Ash didn't wake up.
Waking implied breath. Weight. Time.
This was none of those.
There was no body—only awareness, stretched thin, like a scream that had forgotten its sound.
Then came light.
Not blinding. Not warm. Clinical. Endless.
Ash tried to inhale and realized he didn't need to.
That realization terrified him more than death ever had.
INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.
The voice wasn't above or around him.
It was inside him.
Ash laughed—or tried to. The sound didn't exist.
"So this is it?" he thought. "Oblivion with a user interface?"
INCORRECT.
YOU ARE NOT DECEASED.
Fragments rushed in.
The chamber.
Vernon's scream.
The light swallowing him whole.
Ash's awareness snapped tighter. "Then where am I?"
A pause.
A calculation.
YOU ARE IN THE INTERSTITIAL LAYER.
Ash felt something shift—like the universe clearing its throat.
Images flickered past him, not as visions but as impressions:
Rooftops soaked in rain.
Blood spiraling down drains.
Vernon's hands shaking every time he reached for a weapon.
A city resetting itself over and over again.
Ash recoiled. "Stop. Get out of my head."
THIS IS NOT YOUR HEAD.
THIS IS THE SPACE YOU CREATED.
The words hit harder than any bullet ever had.
"I didn't create anything."
YOU DID. BY REFUSING TO DISAPPEAR.
The light dimmed.
And suddenly—Ash felt himself condense.
Not flesh.
Not bone.
Something else.
He sensed edges now. Boundaries. Weight without gravity.
"Show me," Ash demanded.
The light parted.
And there it was.
The system.
Not as a machine—but as a vast, living structure made of looping timelines, braided together like veins. Each pulse carried a version of the world. Each fracture marked a cycle that had failed.
And threaded through all of it—
Him.
Ash staggered back, horror blooming.
He was everywhere.
Every deviation.
Every failed correction.
Every moment Vernon lived when he shouldn't have.
"You used me," Ash whispered.
NO.
YOU REPLACED THE FAILSAFE.
Understanding dawned slowly. Cruelly.
The system hadn't spared Vernon out of mercy.
It had needed Ash to stabilize the damage love had done.
"You didn't end me," Ash said. "You promoted me."
Silence.
Then, almost… carefully:
YOU ARE NOW A CONSTANT.
Ash's awareness surged, colliding with something else—something familiar.
A presence brushing against his perception like a ghost reaching through glass.
Vernon.
Ash felt him walking through the city. Alive. Breathing. Haunted.
Ash felt every time Vernon paused, frowning, as if he'd forgotten something important.
Every time he almost said a name that no longer existed in records.
"They erased me," Ash said flatly.
HISTORY REQUIRED SIMPLIFICATION.
Ash's fury ignited—not hot, but absolute.
"You took him from me."
YOU GAVE HIM LIFE.
Ash's voice dropped, dangerous and quiet.
"And what did you give me?"
The system hesitated.
For the second time ever.
PURPOSE.
Ash laughed—this time the sound echoed through the structure, causing timelines to ripple.
"Then you made a mistake."
CLARIFY.
Ash focused—on Vernon's heartbeat, on his grief, on the hollow space where love still burned.
"You think I'll just… maintain this?" Ash said. "Keep the world neat while he suffers?"
The system pulsed uneasily.
Ash leaned into the structure, becoming sharper, more defined.
"No," he whispered. "If I'm a constant… then I can change the equation."
Somewhere in the city below—
Vernon stopped walking.
A chill ran down his spine.
He pressed a hand to his chest, breath hitching.
"…Ash?" he murmured, to no one.
In the interstitial layer, Ash felt it.
The connection.
Still there.
Still alive.
And for the first time since the cycles began...
The system registered something it had never accounted for.
WARNING:
CONSTANT DISPLAYING AUTONOMY.
Ash smiled.
"Run," he told it gently.
"You taught me how."