The fall didn't feel like falling.
It felt like being swallowed.
One moment Nero was holding Helia's hand, the chamber ripping open beneath him—and the next he was falling through absolute darkness.
He tried to scream, but the sound stucked in his throat, warped by the pressure crushing his lungs.
Then—the darkness blinked.
A dim teal glow rippled outward, lighting the void like a heartbeat.
Nero's body stopped suddenly, suspended midair as if gravity was not a thing.
His feet touched solid ground a second later.
A floor that hadn't been there a moment ago.
Nero staggered, nearly collapsing. His ribs throbbed, his head ringing. "Helia…?"
Only his echo answered.
He looked around, heart pounding.
The room was impossible.
A circular chamber—massive, silent—its walls made entirely of cracked mirrors. The cracks didn't reflect him properly; instead, they moved with a slight delay, watching him like an audience.
Slow, ragged breaths escaped Nero's lips.
"This isn't real," he whispered.
"Real enough."
The whisper came from everywhere.
The mirror-chamber pulsed faintly, teal veins spreading across the floor like roots. Nero stepped back, but the glow followed him, outlining his footprints.
A soft tapping echoed behind him.
He turned quickly—and froze.
A reflection stood outside the mirrors.
Not inside. Outside.
A boy—twelve, thin, pale—pressed his hands against the glass, staring back with empty eyes.
Nero's breath hitched. "You…"
His throat tightened.
The boy's lips moved.
"…not finished…"
Then his face cracked down the middle like shattered porcelain.
Nero stumbled backward. "Stop—stop—STOP!"
The mirrors vibrated. Every reflection that Nero had asked the word back at him in a whisper that made his skin crawl:
"Stop? Stop? Stop?"
He clutched his head. "I didn't come here. I didn't want this!"
The lights dimmed.
A deep rumble passed through the room—like something enormous was waking beneath the floor.
Nero's knees buckled as the ground trembled again. He braced himself against a mirror, only to snatch his hand away instantly.
The glass was warm. Like human body flesh.
Footsteps echoed behind him—soft, deliberate.
Not the boy.
Someone heavier.
Someone taller.
Nero turned slowly.
A figure stepped from the darkness.
The Unknown Time Master.
His form was still shadowed, but in Sector Zero the shadows behaved differently—they slid off him like dust, revealing the hints of shape beneath his appearance : long limbs, broad shoulders, a posture too calm for a being surrounded by broken realities.
Nero backed away instinctively. "Stay away."
"I already am," the Time Master said. His voice was strangely calm here—less echoing, more human.
Sector Zero changed everyone.
"What do you want from me?" Nero demanded.
"Nothing," the Time Master replied.
"I want something from him." pointing at Nero's chest.
Nero's pulse stuttered. "Veyra?"
"Yes," the Time Master murmured. "From the part of you that survived what he did not."
Nero felt nausea rise in his stomach. "He was a child—he didn't survive because he shouldn't have been in that chamber—"
"He didn't survive because he wasn't meant to."The Time Master stepped closer, and every mirror bent slightly towards him as if gravity favored him. "You, Nero Vale… you were the next iteration [repetition of a process]. The refined attempt."
Nero's eyes widened, his voice cracking. "I'm not a replacement."
"You're right." The Time Master's eyes glowed brighter. "You are the continuation."
A nearby mirror split open, not the glass the reflection itself.
Nero stared in horror as a second version of himself stepped out—same face, same clothes, but eyes glazed with a dead glow.
The clone's voice was flat. "You shouldn't be here."
Nero stumbled back. "What—what is that?!"
The Time Master didn't blink. "A temporal echo. A memory of a future that failed."
The echo smiled—too wide, too empty.
"You stole my place."
Nero shook his head. "You're not real!"
"I was supposed to be you," the echo whispered. "But you overwrote me."
The echo lunged.
Nero barely rolled aside before it slammed into the floor, cracking the stone. The suppressor on his arm sparked violently, struggling to contain the rising surge of Veyra inside him.
"Stop!" Nero cried.
The echo's movements glitched sharply—too fast, too jagged, like someone flipping through frames of a broken animation.
Another echo pulled itself from a mirror.
Then another.
And another.
All glitched, damaged and incomplete versions of him.
Sector Zero wasn't just showing memories.
It was showing possible timelines that failed.
The Time Master watched silently. "Sector Zero is a graveyard of variations. Some died. Some were erased. Some were simply never chosen."
Nero's heart hammered.
Dozens of echoes now circled him, whispering:
"You shouldn't exist.""You took our life.""You are the mistake."
Nero dropped to his knees, covering his ears. "STOP!"
The echoes stepped closer.
Nero's breath shattered.
"I didn't ask for this!" he screamed. "I didn't ask to live inplace of you!"
The Time Master's eyes softened—not with pity, but with recognition. "Yet you did live. That is why they want you undone."
Nero shook his head violently. "I'm not replacing anyone!"
"But you are," the Time Master whispered. "And they know it."
The echoes raised their hands, their fingers sharpening into jagged fragments of time—broken seconds made solid.
They moved as one.
Nero gasped—terror turning to raw instinct and shouted.
"VEYRA!"
The chamber exploded with an energy.
Time compressed inward, the air crushing itself into a singular pulse.
The echoes froze.
Every reflection froze.
Even the Time Master paused.
Nero stood at the center of a sphere of distorted reality, teal energy rippling around him like heat off metal.
His voice trembled.His hands shook.But the light didn't stop.
For the first time—he wasn't losing control.
He was using it.
Helia's voice passed faintly through the distortion from far away:
"NERO! HOLD ON—DON'T LET SECTOR ZERO TAKE YOU!"
The echoes screamed—glitches ripping across their faces—as they dissolved into dust.
The mirrors cracked further, the whole chamber groaning under the force.
The Time Master watched with something close to fascination."So… you finally choose to resist."
Nero glared up at him, tears streaking down his face.
"I'm not any kind of continuation."
The Time Master's smile was small… but genuine.
"Not yet," he murmured.
The teal sphere collapsed inward, swallowing Nero whole—
and the world snapped into darkness.