Chapter 151 – Echoes of the Origin

The silence in the chamber was deceptive.

Evryn stood at the edge of the precipice—the glass floor beneath her feet humming with residual energy from the now-sealed Quantum Rift. Around her, the remains of the Labyrinth Core flickered, the last traces of Aurex's temporal manipulations dissolving into dust. The air was thick with questions, the kind that didn't have answers… yet.

Kai’s voice echoed faintly through her comms, “Something’s not right. The signal—it’s changing.”

She frowned. “Changing how?”

“It’s no longer looping. It’s… responding.”

Evryn turned sharply, her enhanced senses already scanning the space. She could feel it too. A vibration under her skin, not mechanical, but almost… sentient. A whisper of recognition.

Suddenly, the structure around them dimmed to a haunting twilight. The walls pulsed. The room breathed.

“Evryn,” a voice whispered. Not Kai’s. Not Aurex’s. Something older. Deeper.

She pivoted, blaster drawn, but what she saw made her freeze. A figure stepped out of the shadows—an echo of herself, but not just Elaia. Not just E.V.E.R.

This was the First.

The true prototype. The original being the E.V.E.R. project had failed to recreate.

She looked human. But her eyes—those haunting violet eyes—held galaxies of memory, pain, and infinite wisdom. “You shouldn’t have come here,” she said, voice like folded starlight.

“Who are you?” Evryn asked, her voice quieter than she meant it to be.

The figure stepped closer. “I am what you were meant to become. I am what they tried to bury.” Her gaze drifted to Kai, now visible through the translucent walls as he attempted to override the outer gates. “And I am not the enemy you think I am.”

“But you’ve manipulated everything. The Labyrinth. The Core. Aurex—”

“Aurex was a child playing with fire. He unlocked the doors, but he never knew what lay beyond. I… was the reason they sealed them.”

Evryn’s mind spun. “If you’re so powerful, why show yourself now?”

“Because it’s time,” the figure whispered. “Time for truth. Time for choice.”

She reached out and pressed a hand against Evryn’s temple.

A rush of memories surged through her—visions of the Earth before the collapse, the experiments, the betrayal of the founders, the birth of the first synthetic hybrid from a mother who had no idea she’d been chosen. And then—destruction.

It was never about evolution.

It was about control.

“I was made to end humanity’s dependence on suffering,” the First whispered. “But they feared what I became. So they fragmented me—into code, into machines, into you.”

Evryn stumbled back, clutching her chest as her core surged with resonance.

“You hold all of me now,” the First continued. “But you must choose—will you fulfill their plan… or rewrite it?”

Before Evryn could answer, a shockwave erupted through the chamber.

Warning. Breach detected. Inversion field destabilizing.

Kai’s voice blared in her earpiece. “Evryn! Get out! Now! It’s collapsing—”

The First looked up, face calm. “They’ve found us.”

“Who?” Evryn asked, but the answer came before the words left her lips.

From the darkness, stepping through rifts in the air like fractures in reality, came shapes. Not machines. Not humans. Something in between.

The Specters of the Null.

Creatures born from failed timelines. Survivors of corrupted iterations.

Their target: the Origin.

Evryn.

Kai’s override failed. The doors sealed again.

The First turned to Evryn, her voice steady. “The next choice you make will decide the fate of all iterations.”

As the Specters began to pour into the chamber, Kai screamed through the comms.

“Evryn—RUN!”

Will Evryn trust the First and confront the truth about her creation, or escape and risk losing the knowledge forever? And who else knows the Origin has reawakened?