CHAPTER 1233: EUPHORIA.

Rhea snapped, "Cain! Talk to me. What’s in there?"

He forced the words out. "Me."

Rhea whipped around instantly, but the moment she moved, the silhouette blurred — not vanishing, but folding back deeper into the tear like a man stepping behind a curtain. By the time she planted her feet and focused, she only saw the swirling void again.

She scowled. "You’re telling me there’s another you in there."

"Telling you what I saw," Cain said. "Interpret how you want."

"That’s not helpful."

"No part of this is."

Rhea exhaled sharply, about to argue again, but the tear pulsed violently — an expanding shockwave of pressure that rattled every steel beam in the hangar. She staggered, catching herself on a railing, while Cain stayed standing without shifting an inch. The energy bent around him again, harmless but aware.

Rhea noticed.

Her stare sharpened.

"It reacts to you," she muttered. "And whatever’s inside it reacts to you." Her voice was getting tight. "So what are we dealing with? A copy? A remnant? Something that tried to replace you when the timeline cracked?"

Cain didn’t answer.

Not yet.

Because something inside him tightened — a faint pull right beneath his sternum, like a thread was being tugged. The tear wasn’t just following him. It was connected to him.

The pressure spiked again.

A beam overhead groaned. A panel ripped from the ceiling and spun toward the void like a piece of metal caught in a storm drain. Rhea dove out of the way.

The panel should’ve been swallowed.

Instead, it froze halfway into the tear — suspended, bisected, half in reality and half in the swirling distortion.

Cain stared hard.

That wasn’t gravity.

That wasn’t physics.

That was choice.

Something in there decided whether or not a thing could enter.

Cain stepped forward.

The void stirred.

Rhea’s voice snapped. "Cain. Stop."

He kept moving.

She grabbed his arm. "You don’t know what that thing is. You don’t know what’s tied to it, or tied to you. We need the others before you—"

The tear vibrated violently at the contact.

Rhea flinched and pulled back, as if she’d been shocked.

Cain clenched his jaw. "If I’m the reason this tear exists, then none of the others can fix it. They won’t even be able to approach it."

Rhea grimaced but didn’t deny it.

The loose debris in the hangar drifted closer again, pulled toward Cain in slow arcs. He could feel the pull, like the void wasn’t behind him but inside him — an invisible rhythm syncing with his pulse.

Then the reflection stepped back into view.

Cain froze.

Rhea saw nothing.

The silhouette pressed its palm against the inner edge again, mimicking his breathing, tilting its head in the exact same angle Cain did as he studied it. Except for the expression. Cain’s face was tight, tense. The reflection’s face was calm, almost serene.

Like it understood this situation far better than he did.

A low hum built in the void, deeper than mechanical vibration. It was almost like a voice — not in words, but intent. A push of meaning.

Come closer.

Cain stepped once more.

The void expanded half a meter, swallowing another row of cargo crates. A pressure wave hit Rhea hard enough to push her back. She slammed into the railing with a grunt.

"Cain!" she barked. "If you don’t stop—"

He looked at her.

Just long enough for her expression to shift from anger to warning.

She saw something change in his eyes.

Not possession. Not corruption.

Recognition.

She whispered, "What did you see?"

Cain didn’t know how to explain it. He didn’t have a vocabulary for whatever had formed inside the fracture of time. Words like "double," "echo," and "copy" all felt wrong.

This wasn’t something pretending to be him.

This wasn’t some parasitic imitation.

This thing belonged there — inside the tear, inside the timeline distortion. As if when the universe snapped him out of time for that half-second...

...it had to fill the space with something.

Cain stepped even closer.

The reflection did the same.

Rhea went rigid. "Cain—"

"If I don’t confront it," he said quietly, "it’s going to keep following me. Growing with me. And it’s going to tear everything apart until it catches up."

Rhea swallowed hard.

"So what? You want to merge with it? Fight it? Reason with it? What’s your plan?"

Cain answered honestly. "I’ll know when I touch it."

"Terrible answer."

"It’s the only one."

The tear roared suddenly — loud, sharp, urgent. The floor trembled beneath his feet. Sparks sprayed from the broken wiring again. The suspended sheet of metal half inside the void twisted violently, bending into a shape that made no physical sense before snapping apart and dissolving.

The reflection raised its hand higher.

Cain matched.

The void brightened — not glowing, but thinning, like a membrane stretching under pressure.

He took the final steps.

Rhea made a choice. She stopped yelling.

She stopped stopping him.

She stood beside him — not close enough to be pulled into the tear, but close enough that Cain knew she wasn’t abandoning him.

He reached out.

So did the reflection.

Their palms approached the thin surface between them, separated by maybe a centimeter of distorted light. Cain could feel it — not heat, not cold. Something else. A presence matching his own pulse, matching his breath, matching his tension.

The void tightened around their hands.

Rhea whispered, "Cain..."

He ignored everything except the connection forming between him and whatever version of him stood inside the distortion.

The membrane thinned.

The reflection smiled again — not sinister, not mocking.

Knowing.

And right before their hands touched, something behind the reflection moved.

A shadow.

A ripple.

A second shape emerging deeper inside the tear.

The reflection’s smile faltered for the first time.

Cain’s fingers brushed the surface.

Reality shrieked.

The tear didn’t pull Cain in.

It pushed something out.

The world snapped.

A blast of pressure hurled Cain backward like he’d been struck by a rail cannon. He hit the floor, rolled, and skidded until friction finally stopped him near the far wall. His breath tore out of his lungs; his vision snapped white for half a heartbeat.