Corrupted Bonds
Chapter 116: Collapse

Chapter 116: Chapter 116: Collapse

The silence after the last echo fell was deafening.

Rowan knelt in the flickering remnants of the corridor, breath ragged, eyes stinging. His hands trembled—not from the fading resonance, but from the weight of it all. The world, now unraveling at its seams, pulsed like a dying heartbeat.

Lucian reached him first. His steps were unsteady, but his gaze never wavered. Blood still streaked his jaw, and his resonance flickered faintly under his skin. He dropped beside Rowan, touching his shoulder.

Rowan flinched.

"I failed," he whispered, staring at the shattered floor. "I stayed here. I forgot everything. I let it become real."

Lucian cupped his face gently, thumb brushing under his eye. "Rowan. You didn’t fail. You lived."

"But I believed in it," Rowan said, voice cracking. "I lived in it. Loved in it. And now it’s all gone."

"I know," Lucian murmured. "That’s what makes it real."

The corridor shimmered around them, the recursion beginning to collapse, textures folding inward like burning paper.

And then—

The smiling figure appeared.

It had followed Rowan throughout this timeline—always at the edges, never intrusive. A ghost of comfort. Of curiosity. Of calm. Now it stood within the unraveling corridor, eyes reflecting the glow of the world it held.

Rowan’s breath caught. "You... you were there the whole time."

"I always am," the smiling figure said, voice soft as silk through fog. "Not to deceive. Only to bear witness."

Lucian stood, tense. "What are you?"

The figure blinked slowly. "I am recursion given consciousness. A boundary shaped into memory. Not illusion, but actualization. This timeline—this branch—is no less real than yours. It was built on your pain... and your longing."

Rowan’s chest tightened. "So it was real."

"Yes," the recursion said. "A possibility. An option you could have chosen to live in. And he—your Lucian here—was not just a shadow. He was real. Made real by your need, your choices, and your love. He lived because you let yourself love him."

Rowan’s breath hitched as the truth settled in—he hadn’t just escaped an illusion. He had left behind someone.

"In choosing to return," the recursion said gently, "you ended him. You killed a man you loved. And yet... you came back."

A pulse shuddered through the world.

And then, from the other end of the corridor—the flickering stairwell—came the echo of a smile.

Fake Lucian lay slumped, wounded and fading, but calm. He was watching Rowan with something like veneration.

Rowan moved without thought, stumbling toward him. Lucian reached after him instinctively, but stopped, letting him go.

Rowan knelt beside the dying echo. "You stayed."

"You remembered," the echo murmured, voice barely more than breath. "That’s all I needed."

"You’re not him," Rowan whispered, shaking, voice thick with grief. "But you were warm. You were steady. You were everything I needed when I was breaking."

The echo smiled softly, even as flickers of light bled from the seams of his fading form. "I was proud to be the one who held you together. Even if I was never meant to last."

Rowan gripped his hand tightly, desperate to hold him in place as the world peeled away. "I should’ve saved you. I should’ve—"

"You did," the echo breathed. "You gave me something no one else ever could. You saw me. You loved me."

"I did," Rowan choked. "I still do."

The echo leaned forward, foreheads pressed close. "Then let me go with that. Let me go knowing I mattered."

His form flickered again, this time with a shudder, a long sigh exhaled like a life ending.

"And please..." he added, voice breaking now, "tell him... tell the other me to hold you like I did."

Rowan nodded, tears falling freely. "He will. I’ll make sure of it."

"Good."

The echo smiled one last time.

"Then I was never just a shadow."

With a final breath that shimmered like starlight, the echo faded—light dissolving into light.

Rowan knelt there a moment longer, cradling absence, heart aching for what had been and what couldn’t stay.

A terrible clarity settled over him—not just grief, but consequence. The recursion had not been a dream. That Lucian, born from his longing and shaped by love, had lived. Had chosen. Had died—because Rowan chose to leave.

He had killed someone he loved.

Even if it was just to come home.

The truth sat like iron behind his ribs, cold and unmoving. Was it right? Was it fair? It didn’t matter. The weight of that final breath, that final smile, would stay with him. Would echo every time he reached for Lucian and remembered the version who already had him.

He wasn’t sure what he had returned to.

Only that something—someone—had been left behind in the fracture of what-ifs.

Lucian approached and knelt beside him, hand warm and trembling as it closed around Rowan’s.

Rowan didn’t look up at first. His eyes were still locked on the space where the echo had vanished—where love had ended in light.

Lucian’s voice came quiet. "I’m here."

Rowan finally turned his head, eyes red, lips trembling. "He was you," he choked. "He was you."

Lucian leaned in and pressed their foreheads together, breath mingling between them. "Then I’ll carry both our memories. His and mine. Every part of you that loved him—I’ll hold it too."

"I’m scared," Rowan whispered. "Of forgetting again. Of loving wrong. Of not being enough."

"You’ve never been anything but enough," Lucian breathed. "And I will remind you of that every day, for as long as you’ll let me."

Rowan’s grip tightened in his. A sob escaped him, quiet and raw.

Lucian kissed his brow—gentle, grounding, and whole. "It’s time," he said, but softer this time. No longer a summons. A promise.

Rowan nodded slowly, swallowing grief like fire. "Let’s go home."

And as the recursion screamed one last time, the corridor cracked open—columns of golden light erupting around them, bathing them in the warmth of a reality hard-won.

The collapse began.

The return

When Lucian opened his eyes again, the light was gone.

He was lying on the floor of the anchor chamber at Zarek HQ, the pulse of stabilizing nodes flickering weakly around him. The cold, sterile air of the real world bit at his skin. His limbs ached. His bones felt heavy—too heavy.

There was something else.

A weight in his chest, sharp and burning. Not emotional—physical. A crackle of unstable resonance laced through his veins. Vaughn_00’s power—unleashed in that final battle—had left a mark. A cost.

Lucian tried to lift his arm and hissed. Violet filaments ran under his skin like fault lines, shimmering faintly. His body thrummed with energy not entirely his own.

He sat up slowly, vision swimming. Across the chamber, Ren noticed but didn’t approach. His expression was tight, unreadable. He knew. They all knew—this was no ordinary strain.

Lucian’s gaze snapped to the stabilizer pad.

Rowan.

Unconscious. Pale. Golden threads of residual guiding energy coiled around his wrists, flickering like heartbeat pulses.

Lucian’s breath caught.

He crawled toward him, each movement slower than the last. He sat beside him, knees shaking, watching the rise and fall of Rowan’s chest—proof of survival, fragile and real.

He rested his hand gently on Rowan’s, folding their fingers together.

"You came back to me," Lucian murmured, voice cracked and fraying. "Even after everything."

There had been a moment—when Rowan had looked at the echo of him with such sorrow and tenderness—that Lucian had wondered if he could measure up to the version Rowan had built in his heart.

But this wasn’t about being better. It was about being there.

"I don’t care if you forgot," he whispered, tears slipping down his face. "I’ll remember for both of us. Even if the remembering kills me."

The resonance inside him pulsed once, hard—like a warning.

Behind him, the systems crackled. The command team hadn’t entered yet. Maybe they were giving them time. Maybe they knew what he’d done.

Lucian leaned forward, resting his forehead gently against Rowan’s shoulder. His breath stuttered, tears falling freely now.

There was no need to speak. Not yet. Only to feel—to let the ache settle and the grief bloom.

Outside, the recursion was gone.

But in its wake—it left scars, and truths, and a love that had endured them both.

And something else—something still burning inside him, slow and consuming.

A price.

Deterioration

It began slowly.

Lucian noticed it in his grip first—delayed reaction, an echo of pain a second too late. Then the sharp bursts of static that crept down his spine when he synced to system feedback. Vaughn_00’s power hadn’t just scarred him—it had left behind something alive. Active.

But Ren knew. And later, when it was just the two of them—data scattering across screens and system sync anomalies flashing red—Ren didn’t ask. He looked. At Lucian’s skin. At the way his hand trembled when he thought no one was watching.

"You’re decaying," Ren said. "It’s not just corruption. It’s resonance collapse."

Lucian’s jaw tensed. "I can hold it together."

"For how long?"

Lucian didn’t answer.

Instead, he turned back to the console, uploading new data from the recursion. Threads of residual energy, fragments of timelines that no longer existed, but bled meaning all the same.

"I need the system," Lucian said. "If I can align it to Rowan’s pattern... maybe I can stabilize both of us."

Ren frowned. "Lucian, what you’re doing—it’s not just system sync. You’re binding to something that was never meant to survive in a human frame."

Lucian didn’t look away from the console. "Then I’ll be the frame."

"Damn it, Lucian," Ren hissed, stepping forward. "Do you want to die? You think Rowan’s going to be okay with this? You think he’s not going to notice the way your hands shake or the way you flinch every time the system pulses?"

Lucian’s fingers hovered above the keys. "He doesn’t need to carry this. Not after what he gave up. Not after what he lost."

Ren crossed his arms tightly. "He lost a version of you, Lucian. And now you’re volunteering to fade like that one did?"

Lucian finally looked up—eyes rimmed red, glowing faintly. "If keeping him safe means burning myself out, then fine. I’ll burn. But at least he’ll have something solid to hold onto."

"You’re not a martyr, Lucian."

"No," he said. "I’m a tether. And the only thing holding him steady right now is me."

"I’m not trying to survive," Lucian whispered. "I’m trying to make sure Rowan does."

He began inputting the next sequence. A guide not just through space or mission directives—but through fractured echoes and impossible futures.

Lucian Vaughn—the unstable Esper—was turning the system into a compass.

Not to find himself.

But to make sure Rowan never had to lose his way again.

And somewhere in the fractured signals, he’d begun detecting something else. A distortion deeper than any they’d mapped. A pulse buried beneath overlapping timelines.

A fracture trying to reopen.

Something was waking up beneath the veil. And next time, it wouldn’t just be a recursion.

It would be a convergence.

Rowan’s return

Rowan’s recovery was slow, threaded with fractured dreams and sudden tears. When he finally opened his eyes, it wasn’t with clarity—it was with the lost expression of someone who had just walked out of a burning house with nothing left.

Lucian was there, holding his hand, brushing the hair from his brow as if touch alone could anchor them both.

"Hey," Rowan rasped, voice broken.

Lucian smiled softly. "You’re home."

Rowan began to cry—quietly, unrestrained. And Lucian just pulled him closer, whispering, "You don’t have to apologize. You came back. That’s all that matters."

They stayed like that for what felt like hours.

So when Rowan finally looked him in the eyes and said, "You’re shaking," Lucian lied.

"Just tired," he said.

And buried the truth beneath that quiet lie.

But Rowan noticed more than Lucian gave him credit for.

In the days that followed, his clarity returned in fragments—shadows from the recursion, memories sharpened by ache. And with them, a growing awareness of the weight Lucian carried.

One evening, while the others rested and the medbay lights hummed low, Rowan sat beside him in silence. The soft glow from the nearby interface cast long shadows across Lucian’s face.

"You’re hurting," Rowan said at last.

Lucian stiffened. "You just got your strength back. Don’t—"

"Don’t what?" Rowan whispered. "Don’t see you? Don’t notice the tremor in your fingers or the way your aura flares like it’s trying to burn itself out?"

Lucian turned away, throat tight.

"You think I came back just to watch you fall apart?" Rowan reached forward, gently cupping the back of Lucian’s neck. "I didn’t survive that recursion to lose you like this."

Lucian exhaled, slow and ragged. "It’s not that simple, Rowan. What’s inside me now... it doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s devouring me, one pulse at a time."

"Then let me share it," Rowan said. "Let me carry some of it. Because if you die carrying it alone, everything I fought to come back for means nothing."

Lucian’s eyes burned with unshed tears. "I don’t know how long I’ve got."

Rowan pressed their foreheads together. "Then let’s make every moment count."

Lucian’s breath hitched at the words.

For a moment, he said nothing—only held Rowan tighter, as if memorizing the weight of him, the scent of his skin, the warmth still lingering in his touch.

"I’m scared too," Lucian admitted, voice barely audible. "Not of the pain. But of what comes after. Of not being there when it matters."

"You are here," Rowan said. "And I need you to stay. Not just in fragments. All of you."

Lucian nodded faintly, though the weight in his chest did not ease.

Because the truth still loomed between them, unspoken yet understood: time was not on their side. Not anymore.

And somewhere—beneath the walls of Zarek HQ, in the interference of the system’s quiet hum—something shifted.

Not just a warning.

But a beckoning.

As if the recursion’s end had only been the prelude.

And the convergence?

Already beginning to breathe.