Chapter 32: Through Cracks We Fall

"Some fractures are silent… until they swallow you whole."

—Unknown Rift Scholar

[Command Dispatch Briefing Room – Internal Cadet Base | 04:09 Hours]

Aarav sat motionless as the simulation screens flickered across the walls — replays from Zone 5-Epsilon. They had stabilized the Rift breach, yes. But something had followed them back.

He didn't know what.

Not exactly.

But it whispered when he closed his eyes.

Across from him, Reyan leaned back in his chair, eyes distant, jaw tight. The muscles in his forearm flexed unconsciously every few seconds — like he was gripping a blade only he could see.

Kairav was the only one speaking. Pacing. Explaining. Or trying to.

"The data from the anomaly's pulse signature confirms it wasn't standard Rift decay. It reacted to us… almost like it remembered. No, like we remembered it."

Saira looked up from her datapad. "Echo Rift patterns?"

Kairav nodded. "Worse. This might be a recursive pulse. We weren't just seeing memories… we were being inserted into them."

Reyan finally spoke. His voice was hollow. "What if those memories weren't ours?"

The room fell quiet.

Mira, seated beside Aarav, finally broke the silence. "Then who did we become in there?"

[Private Cadet Quarters – Later that Morning]

Aarav leaned against the cold wall of his room, watching the faint glow of Riftlight crawling along the corner edges. It shouldn't be there. The base was sealed. Shielded.

And yet…

He heard footsteps outside.

Then the faintest sound — not knocking — scraping, like fingernails on the metal door.

He opened it.

No one.

Only a message burned into the wall:

"The Rift remembers who you were… long before you became this."

He slammed the door shut and slumped against it.

He wasn't sleeping again tonight.

[Mission Announcement – Cadet Wing – 07:30 Hours]

Instructor Mira stood at the briefing console. Her voice, though calm, held urgency.

"We've detected another instability point. Zone 8-Xi. Unmanned. Unmapped. No response from the probe teams sent last week."

Reyan raised an eyebrow. "Another Echo Rift?"

"Possibly," she admitted. "This mission's voluntary. Only four will go."

Without waiting, Aarav, Reyan, Kairav, and Saira all stepped forward.

Mira gave a subtle nod.

[Zone 8-Xi: A Place Without Coordinates]

The terrain was unlike anything they'd seen before.

Twisted reflections hung midair, like broken mirrors of time suspended in fog.

Aarav walked carefully, watching his own shadow split into three as the light bent around them.

"It's not stable," Kairav warned, tapping his scanner goggles. "There are three versions of this place overlapping. One of them is… wrong."

Reyan motioned ahead. "We keep moving."

They passed ruined structures — not buildings. They were monuments, shaped in a way that made no architectural sense. Some bore symbols in a language that made Aarav's head throb.

One structure resembled the Cadet Tower.

But it was rusted.

Destroyed.

And at its base was a mural… depicting their own team.

Dead.

Slain by something wearing their armor.

[Echo Pulse Event – Localized Distortion Surge]

Without warning, the ground fractured.

Aarav fell first.

Straight through what should've been solid stone.

The others shouted, reaching, diving — but the light twisted — and they were torn apart by the Rift's pull, each scattered into separate shards of the zone.

[Aarav – Fractured Vision]

He woke alone in a forest of glass — trees made of splintered memories. Each leaf shimmered with fragments of things he had never lived.

A child's laughter. A war. A woman screaming his name.

"Who am I?" he whispered to the broken air.

And the Rift replied: "Not who you were supposed to be."

His blade sparked in his hand. Its form had changed — jagged, as if reflecting his fractured state.

[Reyan – The Mirror]

Reyan found himself in a black corridor, every wall reflecting him. Dozens of versions — older, younger, bleeding, broken.

One of them stepped out.

"You were always meant to fail him," the reflection said.

Reyan didn't ask who.

He just attacked.

[Saira – Shadows in the Mind]

Saira awoke in silence — utter void.

But she was being watched.

By herself.

A dozen Sairas, each with different scars. Different eyes. One of them whispered: "You're not the original. You're just the one who survived."

She didn't flinch.

She struck first.

[Kairav – The Data Echo]

Kairav's goggles shorted out.

Still, he could see.

See math and time and loops — rivers of cause and effect unraveling like red string through space.

One image burned brighter than the rest.

A future.

Aarav alone.

Covered in ash.

Bleeding light.

"Something's wrong," Kairav said, breath trembling. "I think we broke the next timeline."

[Moments Later – Rift Collapse]

The team reconvened at the anomaly's epicenter — barely.

Each arrived scarred.

Changed.

Even their equipment bore marks of time shifts.

They didn't speak as they activated the beacon.

The mission had ended.

But something had crossed into their world now.

And it wasn't done remembering them.

[End of Chapter 32]