ayniko

“Everything has a design. Even your fall.”

When nineteen-year-old Kairo Vale signs a forbidden contract to rewrite his destiny, he doesn’t gain power he loses time. Days vanish from his memory. Faces he once knew forget he exists. But the more the world erases him, the more powerful he becomes.

Hunted by beings known only as Architects immortals who manipulate fate like blueprints Kairo must uncover the ancient designs buried beneath reality. Every lie he shatters, every rule he breaks, rewrites the very laws of existence.

But the clock is ticking.
And something is watching.

In a world where truth is a weapon and time is currency, can a man fated for oblivion build his own design… or become the final draft?

Architect of Oblivion

Not metaphorically—literally. Each time Kairo and Vega ascended a step, the staircase reshaped itself. New architecture unfolded upward, removing the concept of height entirely. Time blurred. The idea of "top" became irrelevant.

"This tower's sentient," Kairo muttered.

"Not sentient," Vega said, "Scripted. Every action we take here is being logged, processed, and repurposed to test our boundaries."

Kairo paused on a landing. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning it's not just reacting. It's evolving. Watching how you respond. Adapting the narrative to break you."

Kairo looked down the spiral. It vanished into layered fog. When he looked up—same thing. The tower wasn't climbing into a place. It was climbing into a state.

Vega hesitated. "Not a destination. A confrontation."

Something shifted. The tower trembled—not physically, but conceptually. Kairo felt his memories flicker, like half-rendered cutscenes trying to play behind his eyes.

Suddenly, the stairs vanished.

Kairo fell—slamming sideways into a new plane. Not a floor. A room. Seamlessly inserted between one step and the next.

[ROOM 2-1: Echo Subroutine Initiated]

Glitch-text hung in the air for a second before dissolving.

Kairo scrambled up, just as Vega phased in beside him.

The room was circular, obsidian walls pulsing with low violet light. Mirrors floated midair, showing different versions of himself. Not alternate timelines—alternate rewrites.

A third showed him as an artificial intelligence in a child's body.

"No," Vega said, walking past him. "These are proposals."

"For what you could have been if the Architects got to rewrite you properly."

One of the mirrors shimmered—and spoke.

"You are not optimal," it said in his voice. "You are a redundancy. A philosophical error."

Kairo stared. "Is this the confrontation?"

"First of many," Vega said. "You've started to override your code. That makes you a danger—but it also makes you unpredictable. So now the system is offering you choices."

The mirror changed again. Now it showed Kairo, older. Wiser. Standing at the head of a digital empire.

"Could still be," Vega said. "If you let the system back in."

[Would you like to re-assimilate a structured role? Y/N]

It wasn't afraid. It was tempting him.

"Say yes," a mirror whispered. "End the glitch. Be powerful."

"Say no," another urged. "Stay broken. Stay free."

Kairo reached out—and shattered the prompt.

The mirrors screamed—flickering violently. Then one by one, they exploded into bursts of code. The room cracked open like a shell, and the stairs reappeared—now burning with golden light.

Vega grinned. "You just pissed her off."

"She needed a reason," Kairo muttered.

They began climbing again—faster this time.

As they rose, new constructs formed ahead: arenas, memory loops, shadow doubles.

Kairo wasn't climbing to survive anymore.

He was climbing to reach her.

And for the first time… he wanted to talk back.

Ascension Protocol