Elara awoke with a sharp gasp.
Cold. Everything was cold.
The sterile scent of metal and ozone filled her lungs. Her fingers dug into smooth stone, slick with condensation. She lay on the floor of a chamber—no longer the facility. This place was different. Dim light pulsed from crystalline veins running through the walls, casting ghostly shadows that danced across the ceiling.
She sat up slowly, her body aching as though she'd been dropped from a great height. The silence around her was profound, pressing in like a weight. No hum of machines. No static from Axel. No voice. Just… stillness.
Where am I now?
The last thing she remembered was the collapse—the sound of Axel shouting, the world folding in on itself. And the man. That man. His eyes, his voice, his words—they clung to her like a splinter in her mind.
"You'll remember everything…"
The chamber responded to her thoughts. Lights along the floor flickered to life, forming a faint path leading into the darkness beyond. A low thrum vibrated beneath her feet—like a pulse, slow and deliberate.
Tentatively, she followed it.
The hallway was carved from stone and glass, ancient yet pulsing with technology. It looked like it belonged to no era she knew—like it had existed outside of time. As she moved deeper, she saw symbols etched into the walls. Some stirred something in her chest. Recognition? Or warning?
Then she heard it.
A voice. Faint, echoing.
"Elara…"
She froze. It wasn't Axel. It was female. Familiar.
"Elara, you have to remember…"
The hallway twisted suddenly, widening into a circular chamber that opened like a blooming flower. At its center stood a column of light, swirling with the same energy as the rift—only calmer. Contained.
And within it, a figure.
Female. Cloaked. Head bowed.
Elara stepped forward cautiously. "Who are you?"
The figure raised her head, revealing Elara's own face—older, weary, eyes filled with sorrow and resolve.
"No," Elara whispered, her knees buckling. "This… this isn't possible."
The older version of herself stepped from the light, her expression soft but urgent. "It's time you understood. Time is folding in ways it was never meant to. The unraveling wasn't an accident—it was a fracture. One we created."
"We?" Elara repeated, heart thudding. "What do you mean we?"
"You and I—we opened the first gate," her future self said. "We thought we could rewrite what was lost. But the more we tried to fix it, the more reality bent. I stayed behind to hold the breach. But now... it's your turn."
Elara took a step back. "No. No, I don't remember any of this. I didn't do this."
"You will," her older self said softly. "You were the catalyst. You are the key—not because of who you are now, but because of who you chose to become."
And then she was gone. A burst of light, and the chamber trembled.
Axel's voice cracked through her earpiece again—louder, clearer. "Elara, do you copy? You vanished from the system for almost six hours. Where the hell are you?!"
Elara fell to her knees, trembling. "I… I saw her. I saw me. She said I caused this."
A silence. Then: "We're getting trace signals from the anomaly again. Wherever you are, it's close to the source."
Elara looked at her reflection in the smooth floor. The unraveling isn't just happening around me. It's inside me.
She stood, squaring her shoulders.
"I need answers, Axel. No more running. I'm going to the core."
And with that, she followed the light deeper into the labyrinth, toward the origin of the unraveling—and the truth of who she really was.