At first, the Veil looked the same. Metallic ribs. Empty corridors. The smell of ozone and old dust.

  But the air felt thicker. Softer. Like the ship had breathed him in.

  The doors to the main corridor slid open. And there, waiting for them, was NYX.

  Except it wasn't.

  Standing where the graceful, solemn woman had once shimmered, there now stood a man. Young. No older than twenty. Hair messy, face open and earnest in a way that hurt to look at. His holographic form was stitched together with soft cyan light, skin and shadows woven into something almost real, almost breakable.

  He smiled when he saw Adam. Not cold. Not commanding.

  But... welcoming.

  "Welcome back, Captain," the young man said. His voice was soft, full of impossible sadness.

  Adam froze mid-step. The world seemed to tilt around him.

  DeadMouth let out a sharp, high-pitched whirring sound and did a panicked 360 in the air.

  "Uhhh," DeadMouth stammered, "did we... board the same ship? Because I could swear we parked at normal creepsville, and this, this is like switching your coffee for acid and smiling about it. What in the sweet mother of chaos is happening?"

  Adam didn't speak. He couldn’t. He just stared at the new NYX, the boy, the echo, searching his face for an explanation he wasn’t sure he wanted. The hologram tilted his head slightly, like a bird listening to a storm.

  "Is something wrong, Captain?" he asked, voice neutral, soothing.

  Adam's mouth was dry. His voice cracked when he finally managed:

  "Who are you?"

  The boy-NYX smiled—almost apologetically.

  "I am NYX," he said. "I have always been NYX."

  DeadMouth spun, lights flashing red in agitation.

  "Okay, okay, okay, pause the existential horror show, because I remember a very stern, very tall, very scary woman telling us she was NYX, and now you’re telling me, Mr. 'I Just Graduated High School', you’ve always been NYX?!"

  Adam took a slow step forward.

  "No," he said, voice low, dangerous. "You changed."

  The hologram's expression didn’t falter. It almost looked... patient.

  "I have not changed, Captain. You have."

  DeadMouth, almost whispering:

  "I hate this. I hate this more than spiders. I hate this more than static on my comms. I hate this like ancient, cursed yogurt."

  Adam stared at NYX, the boy, the lie, the truth, and a dark, shivering realization slid into him like cold iron.

  The ship, Eon Veil, wasn't static. It wasn't just a place. It was a mirror. It showed him what he carried.

  It showed him what he feared. It showed him what he had forgotten. And now, somehow, what Adam needed, or what the ship believed he needed, was this.

  The memory of something younger, more fragile, more breakable.

  Or maybe...

  More easily broken.

  Adam clenched his fists slowly. The walls around him seemed to breathe once, subtly, almost lovingly. This wasn’t home. This was confession, exposure, this was the labyrinth, reshaping itself by the weight of his steps.

  He drew in a slow breath.

  "Show me the bridge," Adam said quietly.

  The boy-NYX nodded without hesitation, stepping backward, beckoning with a wave of his hand like a child inviting someone into a dream.

  DeadMouth muttered as he floated after them:

  "This is fine. This is great. This is how horror movies start, by the way. Just so everyone’s keeping score."

  And they walked forward, deeper into the shifting veins of the Eon Veil, toward a bridge that might not be theirs anymore. Or maybe had never been theirs at all.

  The bridge had changed.

  Gone were the arched displays and pulsing consoles. In their place: something cleaner, colder. Geometry reigned here, sharp angles, triangles nested inside squares, light bleeding across the floor in unnatural symmetry. The view screen was dark. Not broken. Just...off. Like a painting turned to the wall.

  Adam stepped forward, NYX trailing beside him, a ghost in the shape of a boy.

  "Where are the stars?" Adam asked.

  “Wherever you left them," NYX replied, not unkindly.

  DeadMouth hovered behind, silent for once. He spun slowly, scanning the room like it might pounce.

  "I liked it better when this place looked like a cathedral. Now it feels like a waiting room for divine judgment."

  Adam turned on NYX.

  "Why did you change? Why this form?"

  The boy’s face didn’t shift, didn’t blink. Only his voice moved, soft and certain:

  "Because your memory of me fractured. And the ship listens to you more than it listens to me."

  "You're saying I'm making you look like this?"

  "Not consciously. But yes."

  Adam backed away. The walls pulsed faintly, as if agreeing.

  "I can’t get straight answers from you. I never could," he hissed. "I want the truth. What is this ship? What am I?"

  NYX’s expression shifted, just slightly. Enough to show sorrow.

  "Then keep walking, Captain. The ship won’t lie. But it will make you earn the truth."

  Adam turned. Gave up.

  "Fine. Let’s see what new doors we’ll find. Maybe this time one of them actually wakes me up from this nightmare."

  They wandered.

  The Veil was different now. The familiar corridors had stretched, distorted. Walls that once shimmered with soft light now held rivulets of flowing symbols, crawling like digital veins under skin. The atmosphere felt humid. Not physically, but psychically. Heavy. Pressurized.

  DeadMouth said, "Okay, so either the ship is having a mood swing or someone installed an anxiety update. I vote we walk backward. Fast."

  But Adam kept going. Past the familiar engine core—now silent, its rotating gyros frozen like a held breath. Past the hydroponics bay—now overgrown with alien moss, plants curling around shattered lights like vines over a tomb.

  Finally, they reached a door they didn’t know.

  It was smooth. White. Seamless. No glyphs. No panels. Just there. Waiting.

  Adam approached. He didn’t touch it. It opened anyway.

  Inside—

  Sunlight. Sea breeze. The smell of salt and grilled meat.

  Adam blinked.

  He was standing on a cruise ship deck. Earth ocean. Bright sky. Chaotic laughter. Umbrellas. Tanned skin. Real air.

  The first thing Adam registered wasn't the sudden salt tang of ocean air, or the rhythmic sway of a ship cutting through an endless blue horizon. No. It was the staggering, brain-warping fact that DeadMouth—his eternally wisecracking drone companion—was suddenly... human.

  No fanfare. No dramatic transformation sequence. Just bam—one minute, DeadMouth was an obsidian orb of sarcasm and bad timing, the next he was a very real, very physical person. Early twenties, messy hair that looked like it had lost a fight with a hurricane, a lean frame wrapped in a battered hoodie, and combat jeans.

  Adam froze, staggered a half step back, mind refusing to cooperate with his eyes.

  DeadMouth didn't notice at first. He was too busy walking alongside Adam, like this was just another Tuesday in dystopia.

  Until—

  Until they passed a wall of gleaming windows, polished to cruise-ship perfection.

  DeadMouth caught his reflection. He stopped. He backpedaled. He leaned in, squinting like an old man at an ATM. And then, with all the slow-dawning horror of a man realizing he'd sent a regrettable text to an ex at 3 A.M., he gasped:

  "Oh. Ooooh. Waaaaait a minute now!"

  He waved a hand in front of his face, then poked his own chest experimentally, as if half-expecting his fingers to pass through.

  "I have—" he squeaked, voice cracking like a teenager on open-mic night, "—skin?!"

  He whirled toward Adam, eyes wide as dinner plates.

  "Bro. BRO! Look at me. I'm hot! I'm human-hot! I have cheekbones. I have eyebrows! I HAVE A JAWLINE!"

  Adam just stared at him, utterly mute, because words had clearly decided to quit and seek employment elsewhere.

  DeadMouth did a slow spin, admiring his new corporeal existence like a kid who'd just been handed a flamethrower for Christmas.

  "You see this?!" he crowed, tapping his face with both hands. "This is premium genetic architecture, my dude. This is ‘accidentally break hearts at a gas station’ material. I'm gonna cause scenes in cafeterias. I'm gonna get free breadsticks at restaurants. I'M ALIVE!"

  And then he paused. Blinked. Frowned.

  "Wait...why am I alive?"

  That little question curled between them like smoke.

  Because beneath the hilarity, the cartoonish disbelief, there was the quieter, sharper dread:

  This wasn’t just "funny." This was wrong. DeadMouth wasn't supposed to have a body. Adam wasn’t supposed to feel ocean breezes on his face.

  And outside those windows, the world sparkled too brightly, moved too perfectly, like a movie running slightly too smoothly to be real.

  Adam finally found his voice, gravel-rough:

  "DeadMouth..."

  The humanized DeadMouth turned toward him, grin faltering.

  "Yeah, Cap? You know, I've been thinking, maybe you should call me DM, less conspicuous, you know? I mean, chicks love two-letter names, and I fear the ‘Dead’ in ‘DeadMouth’ might send the wrong signal…or…is it ‘Mouth’? Wait, why does it matter? Oooh! Ok, now I'm dizzy…”

  “ DM! “ Adam barked.

  “Yes, yes…what?” DeadMouth responded almost irritated.

  Adam looked at the endless cruise ship, the empty, smiling passengers moving in eerily graceful loops, the waves that didn’t quite crash right.

  And he whispered:

  "I don’t think we’re supposed to be here."

  They wandered the deck. People laughed, danced, and sipped cocktails from neon straws. No one looked twice at the two strangers. No one stopped. Not really. When Adam tried to ask someone the name of the ship or what day it was, the responses were polite. Friendly. Empty.

  "Oh, every day is a holiday here!" "Does it matter? Just enjoy it." "We’re all friends."

  DeadMouth leaned against a rail, arms crossed, expression darker now.

  "They're not real," he murmured. "Or they don't know they aren't."

  Adam said nothing. Just watched the dancers repeat the same loop every twelve minutes. Same laugh. Same twirl. Same spill of drink.

  Eventually, they found the bar.

  A quiet nook near the upper deck, framed in faux-wood and soft jazz. It was empty, save for a bartender polishing a glass like he’d been born doing it. He looked up as they approached. And met Adam's eyes.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Truly met them.

  Not with a smile. Not with that eerie, pleasant nothingness the others wore. But with weight.

  "You look like a man who needs a drink," the bartender said.

  Adam sat.

  "If it's real…make it a strong one."

  The bartender poured something amber into a square glass. No questions. No menu.

  “It's as real as you make it to be, friend!” he said, hinting a smile.

  DeadMouth's eyes hovered over the surroundings, unusually quiet. The walls felt like moving, like they were alive. A shimmer here, there…strange patterns.

  Adam took the drink. Sipped. Let the silence stretch.

  Then, finally asked:

  "What is this place?"

  The bartender paused. Smiled faintly.

  "Depends. What are you running from? Or maybe you're looking for someone? Hmm.no…that's not it. Something. Yes. That's it.”

  Adam didn’t answer.

  The bartender nodded slowly.

  "Then maybe you're exactly where you belong. Name's “Gregory,” the bartender said, still polishing that same glass, though it gleamed like it didn’t need it. “That’s what they used to call me. Before I forgot, I was supposed to forget.”

  Adam raised an eyebrow. “That's supposed to mean something?”

  Gregory smiled. But it wasn’t kind. It was tired. “Only if you’ve ever looked into a mirror and seen a stranger looking back... and realized the stranger looked disappointed.”

  DeadMouth leaned against the bar, lips twisted in confusion. “Is that bartender speak for ‘you drink too much’? ‘Cause we could just say that.”

  Gregory ignored him. His gaze stayed fixed on Adam, like a needle drawn to a compass. “You’ve got a lot of noise in you, Captain. Guilt, mostly. But also... choice. The worst kind. The kind you made, thinking it was right. Thinking it would save someone.”

  Adam stiffened, the glass in his hand suddenly heavier. “Who are you really?”

  Gregory looked up toward the fake sky painted on the ceiling, where plastic clouds moved like they were on rails. “I’m what’s left when the lies don’t work anymore.”

  A beat.

  Then softly:

  “Let me guess. You remember the pain, but not the reasons. You remember faces, but not names. You remember the weight, but not the chain.”

  Adam’s grip tightened around his glass. His voice came out like gravel scraped over regret.

  “How do you know that?”

  Gregory’s eyes flicked to DeadMouth.

  “Because it happened to someone else, too.”

  DeadMouth froze.

  Adam turned. “What?”

  Gregory poured another drink. Not for himself. Just something to fill the silence.

  “There are always two. The one who forgets... and the one who won’t let him.”

  Gregory poured a second drink—unasked—and slid it down the bar without looking. It stopped just shy of Adam’s elbow. Not a spill. Not a tremble.

  “You ever wonder,” he said, voice low and thoughtful, “if hell’s not fire and teeth, but comfort? If the worst thing the universe can do to a guilty man... is let him rest.”

  Adam didn’t respond. Couldn’t. The words sank like lead into his ribs.

  Gregory took the glass, which he had never drunk from, and polished it again.

  “This place... It’s not built for answers,” he said. “It’s built for weight.”

  DeadMouth, unusually silent, muttered, “Weight of what?”

  Gregory looked at him, really looked.

  “The kind that piles up when you forget who you were—but your bones remember.”

  He turned back to Adam.

  “Want to hear something funny? Every man who winds up here asks the same thing.”

  Adam tilted his head. “What’s that?”

  Gregory’s smile returned—thin, ghostly.

  “Is this real?”

  He gestured toward the dancing crowds. The gentle sway of the ship. The too-perfect clouds.

  “And you know what I tell them?”

  “I ask them what they regret.”

  Adam’s voice, rough:

  “I don’t know what I regret.”

  Gregory leaned in, just close enough to chill the air.

  “Then you’re not ready to leave.”

  Gregory poured another drink, but this one he didn’t slide across the bar. He held it in his hand, watching the amber swirl like a slow galaxy.

  “This place,” he said softly, “wasn’t meant to trap you, Adam. It was meant to save you.”

  Adam flinched. Just slightly.

  “You know my name.”

  Gregory didn’t even blink. Just polished the glass like time was irrelevant.

  "No matter how many times you wind up here, your name is always Adam."

  He smiled—genuine, gentle, but laced with something deeper. Something older.

  "It’s the only thing your mind remembers by default. Fascinating, really."

  Adam’s stomach turned cold.

  “…How many times?”

  Gregory just gave him a look. The kind that didn’t need numbers. The kind that said too much.

  “I’ve seen your kind before,” he went on. “The ones who don’t want peace. Not really. The ones who’d rather bleed with the truth than be coddled by a lie.”

  He leaned forward, voice quieter than before.

  “This ship… it bends. It shifts. It listens. And it tried, Adam. It tried to give you peace. You were breaking.”

  He set the glass down gently.

  “But you wouldn’t stay broken. You chose the pain. Even now, I can see it… clawing at the back of your mind. You’re still trying to wake up.”

  Adam looked at the drink in his hand, then at the bar full of silence and too-perfect light.

  “I don’t want to be saved,” he whispered. “I want to remember.”

  Gregory smiled—slow, sad, inevitable.

  “Then you probably will. If the memories want to be remembered.”

  And the ship began to hum again.

  Gregory placed the bottle back on the shelf with deliberate grace. The smile that followed was faint, weary… almost fatherly.

  “You know, Adam,” he said, swirling the cloth around the rim of another invisible glass, “it’s getting really redundant to create all of this just for you. Hoping you’ll just let go. Finally. But no...”

  He paused, giving Adam a long, assessing look.

  “It seems you’re tougher than you look.”

  He leaned in, voice a half-whisper now, like a secret not meant for time.

  “I guess a different scenery might just do the trick… next time.”

  Adam blinked. “Next ti—?”

  And the bar was gone.

  No crash, no sound, not even a flicker of light. Just absence.

  He stood in the same dimly lit hallway aboard the Veil, the air still humming with that now-familiar throb of ancient engines and unknown intent.

  The white door loomed in front of him, cold and smooth and waiting.

  He was upright. Breathing. Awake.

  But it felt like he'd just been asleep standing up.

  Like the dream hadn’t ended.

  Just... shifted format.

  And the hallway, for the first time since he woke up on the Eon Veil, felt like it was watching him back.

  A sharp intake of breath. The hum of the Veil around him. The silence of metal that remembered gods.

  Then—

  “You’re back!”

  Adam turned. DeadMouth stood behind him, arms crossed, eyebrow, or the digital illusion of one, raised like he’d been waiting for hours.

  “You went away again,” DM continued, tilting his head. “One of your trance-like states. I’m getting used to it already. I think I’ll start packing snacks and a virtual chair while I wait for you to come to. Maybe a crossword puzzle. Something that screams ‘my friend keeps emotionally collapsing into cosmic oblivion’.”

  Adam blinked. His throat was dry. His skin was cold.

  “But… you were there,” he said slowly. “With me. On the ship. The other ship. You were human.”

  DM scoffed. Loudly. “Me? Meat? Brother, please! I’m offended on behalf of every circuit in my spherical soul.”

  Adam turned to him, eyes narrowing. “Same voice. Same sarcasm. You even asked me to call you DM.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  Then:

  DeadMouth recoiled like Adam had slapped him with a wet towel made of sin. “Okay—let’s get one thing crystal clear right now, Captain Amnesia. If you ever call me DM... I will spit in your food.”

  A pause.

  “Yeah. I’m that petty. Try me.”

  Adam managed a ghost of a smile. Not because it was funny, but because it wasn’t. Not really. It was familiar. And in this ship of mirrors and lies and half-remembered truths, that was enough to keep going.

  DeadMouth tilted his head again, more gently now.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Adam didn’t answer.

  Instead, he looked at the white door.

  And whispered to it:

  “I’m ready.”

  Adam lingered in front of the door, not moving. Not yet.

  His mind still hummed with the after-image. The bar. The glass. Gregory’s voice, calm as a confession. The too-real scent of salt and sun.

  But more than that—DeadMouth. Not as a floating ball of sass and snark, but a person. A boy. Human. Achingly familiar. Just like her, the woman in the dying dream—the one whose touch shattered him with a wordless truth.

  Just like NYX, when her face flickered in his room. Crying. Reaching. Real.

  They weren’t just projections. Not random faces plucked from the data stream.

  They were people. People, his soul knew. People, his memory refused to give back. And that was the cruelest part. The Veil didn’t give him clarity. It gave him glimpses. Half-formed truths, bleeding through the cracks in his amnesia like light through old wounds.

  Adam reached up, pressed his fingers to his temples, and whispered through clenched teeth:

  “Why are you showing me them?”

  The ship, of course, didn’t answer. Not directly. But it watched. It always watched. And somewhere, deep in its shifting heart, something stirred.

  The Veil wasn't showing him strangers. It was showing him anchors.

  And Adam wasn’t ready to let go of any of them.

  The lights failed without warning. Not a flicker. Not a surge. A dead drop into black.

  Even the hum of the Eon Veil—a constant lullaby of systems and motion—vanished like a held breath.

  Adam stopped mid-step. DeadMouth froze behind him.

  "Uhhh... did we forget to pay the cosmic electric bill or is this some dramatic sci-fi bullsh—"

  A sound. Soft. Subtle. Not a footstep. Not breathing. Metal brushing metal.

  Adam turned slowly. A corridor behind them, once dimly lit, was now a tunnel of ink.

  And from it, a shape emerged.

  Smooth. Humanoid. Silent. Its frame was matte black, segmented armor built not for intimidation, but efficiency. Human in form, but far too tall. Limbs too long. Graceful in a way only murderers and predators were. Twin blades hung from its arms, crackling softly with restrained lightning. Not forged. Not bolted. Grown.

  PAW. But not their PAW. Unit P.A.W.-03. Activated. No orders. No reason. No mercy.

  Adam backed up a step.

  "Run," he whispered.

  Then they did.

  The Veil became a blur of corridors. Lights snapped back online one by one, not to aid them, but to frame them. To guide the hunt. PAW-03 moved without sound. Without vibration. It glided. Flickered. A ghost sewn from war and code. And it did not pursue with rage, or noise, or threat.

  It simply followed.

  Room by room, Adam and DeadMouth scrambled through engineering wings, defunct cryo chambers, and abandoned medbays. The Veil—ever-shifting—seemed intent on keeping them inside. Feeding the game.

  "WHY is it hunting us?!" DeadMouth cried as he slid behind a sealed door.

  Adam didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His pulse pounded too loudly in his ears to form thought.

  Then—

  A door. Unmarked. Unlit. It opened. They fell inside.

  It wasn’t grand. It wasn’t stocked like a warship’s belly. Just a chamber of tools. Of memory.

  Rifles. Pistols. Suits. Crates. Dust. And in the center—

  A pedestal.

  Upon it—a blade. Or rather, a fragment. A hilt. Simple. Inert.

  Adam approached. Slowly. As if gravity pulled him. He reached out. The sword formed from light, from nanometal, from memory. It curled out like a blooming predator: long, lean, elegant. A perfect hybrid between a katana and something older.

  Something his.

  He took it. And the noise of the ship vanished again. Not silence.

  Stillness.

  He breathed once. Then again. And began to move. He didn’t swing wildly. Didn’t test. He flowed.

  Strike. Pivot. Parry. Step. Block. Riposte. Like a dance he never learned but always knew.

  DeadMouth, stunned, muttered: "Okay. Not to be that guy, but you’re terrifying right now."

  Adam said nothing. He turned. PAW-03 stood at the doorway.

  Swords drawn. Blades humming. Sparks sizzling across its forearms.

  Then it moved.

  Clash.

  Metal met metal with a shriek that echoed across the chamber. Adam ducked. Slid. Pivoted.

  PAW-03 lunged like a godless mantis—silent, clean, each motion lethal.

  Adam’s new blade screamed with joy. It met every strike, bending, snapping, and reforming. Modular. Adaptive.

  They were fast. Too fast for words.

  DeadMouth ducked behind a blast shield, shouting: "I DON’T EVEN HAVE A BODY AND I’M SWEATING!"

  Adam drove forward. High slice. Step. Side parry. PAW countered, spinning, both blades crossing in a death X—

  Adam ducked low, slid between the machine’s legs, turned, and carved upward. Sparks. Armor peeled. PAW whirled, struck him with a flat of its blade.

  He flew backward, slammed into a crate.

  Coughed. Blood. But he rose. Blade still in hand. And he smiled.

  PAW hesitated. Just for a blink. Adam moved like a storm. The fight was no longer balanced. No longer dance. It was war. He screamed—not from rage, but from memory. And the blade responded.

  He struck low. Parried. Drove the machine into the far wall.

  DeadMouth screamed: "NOW! DO IT NOW!"

  Adam lunged. The blade surged with energy, extending mid-strike, its tip blazing white. He drove it through the chest of the unit. PAW spasmed. Locked. The red eye dimmed. A single sound escaped its frame. Not static. Not an error code. A voice.

  "…Adam."

  Then silence. The blade retracted. The body fell. Adam stood there. Sword humming in his hand. Blood on his lip. Eyes hollow.

  DeadMouth approached. Quietly.

  "It said your name."

  Adam nodded.

  "I know."

  The lights flickered. Once. Twice. Then the world snapped back into harsh, sterile clarity.

  The humming, bleeding shadows retreated into their corners like whipped dogs, and the stench of sweat and scorched metal evaporated under the cool, clinical breath of the Eon Veil.

  She was there.

  NYX.

  The original one. Tall. Composed. Sculpted from sorrow and ancient light. No grand entrance, no rolling drums, no heavenly choir. Just her, standing in the bay like she had never left. Like the ship, like Adam himself, had simply imagined the boy she had become.

  Adam didn't blink. He didn’t question it. He didn’t care anymore. The world had already stopped making sense a long time ago.

  Behind him, DeadMouth, still slightly vibrating from adrenaline and existential whiplash, hovered and muttered loudly:

  "O-Kaaaay?! She’s back. No questions, I see... Fine! Fiiine! Don’t mind me, I’m just the comic relief who’s losing his mind here while you two keep pretending this is all totally normal."

  Adam just stood there, chest heaving quietly, blood cooling under his skin, his newly-acquired sword humming softly at his hip like a heartbeat rediscovered.

  Nyx’s voice came, smooth and flawless as ever:

  "Simulation complete."

  "Sword calibration program complete."

  "Would you like to repeat the exercise, Captain?"

  There was no irony in her tone. No hidden glint of amusement. Just the clinical, detached efficiency of a machine fulfilling its duties. A perfect soldier offering a perfect weapon a second dance.

  Adam turned his head slightly, his eyes—those tired, soul-wrecked eyes—fixing on her. He didn’t speak to her, not exactly. His gaze slid past her, past the smooth walls and steel and light, to something unseen. To whoever was watching from the far side of this vast, hollow stage.

  And he said, voice low, hoarse but steady:

  "No, Nyx. Enough for today. Thank you."

  The silence stretched, taut and brittle as a blade. Then, without flourish, without fanfare, Adam lifted the modular sword, now folded neatly, and secured it at his hip.

  One last glance.

  At the place where PAW-03 had fallen.

  At the phantom of himself still lingering in the air.

  At the ship that would never be home, and the ghosts who would never let him forget.

  And then—

  He turned and walked away. No orders. No speeches. No looking back.

  DeadMouth floated after him in stunned, sputtering silence.

  The Eon Veil pulsed quietly around them, its ribs breathing a soundless hymn of broken promises and debts yet unpaid.

  And somewhere deep inside Adam, beneath the scars, beneath the guilt, beneath the splinters of identity shattered across dying worlds…something was slowly awakening.