Chapter 17 – The Silence That Screams

The earth didn't shatter beneath my feet. It shrugged back.

A beat ago, I was strolling through the broken hallway of the ruin. Now? The stone beneath my feet rippled like water. Air bent. Gravity twisted at an angle. And my body. it wasn't falling.

It was being stripped away.

The feeling was gentle and inhuman. Not agony. Just… removal.

As if I was being cut from existence.

This place isn't stable.

---

The silence wasn't silence.

It pulsed .... like lungs holding breath too long. The walls no longer looked like stone. They were black glass, webbed with veins of crimson light, softly thudding like a second heartbeat. My own reflection warped along them ... stretched, then snapped back, over and over again.

I clenched my fists, grounding myself with sensation. Cold skin. Rough gloves. Shallow breath.

I was still Kevin. I was still here.

"Not here," a voice whispered. "Just remembering."

I turned.

The hallway behind me hadn't disappeared . it had curved. A corridor of mirrors receded back, but something was off.

There, where Luro had been standing only seconds before reaching, warning .he was not.

In his place was a man wearing my face.

He was perhaps eighteen . my age . but ripped apart. His jacket was burnt in half, fused to his shoulder. Blood was dripping from his nose like ink. His eyes… they weren't human. They were empty. Not hollow . but full of something which had watched too many loops fall through.

His smile didn't fit the rest of his face.

"You remember too much," he whispered. "That's why you ended up here."

"Who are you?" I demanded, voice low.

"..."

"..."

"You," he answered. "The you that broke first."

He charged.

I tried to move. But my body was behind the movement . stuck in a loop of my own recollection. He attacked quickly a whirl of anger and destruction and agony burst across my ribs.

I stumbled backward, spewing blood. My boots scraped against stone that didn't belong.

"You're not real," I ground out through clenched teeth. "You're a memory trap."

"Wrong," he breathed. "I'm your future."

His fingers wrapped around my throat. Cold. Ice-cold. Not temperature idea. As if I was being pressed by the thought of freezing.

The walls began to flicker once more. This was not part of the usual destruction. This was a memory trap left behind by a folded Loop and the assailant was me from another version of time that did not belong.

A Loopborne Echo.

I concentrated.

I still have anchors," I gritted. "I recall Nima's food. Kael's records. Lirae's warning. I recall who I am."

That did something.

The echo hissed, recoil twitching down its face like a skipped frame in a broken movie. Light crackled from my skin — not energy, but raw self-recognition struggling to stay intact.

"No," it said. "You will forget. You will be me."

---

činnost

I snapped its wrist and pushed it back.

Time snapped. Not good time.

The corridor split down the middle. Light not luminous, but cutting seeped through the cracks. My Echo shrieked and imploded like glass in a feedback scream.

And just like that, the pressure was gone.

The quiet shrieked again and died.

---

My legs trembled. I pushed myself upright. I hurt all over. Not physically. Existentially. As if I'd battled against being deleted from all states of myself.

I continued walking.

The hallway reformed before me now motionless, now tangible. Walls of dark stone, streaked with dust and old. My boots resonated once more. This time, they were my resonances.

And then I saw him.

Standing on the opposite side of the room, coat slate-gray, face impassive, eyes sweeping data suspended in midair:

Kael.

But not the Kael I knew.

You always knew when someone had looped differently. The set of his shoulders. The serenity in his gaze. The lack of recognition.

"You don't know me in this Loop, do you?" I asked.

Kael didn't blink. He regarded me as a variable he hadn't anticipated.

"Kevin," he said slowly. "Why do you remember what you shouldn't?"

"..."

I smiled.

"Because I fought myself and won."

---