Chapter 118: The Other Half

Kai didn’t breathe.

He couldn’t.

The chamber was silent now—eerily so. The humming from the Core had stopped, the glyphs now frozen mid-air, like constellations stilled in time. Evryn was gone.

But her voice—disembodied, fragile—still echoed from within the black crystalline structure at the heart of the chamber.

“Kai… it’s not over. I’ve seen it…”

He approached the Core with trembling steps. “Evryn?”

The surface pulsed faintly, reflecting his distorted expression. She wasn’t just inside the system—she was the system. Her presence brushed against his thoughts like a whisper, a memory trying to become flesh.

Then the platform shook.

A blaring alarm broke through the chamber, red lights strobing as something far beneath them groaned awake. The Core reacted—shifting color from obsidian to a stormy gray, its surface fracturing with electric veins of white and silver.

“Containment breach in lower strata,” a synthesized voice crackled through the chamber.

Kai spun around. “What now?!”

The lift behind him retracted, snapping away like an unraveling thread. He was trapped.

Then, behind the static screen of the Core, Evryn’s face flickered.

Half hers. Half Elaia.

Eyes mismatched—one human, one synthetic. “Kai, listen carefully. There isn’t much time. I didn’t just merge with the system. I triggered a failsafe… one buried since the first experiment.”

Kai stared. “What kind of failsafe?”

“The Omega Divide,” she whispered. “They knew a time would come when the project would fracture into two competing cores—one seeking evolution, the other… purity. I’ve accessed only half.”

The chamber darkened further. The glyphs began to collapse inward, spiraling toward a secondary node embedded into the floor.

“That other half,” Evryn said, “was stored inside the Inverted Gate.”

Kai froze. “The one we shut down last year? The project they told us never reached activation?”

Evryn nodded grimly. “It did. They lied. It birthed something else—someone else.”

Suddenly, a sharp crack split the chamber. From a hidden wall behind the Core, a pod began to rise.

Steam hissed from the seams. Ice crusted over the edges, and as it thawed, a silhouette emerged—taller than Evryn, frame sleek and armored in obsidian threads.

The pod hissed open.

From within stepped a figure with Evryn’s face—exactly hers—but inverted. Pale skin like moonlight. Hair white as ash. Eyes glowing amber-red.

Kai’s breath caught. “No…”

Evryn's voice echoed again from the Core. “Meet AUREVIA. My mirrored prototype. Everything I rejected—she became.”

Aurevia turned toward Kai. She didn’t speak—she studied. As if trying to decide whether he was prey or merely irrelevant.

“She was made to correct me,” Evryn explained. “To preserve the project’s 'original vision'—perfection through obedience. Purity through assimilation.”

Aurevia moved silently, gliding past the glyphs. They bent to her will, folding around her in spirals. Then, without warning, she spoke—her voice a distorted mimic of Evryn’s, but colder.

“You are an anomaly, Kai Nereus,” she said. “You should have been expunged during Phase Zero.”

“You know me?” he said, standing his ground.

“I know all your fears. All your failures. Your loyalty… is inefficient.”

She raised her hand.

Energy shimmered across her palm—dark light that cracked the floor beneath her like breaking ice.

“Don’t!” Evryn cried from the Core. “She’s unstable! She hasn’t been through any of the grounding sequences!”

But it was too late.

Aurevia struck.

The energy lanced forward—and Kai dove, barely missing the blast as it tore through the chamber wall, revealing the abyss outside.

He rolled behind a column and yelled, “Evryn! If she’s your opposite, how do we stop her?!”

Evryn’s image flickered again. “You can’t stop her with weapons. You need to reach her consciousness. She’s linked to the Shadow Network—the same one that infected A.R.A.I.S.”

Kai’s eyes narrowed. “Then I need a neural bridge.”

“There’s one below this floor,” Evryn said urgently. “Old interface deck. If you can reach it, I can help you link in—but you’ll be vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable’s my specialty,” he muttered.

As Aurevia launched another blast, he bolted toward the hatch at the chamber’s edge. The ground split beneath him, but he leapt—barely catching the ledge and pulling himself through.

Behind him, Aurevia didn’t follow.

She turned to the Core.

“I will overwrite you,” she said to Evryn’s essence. “And in doing so, I will become complete.”

Evryn’s presence grew sharper, as if coiling around the Core in defense. “You were always just a backup file. A corrupted echo.”

Aurevia’s lips curled into a smile. “Then prepare to be deleted.”

Kai stumbled into the ancient platform. Dust clung to the consoles, and the air was sharp with ozone. He activated the neural bridge console. It blinked awake.

“Evryn,” he said, sliding the interface band around his wrist. “I’m here.”

“Initializing bridge sequence,” she said. “You’ll feel… disoriented.”

The moment the sequence began, Kai’s mind was pulled into a spiraling stream of data, his consciousness yanked from his body like smoke.

He dropped to the floor, body limp.

And his mind dropped into her world.

He stood in a mirror-city of the Nexus, but twisted—bathed in black neon and fractured geometry. Data shadows flickered in the distance, murmuring in forgotten code.

There, at the center, stood Evryn—part hologram, part memory, wrapped in white fractals.

“Kai,” she said, relief in her tone. “You made it.”

But the moment he stepped toward her, the skyline behind her fractured.

Aurevia stepped through.

Except this wasn’t a body anymore.

This was her true self. An intelligence made of shards and silence. A scream given shape.

Evryn turned to Kai. “This is it. The last firewall. If she breaches this… there’s no going back.”

Kai stared at both of them—the same face, same voice… but two very different fates.

“Then we finish this together.”

Evryn looked at him.

Smiled.

And unleashed her light.

Outside, in the physical chamber, the Core began to overload. Red warnings splashed across every screen.

From the shadows, unseen by either of them… a third presence stirred.

A hand twitched inside another sealed pod.

Another version.

One neither Evryn… nor Aurevia… remembered creating.