⭐ CHAPTER 16 — “THE MOMENT THAT OPENS”
1045 Words
The white-blue flare from the origin core collapsed inward like a lung exhaling for the first time in years. Riven felt the room disappear around him—not torn away, but folded neatly, as if returning to a place it belonged more than he did.
When the light dimmed, he wasn’t in the origin chamber anymore.
He was lying on a smooth, curved surface—cold, metallic, almost soft in the way memory sometimes smooths over sharp truth.
Calyx sat up beside him, groaning.
“Roll call. Riven?”
“I’m here.”
“Idris?”
Silence.
Riven turned.
Idris lay a few meters away, eyes open, pupils dilated. He wasn’t unconscious—he simply wasn’t present. His breathing was steady, but shallow, rhythmic in a way that mimicked the faint pulse echoing through the chamber.
A low mechanical thump vibrated through the floor.
Thump.
Thump.
A heartbeat—but metallic.
“The station is breathing,” Idris whispered, though no one had touched him.
Riven stiffened.
That wasn’t Idris’s voice speaking.
It came through him like a sound passing through a pipe.
“Get up,” Calyx said, pulling Idris to sit. “You’re staying with us. Focus.”
Idris blinked rapidly. “Where are we?”
Riven scanned the walls. The chamber formed a perfect sphere, lined with lattices of alloy interwoven like neural folds. Thin threads of light pulsed in slow waves.
This wasn’t engineering.
And it wasn’t memory-space.
This was something in between.
A phrase wrote itself across the wall in glowing script:
ANCHOR REQUIRED — 00:17:43
Riven’s stomach tightened.
“It’s starting the event again.”
A seamless door, invisible moments before, irised open with a sound like inhaling air. No wind moved, no pressure shift—yet Riven felt unmistakably invited.
“Whatever’s in there,” Calyx said, “it wants us to see.”
Riven stepped forward. “No. It wants us to choose.”
THE MOMENT CORRIDOR
The passage beyond was long and curved, following the arc of the sphere. Its walls shimmered, not with light, but with recollection—faint silhouettes shifted against the alloy like shadows cast by events instead of bodies.
“We’re inside the moment Hale stood in,” Riven said.
“Not a reconstruction. The actual origin layer.”
Gravity pulsed beneath their feet, soft one second, heavier the next, as though time misaligned for fractions at random.
A figure flickered ahead of them.
Idris froze. “Someone’s there.”
The silhouette grew sharper—dark hair, slim build, familiar posture.
Hale.
He walked past them, paying no attention, as though repeating a path long worn into the memory of metal. As he reached Riven’s side, he turned his head.
Their eyes met.
Not through playback.
Not as echo.
As recognition.
Riven inhaled sharply.
Calyx reached out, but his hand passed through Hale like mist. “It’s selective. It only interacts with one of us.”
Idris trembled. “Why him?”
Riven knew the answer.
He just didn’t want to hear himself say it.
Because the memory thinks I’m him.
THE ECHO NODE
The corridor opened into a circular chamber far larger than the last. Suspended at the center was a structure like a breathing network of light—a woven mesh of glowing lines rising and collapsing gently, like lungs.
The Echo Node.
Calyx’s voice was barely a whisper. “This… is the core of the event.”
Riven stepped toward it. “It’s preparing to replay the moment.”
The node pulsed, and the chamber shifted.
A ripple went through the walls, and suddenly shadows became people—engineers, data analysts, technicians—moving in silent loops, their forms half-complete.
Idris gasped as one passed through him.
“Why am I seeing them?” he whispered.
“Because you’re the emotional anchor,” Riven said softly.
“You feel the memory before it becomes true.”
Idris’s feet lifted slightly off the floor.
“What’s happening—?”
Calyx grabbed him. “No. Stay with us. Stay grounded.”
But the node pulsed again, stronger.
A thin filament of light stretched from it toward Idris’s chest—slow, intentional, searching.
“It’s choosing him,” Calyx said. “Just like it chose Hale.”
Riven stepped between them.
The filament snapped to him instead.
The node paused.
The chamber steadied, as if… considering.
THE ENTITY WATCHES
A sound echoed behind them.
Smooth metal sliding over itself.
A curved arc of light.
The shape that haunted every memory, now clearer, more defined.
The entity emerged from the far side of the node—its form composed of segments that folded and unfolded like a geometric organism learning to breathe.
It did not lunge.
It did not attack.
It watched.
Calyx raised his weapon. “Riven, step back—”
“No,” Riven whispered. “It isn’t hostile.”
The entity tilted slightly, like a head c*****g to examine unfamiliar movement.
Riven felt his pulse synchronize with something alien—an intelligence made not of thoughts, but of remembered impressions.
Idris’s voice cracked. “It sees you.”
“Not me,” Riven said.
“The role.”
The node brightened sharply.
Across the chamber, a final message wrote itself along the metal:
A WITNESS MUST CHOOSE
Hale’s voice—clearer than ever—whispered through Idris’s throat:
“It opens because we fear it will close.”
The node convulsed.
The chamber shuddered.
Time twisted.
THE EVENT BEGINS TO OPEN
A brilliant white halo expanded from the center of the Echo Node, rising like a blooming flower of light. The silhouettes of the engineers froze mid-motion, waiting, expecting the moment to complete.
Calyx pulled Idris back. “We need to move—now!”
Riven didn’t move.
The entity drifted closer.
Its arc curved toward him with perfect, calm intention—like it was meeting someone returning after too long.
The node’s light climbed, blinding.
Riven whispered, “This is the start… not of what happened, but of why.”
The entity rotated—slow, deliberate.
For the first time, its “face” aligned with his.
A feeling—not sound, not speech—pressed into his mind:
Recognition.
The chamber cracked with white brilliance—
- Writer
