Echoes of the Stellar Abyss
Kaine's silver sand sloughed off in quantum tides, revealing newborn dark-gold circuitry beneath. Alys traced the swirling nebula sigil on his scapula, where cerulean fluid seeped—metabolic byproducts from devouring the Prime Womb's core, each drop burning at 30,000°C. They floated above a dark matter ocean, its "waters" exhibiting bizarre non-Newtonian properties: when Alys probed with frostrose vines, ink-black waves instantly crystallized into cathedral-like spires.
"Time axes here are fractured." Sparks erupted from her crystalline heart as twelve temporal coordinates forced their way onto her retinas. One coordinate flashed Church crimson—three Ark-ships tore through dimensions, their prows carved with thorned sigils. The confession cannons charging along their hulls glowed with Alys' sixteen-year-old combat data.
The nebula sigil on Kaine's back unfurled into vast energy wings. As the first confession beam shattered the dark matter surface, his right arm had already morphed into a prismatic structure—the Prime Womb's star map made manifest. Attack energy refracting through spacetime dimensions. The beam split into seven hues, violet light piercing an Ark's shield to strike a cryo-pod.
No explosion followed—only memory deluges. Alys saw her sixteen-year-old self executing a rogue clone, the target morphing into Cinder's form mid-stab. Erased truths surged through the quantum sea: every purge target had been Cinder's anti-program vessels across timelines.
"They weaponized you as a cleansing tool." Kaine's prism-arm swept across the second Ark. Refracted beams etched hidden Church gene codes onto its hull. Upon the seventeenth character's completion, the Ark initiated self-destruct protocols—the characters spelling Alys' unaltered birth name.
The third Ark deployed a humanoid weapon—a Godslayer grown from Alys' twenty-three-year-old combat data, its spinal chainsaw engraved with Kaine's silver patterns. As it struck, the dark matter sea surged into a prison, dragging Alys' consciousness into memory corridors.
She stood in Polaris Lab's White Chamber. Cinder's mechanical arm inputted final virus codes, hundreds of blank embryos frozen in nitrogen tanks behind. As Church guards breached the door, he smiled at surveillance cameras: "Remember—pain is the Church's incalculable variable."
The Godslayer weapon froze mid-assault. Alys' vines pierced its neck, unearthing a trigger buried under combat data—a program encrypted with her five-year-old laughter. When the quantum key activated, silver patterns in its eyes reconfigured. The chainsaw reversed course, cleaving the Ark's energy core.
The dark matter ocean boiled. Kaine's energy wings cocooned them, nebula sigils resonating with prism-arm to tear open a dimensional rift. Falling through, Alys saw the seething sea crystallize into a mirror—reflecting an untainted timeline: white-haired Cinder teaching child-Alys to mold clay dolls on sunlit grass, dawn gilding smoke from a distant cabin's snow-capped roof.