The Deepening Past – “Room 314: The Day the Truth Was Born”

Before they made gods, they tested ghosts.”

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Thirty-one years ago.

Hollow’s first real breath was not in a lab. It was in a coffin.

It began in a place not listed on any map.

Room 314, Hollow Sector 0:

Beneath Navarro’s original corporate campus in Valeburn.

Room 314 had no windows. No nameplate. Just a steel door locked from the outside and a viewing glass designed for one-way shame.

Inside, they didn’t teach children.

They installed them.

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Jayce Navarro was eight years old when his father, General Arlo Navarro, handed him over to Hollow’s testing division.

His father called it “a blood tithe.”

> “The empire needs more than leaders, son. It needs anchors. You’re strong. You won’t remember the pain when they’re finished.”

He lied.

Jayce remembered everything.

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For three years, Jayce underwent Neuro-Emotive Induction Trials (NEITs).

At first, they made him watch.

Children younger than him—some crying, some silent—wired to chairs, twitching as their memories were overwritten.

Then they made him feel.

Every time a child died during simulation collapse, Jayce was synced to their pain.

He felt 42 deaths before age 12.

His bones never broke. But something else did.

Empathy was weaponized.

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The scientists in Room 314 began to notice something: Jayce adapted.

Unlike others, he didn’t fracture.

Instead, he absorbed the trauma and reshaped himself around it—growing more emotionally complex, more inwardly reflective, more capable of surviving ethically impossible choices.

So they escalated.

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They introduced the prototype model: Project ECHO-1.

A neural AI laced with the imprints of high-risk Hollow subject profiles.

Among them: Naomi Raines’s birth mother, several failed psychic amplifiers, and a personality blueprint constructed from Jayce’s own memory biases.

They inserted the ECHO into his dreams.

Told him her name was Naomi.

That she was real.

And he loved her before he ever met her in flesh.

He dreamed her bleeding in his arms. Smiling at him on rooftops. Screaming for him in fire.

He remembered her before she was born.

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When Naomi Raines was eventually identified as genetically compatible for Hollow’s dream-throne program, they didn’t build her from scratch.

They matched her to ECHO-1’s parameters—the ones that Jayce himself had generated.

She was never just a girl.

She was a living simulation come to life.

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And when Jayce first saw her—flesh, not light—his mind didn’t hesitate.

He recognized her.

She didn’t recognize him.

Because her soul was new.

But his?

His had been dying for her since Room 314.

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And Hollow knew.

The directors watched the feed.

One whispered, “The loop has closed. The mirror found its flame.”

Another muttered, “Then burn the mirror.”

They tried to sever Jayce from Naomi. Reassign him. Erase the link.

But it was too late.

He wasn’t just a test subject anymore.

He was the archive of her design.

And the only one who could awaken her if she broke.

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Room 314 was sealed permanently after Jayce’s thirteenth birthday.

Forty-three test children dead.

Five scientists disappeared.

Two black box files redacted by Navarro himself.

Jayce never spoke of what he endured.

Because if he did?

The world would know their savior was born from a child’s stolen sanity.

And he couldn’t let Naomi carry that weight.

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> “Pain builds thrones,” he once said.

“But if I sit on it, the fire spreads. If she sits on it, maybe it stops.”

So he gave her everything—his trauma, his dreams, his loyalty.

And Naomi never knew how many deaths her life was built on.

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Epilogue to the Revelation – Future Integration Suggestion:

Naomi stumbles on a memory feed from Room 314.

She watches a young Jayce whisper her name long before she ever existed.

Her world shatters.

She asks him, “Did you ever hate me for it?”

And he replies, “No. Because loving you was the only thing that made the pain holy.”