Kade didn’t wake up.
He glitched awake.
His body jerked as if rewinding from a violent fall — but there was no fall. Just impact. His breath came in fragments, like a skipped tape trying to play something too scratched to decipher.
He was lying on a stone floor, dust creeping into his lungs. Gray light flickered through a cracked ceiling. The world felt... half-loaded.
> "Initializing... Echo Protocol Failed. Rebooting Memory Layer 3..."
The message blinked in front of his eyes — not on a screen, but inside them. Words carved into his mind.
He blinked once. Twice. Third time, his vision refused to stabilize.
Everything looked like a memory of a memory.
"Asha...?" His voice cracked, scraping against the ruins.
There was no answer. Only a faint buzzing in the static-heavy air, li
