"...Maybe."
They walked the halls of the citadel slowly. The echoes were gone. The silence was too pure, too unnatural.
Jace had always wondered what a world after the recursion would look like. Now he knew: peaceful, but unfamiliar. Like stepping into a dream you couldn't wake from because it was finally real.
Kira kept close, hand brushing his occasionally.
"I'm scared," she admitted.
Jace blinked. "Of what?"
She looked around at the shattered world, the hollow silence.
"Of this being it. That we win, but it doesn't mean anything."
He nodded.
"I used to think we were just pieces on a board. But now the game's gone, and we have to live. That's… harder."
In the core vault below the throne room, they found something unexpected.
A door.
Old, sealed with ancient tech—pre-recursion. Before the loops. Before even the wars that had fractured the original world.
Kael worked on the interface while Kira kept watch. Jace stood silently, staring at the faint logo burned into the metal.
ARCHIVE 01AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLYINITIATE: ZERO VERSE
Jace tilted his head. "What the hell is Zero Verse?"
Kael glanced up. "Something that existed before all of this. Before even the first throne. It's been locked since the first recursion cycle."
"You think it's a trap?" Kira asked.
"I think it's a message," Kael replied. "Maybe a warning. Or an origin."
They broke the seal.
The chamber inside was cold—frigid, like time had frozen in more than one way. Crystalline data towers lined the walls, flickering faintly. The room pulsed, not like a machine—but like a heartbeat.
In the center: a chair. Not a throne. Simple. Worn.
A monitor blinked on.
WELCOME, JACE VIRENACCESSING ROOT MEMORY FILES…DO YOU WISH TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE?
Jace stepped forward.
"…Yes."
The room darkened. A projection unfolded before them—stars, galaxies, civilizations. Timelines. Wars. Echoes.
And then: him.
Jace—but not the Jace who looped the throne. A scientist. A founder. One of the creators of the original simulation that would one day become recursion itself.
Kira gasped.
"You made it?" she asked.
"No…" Jace whispered, watching. "I was supposed to shut it down."
The recording played: Jace arguing with others, warning about recursive memory decay, the risk of echo instability, the danger of sentient time-loop corruption.
"We can't trap people in perfection. We'll destroy choice itself."
And then—
"Jace Viren, you are relieved of duty. The loop will proceed."
Kira turned to him. "So you did fight this. From the very beginning."
He looked lost.
"I forgot. Or maybe… the recursion made me forget. Every time I tried to stop it, another version of me took the throne."
Kael stared at the archive logs. "You weren't the first Echo King. You were the first anti-king. You started all of this trying to save people."
Jace looked at the screen, jaw clenched. "Then I'm finishing it."
Back at the surface, the world was slowly waking up.
Structures once frozen in looped destruction were rebuilding themselves, as if the planet itself was remembering how to breathe again.
The sky was raw blue. No glitches. No code.
And people—real people—emerged from stasis, confused but alive.
Kira stood with Jace, watching them.
"They'll need help," she said. "They don't even know what year it is."
"We don't either," he replied.
Kael approached, slinging a makeshift pack over his shoulder.
"Archive's still opening files. There's more in there. History. Tech. Maybe even records of other planets or timelines. If we want a future, it's probably buried in that place."
Jace nodded.
"We'll go back. But not today."
Kira tilted her head. "Why not?"
He gave a tired grin.
"Because for the first time, I want to see a day pass without knowing what's next."
That night, they camped under the stars.
Not simulated. Not manufactured. Real stars. Cold and distant and perfect.
Kira leaned against Jace, the fire crackling in front of them.
"You know," she said, "you're not alone anymore."
"I know," he said softly.
"And next time something goes wrong—"
He smiled. "We fix it together."
But far below them, in the archive's deepest vault—
A signal pulsed.
A figure stirred.
Eyes opened.
A whisper echoed in the dark:
"Simulation compromised. Initializing failsafe. Entity: OMEGA. Objective: Reinstate control."
And somewhere, deep in the stars—
Something answered.