Corrupted Bonds-Chapter 92: Threshold Drift

The moment the core connected, the sound changed.

It was no longer the low mechanical hum of systems in standby.

It was organic—a pulse, slow and deliberate, like something massive had been sleeping just beneath the floor and was now drawing its first breath.

The lights flared, then dimmed—not off, but filtered, casting everything in tones of deep violet and storm-gray. Shadows lengthened unnaturally. The faint mist curling near the walls began to move against gravity, spiraling upward.

Lucian stood perfectly still. His fingers lingered at the edge of the socket, his head bowed slightly. The glow from the core cast pale amber light across the sharp line of his cheekbone. Sweat trailed behind his ear, catching in the fabric at his collar.

No one spoke.

Then the system whispered again—from everywhere.

[Acknowledged. Administrator override accepted.] 

[Initiating core-layer synchronization. Parity alignment in progress.] 

A low chime pulsed through the floor, followed by a rising whine that vibrated in their bones, like the room was strung with invisible wire, and every heartbeat plucked it tighter.

Mira shifted first.

Her fingers closed silently around the grip of her sniper rifle, bringing it up against her chest—not in alarm, but habit. Her brows were drawn, dark lashes low over her glinting eyes. She watched the ceiling like it might crack open.

Zora, to her left, twitched at the fingertips, his hand brushing the twin sword slung behind his shoulder. His stance widened by a fraction, not aggressive—just ready. The gravity in his blood always stirred when the air turned wrong.

Vespera's eyes fluttered closed. Her resonance charm, the silver chime at her collar, lifted ever so slightly—floating with the pulse in the room. She grasped it gently, lips parted in a soft exhale. Her presence was calm, but her other hand trembled, only slightly.

Beside her, Sloane's hand found her elbow. Just enough pressure to anchor. His eyes were narrowed, reading the light patterns crawling through the walls. He didn't speak, but his jaw tightened, his thumb tracing a line across the edge of his gauntlet.

Quinn held Ari's hand and stepped forward. Quietly. His palm intertwined with hers, but his weight shifted toward Rowan and Lucian instinctively. His brow was furrowed, lips tight, every breath measured.

Ren's voice broke the silence. He tried to keep it light, but it cracked halfway through.

"Sooo... do we clap, or scream?"

Nobody laughed.

Rowan didn't move. He stood just behind Lucian, his gaze flicking from the pulsing socket to Lucian's tense profile. A single bead of sweat traced the curve of his neck. His fingers twitched at his side—not reaching, not touching, just hovering—as if he didn't know whether to pull Lucian back or stand beside him.

"Lucian," he said quietly, "what happens now?"

Lucian's voice came back, lower than usual. Almost reverent.

"We watch what the system remembers."

A pulse rang out from the spire overhead.

Then another.

The echo deepened—the color of the chamber bleeding into shades of drowned gold and violet, like twilight sinking into something ancient.

The spire above flickered, and the looping echoes froze, pausing mid-image.

[Stabilization achieved]

The system intoned.

[Displaying internal fragment: Seed Protocol 00.] 

The floor beneath them shifted.

Not opened—slid, softly, like a stage lowering in complete silence. The chamber sank, the lights stayed in place. Above them, the echoes looped slower now, slower—

Rowan's breath caught.

One of them had shifted.

It was... him.

Not just a flash.

A version of him. Alone. Holding the same memory core. Bleeding.

And then—

Everything around them began to dissolve.

Not violently. Not even suddenly.

Like falling into memory.

—

The version of himself—alone, bloodied, eyes dulled with something not grief, not rage, but resignation—flickered above them in grainy distortion.

The others hadn't spoken yet.

They were all still staring at the frozen projection, their own reflections breaking across the glassy black floor.

Lucian's hand lowered from the socket slowly. He looked shaken—not afraid, not surprised, just... quiet. Like something inside him had been confirmed, and it wasn't the answer he wanted.

"That wasn't... supposed to be stored," he said, barely above a whisper. "That version of you—Rowan—it was from the first reset. The first time I tried to undo it."

Ren scratched the side of his neck. "How many times have you tried, Lucian?"

Lucian didn't answer. His gaze was fixed upward.

Zora, voice low: "That looked like a final version."

Mira glanced sideways at him, jaw clenched. "You don't get that look in your eyes unless you've already lost everything."

Vespera's voice was softer, but steady. "The system doesn't lie. It distorts. But it never fabricates."

Sloane: "Which means this isn't a simulation. It's a graveyard."

Lucian's head dropped slightly. His shoulders tightened—not with pride or resolve, but with shame. The overhead flickers cast his shadow long across the floor.

"I don't remember recording it," he murmured. "But the system does."

Rowan stepped forward. Slowly. Carefully.

"That version of me... he was alone."

Lucian looked at him.

Their eyes met in the low light. Lucian's were tired, not from lack of sleep, but from years—decades, maybe—of chasing the same moment over and over.

"You always are," Lucian said softly. "At the end."

The silence after that was heavy.

No one moved. The mist hanging in the chamber felt thicker now, curling around their ankles like it was listening too.

Ren, trying to cut through it: "Okay. So. We've got ghost timelines, bleeding memories, and a prototype project that's treating us like old data logs. I'm not saying I'm scared, but if someone has a backup plan? I'm very interested in it."

Quinn, arms crossed, said quietly: "We're past backup plans."

Rowan's voice was quieter. "Then we find out what the system is trying to show us."

Lucian didn't nod.

He just turned toward the spire again.

"Seed Protocol. Begin projection."

The system obeyed.

The world around them shifted again—smoothly this time, not like before. Like falling into a trance you didn't remember entering.

The image reformed—Lucian's lab, again.

The original terminal. The younger Lucian.

But this time, the moment didn't end.

The loops continued.

Again, Rowan died.

Again, Lucian screamed.

Again, he rebuilt.

The projection began showing other versions. Not just timelines—but Lucians. Subtly different. Slightly altered.

One pulled Rowan into his arms and refused to let go.

One tore open the console and screamed at the system.

One stood in silence as the world burned behind him.

Then came another.

And another.

Dozens. Hundreds. Of Lucians.

Rowan always died.

Sometimes in his arms.

Sometimes far away.

Sometimes calling his name.

Sometimes—without ever knowing him at all.

The light in Lucian's eyes began to fade.

Not all at once.

But slowly.

One Lucian stopped reacting.

One began rewriting timelines without recording them.

One erased entire teams—just to buy time.

One began watching Rowan die without moving.

And then... one smiled as it happened.

"No..." Rowan whispered. His voice was barely audible.

The next scene flickered.

A version of Lucian, standing over Rowan's body—but this time, it was his blade that did it.

A clean strike.

A cold one.

Rowan—confused. Bleeding. Reaching.

Lucian—expression unreadable.

Ari stumbled back. "No—what—what the hell is this?!"

Mira turned away. Her jaw was clenched so hard it shook.

Quinn's hand clenched tightly into a fist, his eyes frozen wide—disbelieving.

Ren's voice broke. "No, he wouldn't—he wouldn't ever—"

The system, flat and merciless, continued:

[Seed Deviation 004. Subject initiated preemptive termination of Guide to restart cycle.] 

[Probability of emotional tether collapse: 100%.]

[Initiator response: static.] 

Zora's hands twitched, knuckles white. "He—killed him."

Sloane's face had gone pale. "No... he believed he had to."

Vespera's voice cracked, rare and trembling. "He broke. He twisted the bond into sacrifice."

The projection showed more.

Lucian, walking into a Rift alone.

Lucian, covered in blood not his own.

Lucian, whispering over and over—"It'll work next time."

"It has to work."

"Rowan's death is the anchor."

Rowan—dying in dozens of ways.

Rowan—always the variable removed.

Lucian—becoming less human each time.

The real Lucian—the one in the room, watching—had collapsed to one knee, hands shaking, face pale, lips parted like he couldn't breathe.

"I didn't—" he choked, voice raw. "I don't—remember—doing that."

Rowan fell to his knees beside him. Grasped his wrist, his voice shaking.

"That's not you," he said. "That's not who you are now—"

Lucian looked up at the projection.

And saw his own face.

Smiling. While Rowan bled out at his feet.

"That was me."

The system intoned coldly:

[Seed fragmentation reached critical saturation.]

[Identity nodes splintered.]

[Conscious divergence confirmed.]

[Reintegration impossible without central override.]

And then it asked—

[Would you like to erase the corrupted threads?]

Everyone froze. free𝑤ebnovel.com

The chamber dimmed.

The loop paused.

Lucian closed his eyes.

Tears slipped down his face. Not loud. Not sobbing. Just—falling, like water through cracks that had been long ignored.

[Would you like to erase the corrupted threads?] 

The system's voice lingered like a scalpel—sterile, quiet, waiting to cut.

No one moved at first.

The air had turned oppressive, the kind of stillness that came after a scream. Like breath held too long in a sealed room.

Lucian knelt at the center of it all.

His body was hunched, arms wrapped around himself as if trying to keep from shattering further. His dark coat had fallen open, revealing the core still pulsing faintly inside the socket—its light now flickering like a dying pulse.

His hands shook.

Faintly at first—then harder, until his knuckles turned white from the tension of holding them still.

A single breath rattled in his chest. Then another.

Tears continued down his cheeks, clean trails over skin smudged with sweat and system light. His jaw trembled, teeth clenched so hard it looked like he might bite through his own resolve.

The violet glow in his eyes had dimmed.

The shine of power was still there—but it flickered, unstable.

His resonance—usually sharp, calibrated—was now slurring through the air, like music being played in reverse. A low whine of emotionally fractured energy coiled around him, tight enough that Rowan could feel it in his bones.

Rowan knelt beside him. Not touching, just there—his hand close, ready.

"Lucian," he whispered.

Lucian didn't respond.

He just stared at the floor.

His voice, when it came, was hoarse, cracked.

"They're me," he rasped. "Every one of them."

Mira stepped forward cautiously, her voice steady but not unkind.

"They were you. Under pressure. In pain. That doesn't mean they deserve to define who you are now."

Zora's brows pulled together. "If you erase them... what happens to the recursion field?"

Vespera's fingers drifted across her charm. "Theoretically, it would stabilize. Removing corrupted echoes reduces the load. The site might stop glitching... or collapse entirely, depending on how much they anchor."

Sloane spoke quietly. "It's not just about load. It's about identity. If he deletes them... he's deleting parts of himself."

Ren muttered, "Honestly? I'd delete 'murder-me' without blinking."

"But it's not that simple," Quinn cut in. "If he erases them... he's making the final call that those versions are beyond redemption. That he was beyond redemption."

Lucian's shoulders jerked slightly, like the words physically hit him.

His breath hitched again.

"I thought I was doing it to save him," he whispered. "Over and over. I thought if I just changed the timing, changed the place, kept him from the Rifts—he'd live."

His fingers curled into his knees.

"But every time I tried... I made it worse. I became worse."

Rowan's voice shook. "But you're not him. Not anymore."

Lucian turned to him.

And in his face was a kind of raw devastation rarely witnessed in someone so powerful.

His hair was disheveled, damp with sweat, strands falling into his eyes. His lips were parted slightly, trembling. Tears still clung to his jawline, catching in the flicker of the room's unstable light.

"What if I don't know where the line is anymore?" he asked. "What if I cross it again and don't even notice?"

A deep pulse echoed from the system.

A countdown had not begun, but the chamber felt as if it were waiting. The lights had stilled. The mist around the walls paused, mid-swirl.

Everyone looked at Lucian.

And he looked up—toward the center of the spire, where the flickering loop of corrupted Rowans and alternate Lucians still lingered in suspended stasis.

The pulse from the system faded into silence again.

But inside Lucian, the system's voice replayed itself.

"How many times have I tried to fix it?"

[Thread overlap analysis: 47 primary attempts.]

[Recursive recursion: 63.] 

"Did I ever get it right?"

[There is no iteration where all subjects survived.]

[You prioritized one outcome over the system's original stability.] 

"Rowan."

[Yes.] 

"Will I do it again?"

[If conditions allow, yes.] 

That conversation had been just data then.

Now it rang like a warning bell passed down by something that knew him too well.

Lucian's shoulders sagged, breath rattling in his throat.

"If I erase them... what if I lose something I need?" he murmured.

His voice was quieter now. Not from fear. But from a deeper kind of dread—uncertainty. The kind that hollowed out the ribs.

"They were me," he whispered. "If I delete them... I lose that version of pain. That guilt. That mistake. What if I need that to remember what not to become again?"

Rowan's hand hovered near his, hesitant but present.

"But what if keeping them means you keep bleeding?"

Vespera spoke gently, voice weighted by years of reflection.

"The echoes of trauma don't make us stronger if they never stop replaying. They rot."

Sloane's voice was lower, gravel-thick.

"Holding onto them doesn't mean they'll hold back. Sometimes the version of you you're scared of isn't just waiting—it's rehearsing."

Lucian flinched.

Ren stepped forward, dropping to a crouch, voice softer than he usually allowed.

"You're afraid that if the right tragedy happens again... you'll make the same call."

Lucian's gaze twitched.

Ren nodded.

"Yeah. I'd be afraid too."

Mira finally turned fully to face him, arms crossed, but her voice wasn't cold.

"We've seen what you're capable of, Vaughn. Good and bad. And if you ask me? The worst version of you died the moment you let Rowan bring you back."

Zora, arms at his sides, said nothing at first. Then quietly:

"Even if those pieces die... we still remember. We'll always remember. And we'll make sure you don't forget either."

A long beat.

Then Quinn's voice, calm and steady.

"Erase them. Not because you hate them. But because you love who you are now more."

Lucian looked up at him.

And then to Rowan.

And in that moment, he spoke—his voice ragged, as if he were speaking not just to them, but to himself.

"I'm scared I'll lose something important."

Rowan finally reached for him, fingers curling around his hand—firm, grounding.

"Then let us be what you keep."

Lucian didn't answer.

He just gripped Rowan's hand tighter.

Above them, the echoes flickered again—like something impatient.

[Administrator.]

The system intoned, flat.

[Confirm erasure protocol. Purge or preserve?] 

Lucian's fingers curled.

And he stood.