The Core chamber pulsed weakly, its golden veins dimming as if the entire city was holding its breath. Every hum, every flicker of light seemed to echo the same message—time was running out.
I stood at the center of the room, staring at the access panel on the wall. It was a failsafe, one even the Core rarely mentioned. "Shadow Layer Access." A system buried beneath reality itself. The cat paced beside me, tail flicking nervously.
"You're serious about this," it said. "Going down there means stepping into the Core's subconscious. The place where logic stops working."
"I built the Shadow Layer for emergencies like this," I replied. "But it wasn't supposed to be entered. It's more memory than space."
The cat tilted its head. "Then we'll be walking through your memories, won't we?"
I hesitated, hand hovering over the panel. "Something like that."
When my palm touched the surface, the world blurred. The floor rippled like water, and the city around us dissolved into streams of light. A weightless feeling took over, and suddenly we weren't standing anymore—we were falling.
Not down, but inward.
When I landed, the air felt heavy, damp, alive. The streets of the Shadow Layer looked like a distorted reflection of the city above. Buildings floated, broken and twisted. Rivers ran backward, and the sky was a dull mirror showing flashes of other lives.
The cat landed beside me, shaking itself. "Well, this is pleasant. Smells like burnt code and regret."
I almost smiled, but the weight in my chest didn't let me. "Stay close. The Fragment's born from this place. It knows how to move here."
We walked through a street that shifted beneath our feet, reality bending slightly with every step. The signs on the walls flickered between words and memories—old case files, faces of people I'd helped, others I'd failed.
Then I saw her.
A woman standing by the broken lamppost, coat fluttering as if in wind that didn't exist. Her eyes were kind, tired, familiar.
"Lira?" I whispered.
She smiled softly. "You shouldn't have come here, Elior."
The cat stiffened beside me. "Who is she?"
I swallowed hard. "My partner. She died years before the merge."
She stepped closer, her outline flickering like she was made of mist and memory. "The Fragment found me here. It's feeding on the echoes of what you couldn't let go."
My heart clenched. "You're saying I created it from guilt?"
Lira shook her head gently. "From fear. You wanted to preserve everything—every memory, every soul. But the merge twisted that desire. It turned protection into possession."
Before I could reply, the ground cracked open with a pulse of static. A cold wind swept through the street, and the sky fractured. From the void above, the Fragment descended—its form clearer now, a humanoid shape wrapped in shards of light and shadow.
"You finally came home," it said in my voice. "To where it all began."
Lira reached out to me, her hand trembling. "Elior , you can't fight it like this. It knows every part of you."
The cat hissed, fur bristling. "Then we change the rules."
I took a deep breath and looked at the Fragment. "You want to finish what I started? Fine. But this time, we play by my design."
The sky pulsed. The streets folded inward.
And the Shadow Layer began to respond—not to the Fragment, but to me.
For the first time since this began, I wasn't just trying to stop it. I was taking control back.