The corridor leading to the Vault of Origins was silent. No screams, no echoes. Only the hum of something... ancient. Something alive.
Kaizen walked slowly, each step heavier than the last. The walls whispered. Not in words — but memories.
Behind him, Captain Taro muttered, "You sure you want to see this?"
Kaizen didn't answer. His body moved, but his mind was slipping… into something deeper.
A memory? A warning?
They stopped at a heavy iron door, half-buried under roots that pulsed like veins. On the door was a phrase, etched in a forgotten tongue.
> "He who sees the Fathers, forgets his own blood."
The door creaked open. What lay beyond wasn't a room — it was a womb. A giant chamber lit by dim red pulses, shaped like a beating heart. Transparent tubes hung from the ceiling, each holding a figure inside.
Kaizen's breath caught.
There were men inside those tubes. Not just any men. They all looked like... him.
Some older. Some younger. Some monstrous. Some divine. Every tube told a story of a possible self.
> "What... what is this place?" Kaizen whispered.
Captain Taro's voice cracked. "This is the Room of Broken Fathers. Every failed experiment. Every alternate version of you. Every life... that never became you."
Kaizen's hands trembled. One of the figures inside a tube opened his eyes.
> "You're late," the voice echoed in Kaizen's mind.
He staggered back. That version of him — older, scarred, with one crimson eye and a crown of black thorns — smiled.
> "I killed our mother. You might do better."
Kaizen screamed.
Ayaka's voice pulled him back — through the communicator. "Kaizen?! Your vitals just spiked. Get out of there!"
But he couldn't. His eyes locked onto the final chamber at the center.
There was one tube… empty.
A name etched above it:
"Nerovar."
Taro noticed too. "That one... that wasn't a failure. It was the first success."
Kaizen's blood ran cold.
> "He escaped?" he asked.
Taro nodded. "He didn't just escape. He burned the facility above us twenty years ago and vanished. We've called him Nerovar ever since. Your shadow. Your predecessor."
Kaizen's voice dropped. "Why was he made?"
Taro looked away. "To become the Shard King. Until he started killing the ones who created him."
Suddenly — a crackle of static.
Ayaka's voice turned to a scream. "Kaizen! He's here! Nerovar just—"
The signal cut.
The room flickered. All the tubes began to shake. The versions of Kaizen inside them started laughing. Whispering.
> "He's watching..." "He's coming for you..." "You're not the original either…"
Kaizen collapsed to his knees.
And then — on the wall ahead — Nerovar's shadow appeared.
Just his silhouette. Eyes glowing like twin eclipses. No face. No sound.
Only one line written across the wall in blood:
> "We are not born, Kaizen. We are chosen."
Kaizen clutched his head, trying to silence the voices. But one thing was clear.
The enemy wasn't just the Bist anymore.
It was the legacy of the Shard Kings.
It was himself.
And it had already begun.