Chapter 9 – The Loop Authority and the Ghost of Maya

Kael's throat tightened as he stared at her—Maya, or at least someone who wore her face like a mask.

She stood at the edge of the skyship's loading ramp, draped in the black and gold uniform of the United Loop Authority. Her voice, once soft with laughter, now rang with mechanical formality. Her eyes didn't dance the way they used to. No recognition. No warmth. Just orders.

"State your name," she repeated, tone flat. "Or be detained under loop contamination protocol."

Kael took a step forward. "It's me... Kael. Don't you remember?"

Maya blinked once. "Kael Huron is listed as deceased in seven timelines. Explain your presence."

Luma grabbed Kael's wrist, whispering, "That's not her. At least not our version."

"She looks exactly like her," Kael whispered back. "Same birthmark. Same nervous twitch in her left hand."

"That's not memory. That's programming," Luma said. "Look at her eyes."

Kael did—and saw it. A faint blue flicker in the iris. A pulse. She was real, but modified. Enhanced or—worse—rewritten.

Behind Maya, several armored agents stepped out of the ship. They moved like shadows—smooth, precise, robotic. No words. No faces showing.

Kael raised his hands slowly. "I'm not infected. I'm not a danger."

Maya's expression didn't change. "Loop anomaly signatures detected in your neural field. You've been flagged. Surrender for extraction and recalibration."

"What the hell does that mean?" Juno asked, finally climbing out of the crevice Vaera had dropped her into.

The soldiers turned toward her.

"Wait!" Kael shouted. "She's not part of this. None of us are loop threats!"

"Then prove it," Maya said calmly. "Step into the purifier."

She gestured to a glowing chamber beside her, humming softly. A silver mist swirled inside like trapped breath.

Kael's heart pounded.

He remembered the stories. The purifier wasn't just for diagnostics. It rewrote memory. Broke mental patterns. Turned rebels into rule-followers. Loop survivors called it the Forgetting Room.

Luma shook her head. "We're not stepping in there."

Kael stared at Maya again, praying for some flicker of the woman he once knew. "Maya, we used to—"

"Do not speak to me as if we share a past," she interrupted.

"But we did," he said quietly. "You wore yellow on rainy days. You hated peppermint. You said I made the stars quieter for you."

Her eyes flickered. Just for a second.

But it was there.

A crack.

Luma whispered, "Kael… that wasn't programming. That was memory."

Maya's jaw twitched. Her eyes dropped to the ground. The soldiers hesitated, waiting for her next move.

And then the wind shifted.

From behind the trees, a low growl emerged.

A second later, something lunged.

Kael barely dove out of the way as a four-legged beast, made entirely of clockwork and bone, tore into the clearing. Its spine twisted unnaturally, glowing with red-hot lines of code.

One of the soldiers opened fire—but the bullets phased through it.

"Time-hound!" Juno screamed.

The thing leapt again, sinking fangs into the soldier's neck. Sparks flew. Blood and metal.

"Protect the purifier!" Maya ordered, voice cracking slightly.

Kael grabbed Luma's hand and ran—not toward safety, but toward the chaos. The distraction was their only shot.

Juno flanked right, drawing a short blade etched with a glyph Kael hadn't seen before.

"What the hell is that thing?" he yelled.

"A scavenger of broken time," she replied. "They feed on paradoxes."

Kael didn't stop. "So we're basically buffet."

"Yup."

The beast locked eyes with Kael—eyes made of broken watch parts and screaming silence. He felt it in his bones, like every mistake he'd ever made had teeth.

And it lunged.

Time slowed.

Not metaphorically—literally.

Kael saw every detail: the ripple of the ground beneath the beast's paw, the glint of Luma's tear as it hovered in the air, the flicker in Maya's eye as she shouted something in a language too old to be remembered.

Then—boom.

Time snapped back.

The beast was gone.

So was Maya.

So were the soldiers.

Only Kael, Juno, and Luma remained, gasping, bleeding, wide-eyed in the silence.

"What… what just happened?" Kael asked, dizzy.

Luma bent over, hands on her knees. "I think… we looped again. But only halfway."

Juno looked around. "No purifier. No ship. No Maya."

"But this place is still Praton," Kael said, voice trembling. "Something's wrong. It's the same… but not the same."

He turned and saw it.

A statue.

Himself.

Cast in stone, arms outstretched, eyes hollow.

At the base, a plaque:

KAEL HURON – THE FIRST TO BREAK TIMELOST TO THE VOID: YEAR 000

Luma stepped closer. "Kael… how long have you been dead in this version of the timeline?"

He couldn't speak.

His face stared back at him, empty and still.

And then… the statue blinked.

He staggered back.

Juno grabbed his arm. "Okay. Nope. Nope, we're not staying here."

But the statue opened its mouth—and spoke in Kael's own voice:

"The end begins when you forget why you started."

Then the world fractured.

Not figuratively.

Literally.

The sky split like glass. Gravity hiccupped. The ground twisted like it was trying to remember where it belonged.

They were falling—sideways, upward, nowhere.

Kael reached for Luma—but she vanished.

Juno vanished.

Even Kael couldn't feel his hands anymore.

He was floating in a void made of mirror shards.

And each shard showed a different version of him.

Some screaming.

Some bleeding.

One of them smiling—with Echo behind him.

And then a voice whispered in his mind.

Not Maya.

Not Echo.

Not Vaera.

But his own.

"You don't break the loop. You become it."

Kael screamed.

And woke up—

—on the floor of a child's bedroom.

Same eyes.

Same hands.

But ten years old again.

A music box played softly in the corner.

His mother's voice called from downstairs.

Like nothing had ever happened.

To be continued…