Some fates are not chosen. They're assigned—by those who wield the pen behind the veil.
[Opening Scene – Intramuros HQ, Command Room]
"Play it again," Admiral Ina ordered.
The hologram replayed the moment the Severed One emerged from the Eternal Rift. But the footage jittered—distorted—as though reality itself couldn't decide what had happened.
Rael stood beside her, arms crossed, face grim.
"That thing didn't just step out," he said. "It edited its way in."
Sam, now steady on his feet but still speaking in dual-tone, nodded. "It's not breaking into our world. It's correcting a version where it was already here."
The room fell into heavy silence.
Valencia stepped forward. "Then we stop it before the edit sticks."
[Scene Shift – Within the Eternal Rift (Antagonist POV)]
The Severed One floated through a dimension that looked like torn manuscript pages, each fragment pulsing with rewritten truths.
A chorus of rewritten myths whispered around it:
"Lapu-Lapu died in shame."
"Bonifacio betrayed the revolution."
"Sam was always Court-born."
Behind the Severed One trailed its scribe: a humanoid draped in living ink, quill-fingers scratching revisions into the bleeding folds of reality.
"We must finish the draft," said the Scribe. "The Echoform has awakened. He remembers too much."
The Severed One raised a hand of broken clockwork.
"Then let us overwrite him. Paragraph by paragraph. Memory by memory."
[Scene Shift – Archive Chambers, Intramuros HQ]
Sam stood before a sealed Archive Vault—Rift Locked, only accessible through dual Resonance keys.
Valencia handed him the second fragment. "These are your inherited echoes," she said. "Your line never ended, Sam. The Courts only erased the witnesses."
He took the fragment.
A pulse ran through the vault.
It opened.
Inside was the last encrypted echo of Leon Malvar—one of the final General-Echoes of the Unwritten Resistance. Malvar's spirit, bound by oath, flickered to life.
"Who bears the flame?" he asked.
"I do," Sam said.
Malvar smiled sadly. "Then burn the draft. Tear it from their ink-soaked hands."
[Scene Shift – Rael's Discovery]
Alone in the Crypt Chamber, Rael studied a blueprint stolen from a Court facility.
It showed a Reverse Resonance Bomb—a weapon capable of collapsing a timeline into non-existence.
The catch?
It had to be triggered from inside the reality it aimed to destroy.
A suicide weapon.
He clenched the scroll.
"I'll do it," he whispered.
But the room answered him with silence.
And from the shadows, a pair of violet eyes blinked open.
"You don't get to choose sacrifice," said a cold voice.
Rael spun—and found himself face to face with a boy who looked exactly like him.
Only older.
Only broken.
Only... Court-born.
[Scene Shift – Vein Tower, Sam's Solo Echo Training]
Sam now trained under Malvar's projection, attempting to stabilize his Echoform: Mind Split.
"You must learn to speak without echo," Malvar instructed. "If both selves speak at once—you'll lose your name."
Sam gritted his teeth.
His movements glitched.
One part of him attacked forward.
The other defended.
He was fighting himself inside his own Resonance.
Suddenly, he saw it again—
The version of him the Court worshiped.
Eyes hollow.
A crown made of timelines.
His voice laced with cruelty: "You always rewrite the ending. But it's my pen now."
Sam fell to one knee.
Bleeding from his ear.
"I won't become you."
"No," the future said. "You'll become me, because you won't kill what you love."
Sam's hand trembled. "I can try."
[Scene Shift – Court of Logos, Rift Hall]
The Director stood before a Rift Forge—a massive construct powered by memories harvested from rewritten lives.
The Scribe approached.
"Our counter-narrative is nearly complete. The Severed One is seeding contradictions through myth and memory."
"Good," the Director said. "Once the Mind Split collapses, the final version of Sam will be ready to draft. We install him into the public story. Make him our Flame."
"And the others?"
"Let them fight. It gives the readers something to cling to."
She turned to a bound prisoner in the shadows—Valencia's brother, barely conscious.
"Your sister's flame will go out, boy. And she will light the new canon with it."
[Final Scene – Battle Preparation]
Valencia stood on the roof of Vein Tower, hair whipping in the wind.
Rael stood beside her, shaken, but armed.
Sam stepped forward, dual-toned, eyes calm despite the war inside him.
They stared out at the Rift opening wider each hour.
"The Court's not just erasing us," Sam said. "They're installing a new world."
"Then we give them a story they can't control," Valencia replied.
Rael raised a Resonant Blade. "And bleed ink all over their perfect pages."
A third voice now whispers in Sam's dreams—neither his nor the corrupted future.
A child's voice. Soft. Familiar.
Saying only:
"Don't forget who you were before they wrote you."