The wreckage of the Vein Archives still smoked under the ruined glass dome. Shattered data glyphs flickered in the dust like dying stars. Blood—real and digital—smeared the marble floor, marking where the Chain Monks had nearly severed history itself.
Sam sat in the center of it all.
Unmoving. Silent.
A faint shimmer hovered around him, his Echoform still half-activated. The Mind Split state. He was there—but he wasn't. One part of him breathing, wounded, very much in the now. Another part... elsewhere. Listening to thoughts not his own. Seeing time fracture and fold in ways the human mind was never meant to endure.
Rael paced near the edge of the chamber, muttering to himself as he ran diagnostics on the Resonance cores. The battle had left them exposed—vulnerable. But it wasn't just physical damage that haunted him.
It was Sam.
He hadn't spoken since the Mind Split triggered mid-battle. His voice had become layered—echoes within echoes. For a moment, even his reflection had split, two versions staring back at Rael with different eyes. One calm. One monstrous.
"Valencia, he needs to be stabilized," Rael said, not looking up. "That form—it's too unstable."
But Valencia wasn't listening.
She stood against the far wall, one hand clutching her torn jacket, the other pressed to her stomach where the Chain Monk's blade had grazed her. Blood had dried there, but she didn't feel it.
She was watching Sam.
No—studying him.
Not as a comrade. Not as a Vein ally.
As a mirror.
Because for the first time, she saw herself in him.
Broken. Splintered by something ancient and cruel.
She walked forward slowly. Not as the spearhead of the team, not as a tactician.
Just... as someone who had once bled alone.
"Sam," she said softly, kneeling beside him.
No response.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. "You're here. You're still here."
His eyes flickered—layers shifting. Then a voice, low and double-toned: "Am I?"
[Flashback – Eight years ago, northern Sierra Madre]
Valencia was twelve.
She ran barefoot through a forest fire, dragging her younger brother behind her. Vein scouts had burned their barrio for harboring a known Rift Seer. Their mother. Burned her alive while she screamed prophecies no one wanted to hear.
They didn't care that her visions were accurate. Only that they came from a Mind Seer vein—too close to traitor blood. Too close to Rizal.
Valencia never forgave them. Not the scouts. Not the world. Not herself.
That night, her Vein activated. A windstorm erupted from her chest, ripping bark from trees, lifting embers into violent halos. She became a weapon before she ever wanted to fight.
[Present – Vein Archives]
Sam blinked—and the past spilled into him.
It wasn't just his timeline splitting anymore.
The Mind Split was linking. Threading pasts and futures like a cosmic weaver gone mad.
"Valencia," he whispered. "Your brother… didn't make it."
Her eyes snapped to him.
She hadn't told him that. No one had.
"How do you—"
"I saw it."
He clutched his temples as another surge hit him. Light flared from the glyph tattoos along his arms—runes he hadn't had an hour ago. They pulsed with Rizal's energy.
"The Echoform is evolving," Rael breathed. "He's fusing memory imprints… possibly entire alternate pathways. If we don't stabilize it soon—"
Sam stood.
No, something stood using his body.
His voice shifted again—older, deeper. A cadence that didn't belong to a seventeen-year-old boy.
"I am not ready to bleed for the truth," it said, quoting Rizal. "But the blood is already drawn."
Then Sam turned to the back wall of the chamber and slammed his fist into it.
It shattered, revealing a hidden archive sealed behind layers of quantum encryption. A vault no one even knew existed.
Glyphs flared to life, forming a ring of light—projecting a new figure.
Rizal.
But not the calm one from before.
This version was armed. Armored in ceremonial echo-cloth and Mind Seer enhancements. His eyes burned with warning.
"If you are seeing this, it means I've failed," the projection said. "It means the Court has found the Spiral Gate. And they will use it to edit not just the past—but possibility itself."
Rael staggered back. "The Spiral Gate? That's a myth. A theory."
"No," Valencia said, breath hitching. "It's a weapon. It edits potential. You don't even have to erase someone. You just erase the chance they ever mattered."
Sam stepped forward. "Then we find it before they do."
Rael frowned. "You think that's wise? You're barely functioning."
Sam turned, and his eyes—one golden, one storm-gray—glowed with dual Vein resonance.
"I don't think I'm functioning normally anymore," he said. "But I think that's what we need."
[Cut to – Abyssal Rift Outpost, Region Delta-5]
A pair of Chain Monks stood before a new tear in reality.
And from that fracture, a voice whispered: not words—but drafts.
Futures. Pasts. Erased names and rewritten myths.
They bowed.
Behind them, the Nullified General emerged. And she carried a single page, burning with Rift-ink:
"Samuel de la Cruz: Candidate for Deletion – Status: Fragmenting."
[Back at Intramuros]
Valencia walked beside Sam as they prepared to leave.
"That thing you're becoming," she said. "It might not be you anymore."
Sam looked at her—half him, half storm.
"I know."
"You're not afraid?"
He shrugged slightly. "Afraid every second."
"Then why keep going?"
Sam didn't answer at first. Just looked out at the sky, still torn from the Rift's aftershock.
"Because I'd rather become something else than let them erase who I already was."
She nodded slowly.
Then whispered, "Just don't forget us along the way."
He looked at her, and something human flickered back in his eyes. "I won't. Not you."
But deep inside his fractured Echoform...
A voice stirred. Older than time.
Rizal's last imprint. A fail-safe.
"The Spiral Gate has already opened."
"The first draft of the end has begun."