Story Title :- Echoes in the Circuit
Chapter 4: The Crimson Archive
The sky above Central Sector was fractured.
Great veins of lightning crawled through thunderclouds that never moved, casting an eternal twilight over the ruins of the once-glorious tech spires. Buildings leaned against each other like broken limbs, and between them flowed the eerie red mist that marked Rift saturation—residual energy bleeding into the world like an infection.
Kael stood at the edge of the drop zone, eyes fixed on the glowing dome in the distance.
The Crimson Archive.
It rose like a buried cathedral halfway exposed by time—a brutalist tower surrounded by a containment field pulsing with deep red arcs of defensive energy. Its architecture was impossible by conventional standards, twisting in subtle optical illusions the closer you looked. Lines curved into themselves. Corners stretched toward the sky at impossible angles. The Archive wasn’t just a building—it was a construct of memory and machinery woven together with magic too old to name.
Kael exhaled slowly.
His heart was a war drum.
Every instinct screamed that whatever was inside that place would either save him or destroy what was left of his soul.
Vex’s voice whispered in his ear via the comm implant she had reactivated remotely. “You’ve got less than ten minutes before the Syndicate’s hunters triangulate your signal. Once you breach the dome, you’ll vanish off their grid—but you’ll be alone. No comms. No extraction. No second chances.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Kael muttered.
“You’re really doing this?”
“I have to.”
A pause. Then softer: “Good luck, Kael. And... don’t forget who you are in there. The Archive has a habit of rewriting people.”
The comm went dead.
Kael stepped into the fog.
Entrance Gate: Crimson Archive
The field around the tower shimmered with blood-red glyphs cycling through ancient runic code. Kael approached cautiously, and the sigil on his arm began to glow. The field reacted immediately—pulsing outward in concentric rings like a sonar receiving a key signal.
[IDENTITY: RIFTWALKER]
[ACCESS GRANTED – WELCOME, KAEL DRAVEN]
The dome collapsed inward silently, dissolving into mist.
Kael stepped through.
Inside, the world shifted.
Gravity softened. Sound flattened. And time… bent.
The Archive’s halls were dark red corridors carved from a metal that felt alive under his boots. Shapes flickered in the corners—shadows with memory. Old echoes. Failed intruders, perhaps, or worse… remnants of Kael’s past selves.
Each door bore his name, but in different scripts—languages he had never studied but instinctively understood. They were his, from lives he didn’t remember.
A terminal appeared in the center of the atrium, spinning slowly. Its holographic interface was shaped like a flower with blades for petals.
[QUERY: RECLAIM IDENTITY?]
Kael reached toward it.
[WARNING: UNSTABLE FRAGMENTS DETECTED]
[RIFTLINK REQUIRED TO STABILIZE CORE MEMORY]
From the ceiling descended a glass cylinder, within which floated a black cube—its surface shimmering like oil. Kael’s sigil pulsed wildly as the cube drew near. His head filled with whispers, thousands of versions of his voice speaking at once.
He grabbed the cube.
It didn’t burn.
It fit.
Pain lanced through him as the Archive reconnected the first major memory fragment.
[MEMORY: THE CHILD AND THE VOID]
Kael, age twelve, stands in a white room. Around him are men and women in lab robes, their eyes shadowed by blue-glass visors. He’s strapped to a chair with cables sunk deep into his skin. Behind a glass wall, a Rift shimmered—contained, but pulsing with hunger.
"Begin extraction," a voice says.
The Rift lashes out—through the glass. Into Kael. He screams, and the world shatters. But he doesn’t die. He absorbs it.
The scientists panic. A siren wails. And from within Kael’s eyes, the Rift sees back.
Kael staggered as the vision ended, nearly vomiting from the force of it. Blood leaked from his nose, and his sigil now burned like a brand of fire.
But his mind was clearer. Sharper.
“I was a conduit even then,” he whispered. “They didn’t create the Riftwalker… they provoked it.”
From behind him, metal screeched.
He turned, weapon in hand.
A figure stepped through the far wall, phasing through it like smoke through cloth. It wore Kael’s face—only younger, untouched by corruption. The eyes were hollow, flickering like broken screens.
It smiled.
“Hello, Kael.”
Kael’s grip tightened. “What are you?”
“I’m what you left behind,” the doppelgänger said. “The piece of you they extracted to control the Protocol. The ghost of your obedience.”
It raised a hand, and the Archive trembled.
“You broke the seal. That means I no longer need to be locked away. I can become real again. Through you.”
Kael lunged, blade slicing toward the thing’s head.
It caught the weapon with inhuman strength, twisting it aside effortlessly.
“I am your unmaking,” it whispered.
And then it drove its hand into Kael’s chest.
Pain tore through Kael’s soul—not his body. The blade fell from his grip as visions surged again—countless timelines collapsing inward, screams from fractured lives, cities burning, stars imploding.
The Riftwalker identity was unraveling.
But something inside Kael resisted.
A deep-rooted memory—not from the Protocol, but from his true self.
A voice. His mother’s, soft and defiant.
“You are not theirs. You are not a weapon. You are mine. And you are human.”
Kael roared.
The sigil on his arm erupted into light, blinding violet tendrils bursting outward. The doppelgänger screamed, caught in the storm of raw Rift energy.
Kael struck again—this time not with a blade, but with will.
Reality around him snapped.
The shadow self dissolved.
And the Archive quieted.
Kael collapsed to his knees, breathing hard. The cube he’d interfaced with was now dark. But something new had awoken within him—clarity. Purpose.
He stood.
One memory reclaimed.
Many more to go.
And now he knew: The Syndicate hadn’t just created the Riftwalker.
They had stolen a boy, torn him apart, and tried to forge a god.
And Kael Draven was about to return the favor.
End of Chapter 4
