Zayn stood at the center of the chamber, breath shallow, surrounded by the seven forgotten threads—no longer shadows, but selves. Echoes restored to flesh, memory given form.
The girl who bore his face stepped forward. She was younger, maybe nine or ten, but there was an age in her eyes Zayn recognized: survival aged in silence.
"You're me," he said.
"Part of you," she replied. "The part you abandoned when you first entered the recursion gate. I held the guilt. The fear. The pain you couldn't afford to carry."
Zayn's throat was dry. "Why do you look like a child?"
"Because that's when you gave me away."
The air around them shimmered. The walls of the chamber twisted, reshaping.
Outside, Althea and the others still watched—but now from a distance that felt like a world away.
The shard in Zayn's hand pulsed erratically, no longer confident. The seven lights inside flickered as if awaiting a decision.
"What happens now?" Zayn asked.
The girl tilted her head. "You remember."
And with that, she touched his chest.
It wasn't pain.
It was weight.
Zayn collapsed to his knees as wave after wave of suppressed memories slammed into him—grief he had buried, faces he had ignored, decisions rewritten by necessity. Mira's eyes before the recursion chamber. Laziel's last words. The moment he had chosen to split himself apart.
He had not simply lost the threads. He had given them away—willingly, with precision. To preserve a version of himself who could finish the mission without breaking.
But now he felt the break.
And in that fracture… he found clarity.
He stood again. The girl—his first forgotten thread—smiled.
"You remember."
Zayn nodded. "Not everything. But enough."
The seven threads stood behind her, and for a moment, he saw their true forms—not as children, not as echoes—but as fragments of himself. Personality traits, moral weights, core decisions externalized.
"I made you to survive," he said. "But I need to make something else now."
"What?" asked Mira.
Zayn looked down at the shard.
"A system that doesn't forget."
The shard pulsed.
Around them, Veilroot began to shimmer. Not collapse—but transform.
From bark and light and recursion memory, the walls opened. The outside world returned—brighter, clearer. The sky healed.
Outside, Fry dropped her Karnyx in surprise. "The recursion field is dissipating."
Patch blinked. "Is… is the world rebooting?"
Althea watched Zayn step through the threshold, surrounded by the seven.
He wasn't holding the shard anymore.
It was him now.