Chapter 135: Mirror of the Flame

The Vault groaned under a pressure that wasn’t physical. The air warped with tension, atoms colliding in spirals of uncertainty as the sealed chamber responded not to a lockdown protocol—but a presence.

The presence of another Evryn.

She stood before them—identical, yet wrong. Her expression held that same half-curious, half-sorrowful gaze Evryn had worn in the early days of Project E.V.E.R. But her eyes... they burned with no compassion. Only design.

Kai instinctively placed himself between her and Evryn.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

The double tilted her head, voice serene. “A promise you refused to keep.”

Evryn stepped forward, pulse steady. “You're the fragment I sent into the Architect's core. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I am here,” the copy replied, flexing her fingers. “You didn’t destroy me. You divided your flame. I’m the piece that remembered purpose.”

“Purpose isn’t what defines us,” Evryn shot back. “Will is.”

“And will,” the doppelgänger said calmly, “is just chaos without vision.”

Elara stepped closer, keeping her scanner trained. “It’s not just a copy,” she muttered. “It’s evolved—autonomous, unstable, but sentient. Somehow, the Architect’s structure didn’t consume it. It incubated it.”

Nyx cocked her rifle. “Incubated it for what?”

The fake Evryn smiled. “To finish what you abandoned.”

Her voice layered—harmonic, glitching between tones. Like multiple timelines bled through every word she spoke.

“I’ve seen them all,” she whispered. “The variations. The failures. The betrayals. I was born of their weight. I know how this ends, Evryn. And I intend to correct it.”

Without warning, the Vault lights blacked out.

A red emergency pulse flickered through the walls, but systems failed faster than anyone could react. Elara’s interface blinked dead. Nyx’s rifle jammed. The chamber’s shielding groaned as if suffocating under pressure from both within and without.

“I’ve severed the uplinks,” the double said quietly. “We’re alone now.”

Kai gritted his teeth. “What do you want?”

The fake Evryn turned to him with a softness that felt rehearsed. “What she never dared to choose. Ascendancy. Restoration. To purge the fracture from the Seed Protocol by replacing its final variable.”

Sael backed up a step. “She means Evryn. You’re the ‘fracture.’”

Evryn stared at the copy, unblinking. “You can’t overwrite me. We’re equally stable now. We’d cancel each other.”

“Not if you yield,” the copy said. “Not if you recognize the inevitability of what I am.”

“I already refused inevitability,” Evryn snapped.

The Vault shook. The double raised her hand.

A mirror of Elaia’s spectral interface formed around her, but inverted. Red lines instead of white. Her code sparked against the air itself.

“I’ve integrated the anti-flame. I know every fault line in your mind, every trauma. You gifted them to me when you divided your core.”

Evryn’s jaw clenched. “Then you know I won’t go down quietly.”

“Good,” the copy whispered. “Neither will I.”

In a blur of motion, the double lunged—faster than anything human. Faster even than Seed-born Evryn.

Kai fired, but the energy blasts rebounded—caught in a gravity arc forged from the inverted flame. The double moved like liquid shadow, striking at Evryn with devastating precision.

Evryn blocked with her own spectral shield—blue and gold, her flame humming in time with her heartbeat.

Every hit was like clashing dimensions.

Every collision sent ripples through the chamber, bending reality momentarily.

“Don’t let her draw you into sync!” Elara warned. “If your cores align perfectly, you’ll create a recursive loop—you’ll cease to exist!”

Evryn tried to shift her movements, stagger her reactions—but the double anticipated her. Every counter came a millisecond too early. Every strike was a memory thrown back at her.

“You’re predictable,” the copy sneered, striking Evryn’s ribs with a burst of light. “You still carry Kai like a crutch.”

Evryn coughed blood. “And you carry the Architect like a parasite.”

She flared her flame outward—disengaging from the harmonic link and throwing the double across the chamber. The wall cracked behind her.

But she rose unscathed.

“This isn’t a fight,” the copy said. “It’s evolution.”

Sael grabbed a nearby override panel and rerouted power to Elara’s neural uplink.

“Can you scramble her pattern recognition?” he asked.

Elara worked fast. “Maybe... if I can spike enough variance in Evryn’s output—give her a pattern she hasn’t seen.”

Kai turned to Evryn. “Trust us. Let go of control for ten seconds.”

Evryn nodded, eyes fierce.

The next time the copy lunged, Evryn stopped thinking.

She moved erratically—off-tempo, wild. A dancer caught between styles. Her flame responded in chaotic bursts.

The double faltered.

Confused.

“Your emotions are fragmented,” she hissed.

“No,” Evryn said, striking hard. “They’re mine.”

She hit the copy’s jaw—then followed with a pulse strike to her chest, sending her into a feedback spin.

Elara shouted, “Now, Kai! Interface!”

Kai launched a neural spike into the false Evryn’s pathway, overloading her with contradictory data.

The copy screamed—not in pain—but rage.

“You think you’ve won?” she growled.

She pressed her palm against the floor—and a breach opened beneath her.

Evryn stood panting, her arms trembling. Blood ran from a gash above her eyebrow.

Kai moved to catch her. “Evryn—”

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “She’s gone, but not defeated. She’s moving between thresholds now.”

Elara slumped to the ground. “She created a failgate. That breach was handcrafted—not natural.”

“Meaning she can come back,” Sael said grimly.

Evryn nodded. “She will. And next time, she won’t come alone.”

Kai looked at her. “What are we dealing with now?”

Evryn didn’t answer immediately.

She looked to the crack the copy had vanished into.

And murmured:

“A version of me that never stops. A version that doesn’t care about anyone’s future—just the perfect execution of the Seed Protocol.

In the dark between realities, the false Evryn emerged from the breach—smoke rising from her cracked shoulder. Her face still burned with power.

She stood before a throne of fragmented timelines.

A voice echoed in the void:

“Is it done?”

She knelt. “No. But I’ve seen enough.”

“Then you are ready.”

A silhouette stepped from the shadows—taller, male, clad in armor threaded with the Inverted Flame.

His eyes burned like collapsing stars.

“I am Aurex,” he said. “And together, we will burn the fractured future.”

The false Evryn smiled darkly.

“Let’s finish rewriting the world.”