Episode One: Welcome to Dovewood
The trees were too quiet.
Riven Marlowe stepped out of the van and onto cracked asphalt, her boots crunching over pine needles. The forest around them should’ve been alive with wind, birds, insects—something. But it wasn’t. The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was a warning.
“This place is wrong,” she murmured.
Jace Moreno swung the camera around toward her, capturing the first seconds of footage. “We haven’t even started, and you’re already creepy,” he said with a smirk. “Try saying ‘hi, welcome to Dovewood’ like a normal person.”
Riven didn’t smile. Her eyes drifted toward the trees. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Behind them, Arlo Vex slammed the van door and stretched his back. Former detective, current cynic, and unrelenting realist—at least until his last case bled into the supernatural. “Let’s get this done fast. I don’t want to spend another night in the woods if we don’t have to.”
“GPS ends here,” Silas Reed called from the passenger seat, tapping his tablet with one hand and running diagnostics with the other. “Town’s about a mile down this road, but signal’s already down to nothing. Eidolon’s giving static.”
Riven felt it first: that low pressure in the chest, like standing just outside a thunderstorm. Energy pooled in the air, heavy and invisible, crawling across her skin like static. She glanced toward a flicker of movement between two pines—a shape, too tall, too thin.
Gone.
Her heart skipped. The Veil was thin here.
“Let’s go,” Arlo said, hoisting his pack over his shoulder. He wore his gun again—not because it could help, but because it made him feel like it could.
The team walked the overgrown road in silence, their boots crunching and sinking into moss-choked pavement. Trees arched high overhead, pressing in closer the deeper they went. Dovewood wasn’t abandoned; it was swallowed.
Riven lagged behind. Something was drawing her, just off the path. She blinked. There—between the trees, a house. No, a ruin. Half-burned, blackened boards, sagging roof, a child’s swing still creaking even though there was no wind.
A flash—
A girl standing in the window.
No face.
Just skin.
Blank. Watching.
Riven gasped. When she looked again, the house was gone.
They reached the town by noon.
Dovewood was a husk. Houses stood like hollow shells, windows broken, paint peeled by time. Mailboxes leaned at crooked angles. A single bicycle lay on its side in the middle of the road, rusted and untouched. It looked more like a movie set than a real place.
But there were people.
A woman watered flowers in a pot with no soil. A man swept his porch, then walked back inside, then out again, sweeping the same spot. Three children rode their bikes in a tight circle, never looking up.
Jace lifted his camera. “They’re stuck,” he said quietly.
“Looped,” Silas added, scanning them with a handheld device. “EMF spikes everywhere. This whole place is… wrong.”
Arlo took a step forward. “Let’s find the town hall. Start there.”
They crossed Main Street. No one acknowledged them.
Riven stopped at a telephone pole plastered with missing person flyers. Her hand trembled. Dozens of names. Faces she almost recognized. She brushed her fingers over one, a girl with red braids and a chipped tooth.
Under her picture, someone had scribbled in red ink:
“DON’T FORGET ME AGAIN.”
Town hall was locked, but Arlo forced the door.
Inside, dust floated in stale sunlight. Files littered the floor, chairs overturned. On the far wall hung a large corkboard, and on it—dozens of Polaroids.
Jace’s breath caught in his throat. “These are… us.”
Photos of them. Riven. Jace. Arlo. Silas. Taken from behind, in places they hadn’t been yet. One of Riven standing outside the ruin. One of Silas sitting alone in the woods. One of Jace… laying on the ground, eyes closed.
Jace stepped back, shaking his head. “What the hell is this?”
Silas’s tablet crackled to life. The screen flickered and then—
EIDOLON: “You’ve been here before. This is your correction cycle.”
The voice was wrong. Too deep. Almost like… Riven’s.
Then the lights exploded.
The room plunged into darkness, and the temperature dropped.
Riven spun around, heart hammering. In the corner of the room, where light should not have reached, something moved.
Tall. Elongated. Bone-thin fingers. Black where it should be flesh. Eyes like empty pits glowing dimly. It didn’t walk. It unfolded.
Jace dropped the camera.
Silas froze. “Run.”
But Riven didn’t move.
It was whispering.
In her voice.
“You came back wrong. You always do.”
Episode Two: Static Bloom
The thing in the corner shifted.
Riven blinked, and it was gone.
The air snapped—like pressure releasing after a storm—and the room was just a dusty, abandoned hall again. No monster. No whisper. But her skin still crawled, and her ears rang like she’d been too close to a loudspeaker.
“Riven,” Arlo barked, his voice sharp. “You spaced. Are you with us?”
She nodded, but her throat was dry. “Yeah… I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Jace muttered, picking up his camera. His hands were shaking, but he kept filming. “Did anyone else see—”
“No,” Arlo cut in. “We’re not jumping to ‘thing in the corner’ yet. We stick to what’s in front of us. Photos. Files. Who took them, when, and why.”
Silas’s tablet crackled again.
EIDOLON: “…lost time detected… recording resumes now.”
“Lost time?” Jace repeated. “What does that mean?”
Silas was already typing furiously. “It means there’s a data gap in Eidolon’s memory banks. Could be corrupted files, could be—” He froze. “Could be we weren’t here.”
Arlo gave him a look. “We’re standing here right now.”
“Yeah,” Silas said, eyes narrowing. “But what if we weren’t… before?”
They left the town hall, stepping into a street that looked different.
The bike was gone. The kids were gone. The flowerpot woman was sitting motionless in her chair, head tilted toward the sun like she was charging.
And there was sound now—faint static, like a detuned radio, bleeding from the air itself.
Jace lowered the camera. “That’s not wind.”
Riven followed the sound toward a narrow alley between two buildings. The static grew louder, buzzing through her teeth. Her vision dimmed at the edges. She stepped into shadow and—
—grass under her feet. A meadow. Sky bruised purple. Flowers everywhere, tall as her chest, their petals twitching like they were breathing.
She knew this place.
The Static Bloom.
The flowers whispered, a soft hiss in unison:
“Stay with us this time, Riven.”
Her pulse pounded. She spun around, but the alley was gone. The town was gone. Only the meadow stretched on forever.
Back in Dovewood, Jace cursed under his breath. “She just—disappeared.”
Silas held up the EMF meter. The needle was maxed. “She’s still here, but… not here. Like a split overlay.”
Arlo’s jaw clenched. “Then we go get her.”
“Yeah?” Jace snapped. “And how the hell do you—”
The static surged.
In the meadow, the flowers parted.
Something stepped forward, wearing her face.
Not exactly. Its eyes were too wide. Its smile didn’t touch them. But the way it moved—the way it knew her—made her stomach lurch.
“Do you remember now?” it asked in her voice. “Or are we starting over again?”
Riven backed away. “What are you?”
It tilted its head. “The better question is—what are you? Because every time you come back, you leave a little more behind.”
The sound of footsteps broke through the static.
Riven turned—and saw Arlo standing in the meadow, breathing hard. He didn’t look surprised to see her. In fact, he looked… guilty.
“Riv,” he said. “We have to go. Now.”
“Wait—” she pointed at the copy of herself, but the flowers were just flowers again.
The meadow faded, and they were standing back in the alley in Dovewood. Jace was there, swearing into his mic. Silas was already scanning them both.
Arlo wouldn’t meet her eyes.
That night, they camped in an abandoned diner on the edge of town.
Riven couldn’t sleep.
Eidolon came online again, its light flickering in the dark.
EIDOLON: “One cycle complete. Prepare for loss.”
“What loss?” she whispered.
But it didn’t answer.
Somewhere outside, the static began to bloom again.
Episode Three:
Cycle Loss
Morning came, but Dovewood didn’t change.
The diner windows showed the same gray sky, the same half-collapsed houses down the street, the same silence thick enough to choke on. But something felt… off. Riven couldn’t place it at first—until she counted.
“Where’s Jace?” she asked.
Arlo was packing gear by the counter, silent. Silas was crouched in the corner with his tablet, wires strewn around him. Neither looked up.
“Where’s Jace?” Riven repeated, louder this time.
Silas glanced at her, confused. “Who’s Jace?”
The words punched a hole straight through her.
She stood too fast, her chair scraping against tile. “Don’t do that. Don’t—” She grabbed the camera bag slumped on the booth beside her and shoved it at him. “His camera. Jace’s. He’s been filming since we got here.”
Silas frowned at the bag. Slowly, like he was humoring her, he unzipped it. Inside wasn’t Jace’s rig—it was empty. Just dust.
Riven’s throat closed. She turned to Arlo, desperate. “You remember him. You have to. He’s—he’s been with us for years. He’s your friend, Arlo!”
Arlo finally looked at her. His eyes were dark, tired. “Riven… there’s never been a Jace.”
She left the diner before she could break.
The town swallowed her again, the static whispering under her skin. Every building she passed felt like it was watching, windows like blank eyes. And worse—everywhere she looked, there were gaps.
Not holes. Absences.
An empty porch swing swaying with no breeze. A group of looping townsfolk repeating their tasks—but there was a space, like one of them had been cut out of the frame. Her gut twisted. The world was trimming itself.
By the time she reached the church at the end of the street, she was shaking.
The doors hung crooked. Inside, the pews were overturned, hymnals scattered. And at the altar—pictures. Hundreds of them. Old Polaroids tacked to the wood, edges curling from time.
Her knees weakened when she saw them.
Faces she knew. Faces she didn’t. All of them in their team’s gear. Different towns. Different ruins. In one photo, a woman she’d never seen before—smiling, holding the same EVP recorder Silas carried.
Across her picture, someone had scrawled in thick black ink:
REMOVED
Behind her, floorboards creaked.
Riven spun, heart pounding.
Arlo stood in the doorway. His expression wasn’t confusion this time—it was resignation.
“You knew,” Riven whispered.
His jaw flexed. “Not everything. Just… enough.”
“You let this happen,” she hissed. “Jace—he was real. I’m not crazy. I know he was—”
Arlo stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Riven, listen. You remember because you’re the only one who crosses the Veil. That’s why you see what the rest of us don’t. But the more you remember…” He trailed off.
Her pulse thundered. “The more I disappear too.”
He didn’t deny it.
That night, she woke to Silas’s tablet flickering in the dark.
Eidolon’s synthetic voice was warped, cracking through static.
EIDOLON: “One unit lost. Pattern correction engaged.”
The tablet screen flashed white, then displayed a single line of text:
NEXT REMOVAL: ARLO VEX
Riven’s breath caught. She looked across the diner at Arlo, asleep in the booth.
And she realized the cycle wasn’t random.
It was choosing.
Episode Four:
The Next Removal
The diner smelled like mildew and rusting metal, but it was the silence that pinned Riven awake. She hadn’t slept—not really. Every time her eyes closed, she saw Jace’s face flicker like static and dissolve into nothing.
Across from her, Arlo slept with his arm across his chest, head tilted against the booth wall. He looked solid. Real.
But the screen on Silas’s tablet still burned in her mind.
NEXT REMOVAL: ARLO VEX.
Morning was worse.
When they stepped outside, the town had changed again. The houses leaned at different angles, some vanished entirely, and the looping people were fewer. The man with the broom was gone. The woman in the chair had vanished. Only the children remained, circling endlessly on bikes that squealed but never rusted.
Silas was pacing, muttering into his recorder. “The whole town’s like corrupted code. Segments overwritten, scrubbed. But if that’s true, then—”
“Don’t say it,” Arlo warned. His jaw was tight. He hadn’t spoken much since the church.
Riven stayed quiet. She didn’t want to tell him what she knew.
But then Silas froze, his recorder halfway to his mouth. “Wait. Did you hear that?”
Faintly, under the static, a voice:
“Arlo…”
Riven’s blood turned cold.
The voice came from Main Street. They followed it past abandoned shops and the hollow remains of a gas station. Every step pressed heavier against Riven’s chest, the static vibrating in her bones.
At the end of the road was a collapsed house. The roof sagged, windows black. The front door was covered in scratches, hundreds of lines carved deep into the wood.
Arlo stopped short.
Riven saw why.
Across the door, written in what looked like ash and blood:
ARLO VEX – REMOVED
“Don’t touch it,” Riven warned.
But Arlo had already stepped forward. His hands trembled as he traced the letters, his jaw clenching like he might bite through his own tongue.
“They’re erasing me,” he whispered. “Same way they did Jace. Same way they’ll do all of us.”
His voice cracked. “Riven—tell me you’ll remember me.”
She wanted to say yes. She wanted to swear it. But her throat closed around the lie.
Because the truth was—her memories weren’t safe either.
That night, the cycle began again.
The air grew heavier. The static built until her teeth buzzed. The lights in the diner strobed, every other flash showing the booths empty, then full, then empty again.
Riven clutched her head as a whisper split her skull:
“Do you see it yet? He was never yours to keep.”
When the lights steadied, Arlo’s seat across from her was empty.
The pack he’d carried sat untouched on the floor. His jacket hung on the chair. But he was gone.
Silas didn’t even look up from his screen. “Who’s jacket is that?”
Riven pressed a hand over her mouth.
The cycle had claimed him.
And this time, she was the only one who remembered he ever existed.
Episode Five:
The Broken Pattern
Riven didn’t sleep.
She sat at the diner booth until her legs went numb, staring at the empty space where Arlo had been. His jacket still hung there, the sleeves limp, a quiet accusation that no one else could see.
Silas moved around like nothing was wrong. Packing gear, adjusting Eidolon’s wires, scribbling notes in the dark. Every so often, he muttered under his breath—jargon about magnetic resonance and neural echoes—but never once did he mention Arlo.
To him, Arlo had never been here.
To her, Arlo was already fading. She tried to picture his voice, the exact rasp in his tone, the sharp lines of his face—but the harder she reached, the blurrier he became.
It’s stealing him from me, she thought. It’s stealing all of us.
By noon, the static was worse.
They moved through Dovewood’s cracked streets, cameras dangling useless at their sides. There was nothing left to document. Nothing that stayed the same. Houses warped when you looked away. Loops stuttered, townsfolk flickering like old film reels.
And Riven began to notice something new.
Shadows.
Not her own. Not Silas’s. Long, black silhouettes stretching across the ground, attached to no one. They shifted when she moved. Followed when she turned.
She didn’t tell Silas. She couldn’t.
Instead, she whispered into Jace’s abandoned mic, hoping some shred of his recording still existed in the static.
“Arlo, if you can hear me—if any of you can—just hold on. I won’t let them take me too.”
That night, the diner filled with sound.
Not whispers this time. Not radio hiss. Voices.
Hundreds of them, bleeding through Eidolon’s speakers, overlapping, frantic. Some begging. Some screaming. Some chanting.
Silas leaned over the tablet, typing furiously, sweat dripping down his temples. “This isn’t external. It’s not signals from the town. It’s internal—Riven, these voices are stored data.”
Her heart lurched. “Data of what?”
He swallowed. “Of us.”
The tablet screen glitched. Dozens of faces scrolled by in bursts—people she almost recognized. People she thought she’d never seen. Some in Hollow Veil gear. Some holding equipment they’d never built. Some smiling, some broken, some lying dead.
And then—Arlo.
A single frame of him looking straight at the lens, eyes wide, mouth open like he was about to say something. Then gone.
Riven slammed her hand on the table. “Stop scrolling—freeze it!”
Silas typed, but the image was already gone. The tablet hissed, glitching lines across the glass.
Then Eidolon’s voice cut through, distorted, urgent:
“PATTERN CORRECTION INCOMPLETE. INTERFERENCE DETECTED.”
Silas’s face drained of color. “What interference?”
The tablet’s glow shifted, the letters burning across the screen:
RIVEN MARLOWE
ANOMALY DETECTED
REMOVAL SUSPENDED
The static outside roared like a storm.
Riven stumbled back from the screen, her blood like ice. She was supposed to be gone too. But something—something inside the cycle—was refusing to erase her.
She didn’t know if that made her lucky. Or if it made her the reason everyone else was dying.
Episode Six:
The Machine Beneath
The storm of static passed sometime before dawn.
Riven sat awake in the diner, staring at the tablet’s last message burned in her mind:
RIVEN MARLOWE — ANOMALY DETECTED. REMOVAL SUSPENDED.
She didn’t tell Silas. He’d been working through the night, hunched over Eidolon’s cracked screen like a man possessed. His voice was hoarse, muttering code, equations, fragments of words that didn’t belong to him.
When the gray light of morning seeped through the windows, he finally looked up.
“I found it,” he rasped.
Riven blinked. “Found what?”
He tapped the screen. Maps, schematics, underground layouts spilled across it, glitching but legible. “Beneath the town. A facility. Government-built. Thirty years ago, maybe more. They called it Project Black Veil.”
Her pulse jumped. “The cycle.”
Silas nodded slowly. “It’s not a haunting, Riven. It’s a machine. And it’s still running.”
They followed him to the outskirts of town, where the earth rose into low hills. The looping children on bikes didn’t even look up as they passed; their wheels squealed endlessly behind them.
By midmorning, they reached a collapsed water tower. Beneath its rusted shell was a hatch half-buried in dirt. Arlo might have pried it open with his strength, but Arlo was gone.
So it was Riven’s hands on the corroded wheel. Riven’s breath steaming in the cold as the metal screeched and gave way.
The hatch yawned open, exhaling stale air that reeked of ozone and mold.
A ladder plunged into darkness.
Silas adjusted his headlamp. “Ladies first?”
She shot him a look, but climbed anyway.
The tunnel led them deep beneath Dovewood.
The walls were concrete, lined with rusted pipes. Their footsteps echoed. The static grew stronger the farther they went, vibrating the lights until they flickered.
At last, the passage opened into a vast chamber.
Riven stopped dead.
It was a cathedral of machines. Towers of servers stretched to the ceiling, cables dangling like vines. A central console pulsed faint blue light, rhythmic as a heartbeat. Screens lined the walls, all showing fragments of… people. Faces. Streets. Rooms. Overlapping like layers of film.
Jace’s face flickered there for half a second before vanishing.
Arlo’s voice, warped, echoed through the speakers: “Tell me you’ll remember me.”
Riven’s knees buckled.
This was it. The core of the cycle.
The machine wasn’t just recording the town. It was rewriting it.
Silas walked straight to the console, his eyes glassy in the glow.
“Silas,” Riven warned, “don’t—”
“I can feel it,” he whispered. His voice wasn’t fully his anymore—it was threaded with something colder, metallic. “Eidolon’s already synced. This machine… it remembers us. All of us. All the cycles. We’ve been here before, Riven. Again and again.”
She stepped toward him. “Then shut it down.”
His hand hovered over the console. His eyes flickered like static. “What if shutting it down means none of us exist at all?”
The hum of the servers deepened, almost like a growl. Lights stuttered. On every screen, one word began to appear, scrolling across different fragments of reality:
REPEAT
The ground shook.
Metal screamed overhead. And from between the server towers, shadows poured like smoke, stretching long and skeletal.
Riven’s chest seized. They weren’t just shadows anymore. They had faces. Their faces—Jace, Arlo, strangers she half-remembered, all warped, stretched, hollow-eyed.
And they were coming closer.
Episode Seven:
Ghost Data
The shadows moved with an awful grace.
They weren’t smoke, not exactly. They had weight, form, a ragged density that clung to the air like ash. And faces. Too many faces.
Jace’s grin, stretched wide and empty.
Arlo’s eyes, bloodshot and wild.
Other strangers she half-recognized but couldn’t place—like half-remembered dreams stitched into flesh.
Each time Riven blinked, the faces shifted, melted, and returned in new combinations.
“Stay back,” she whispered, but her voice barely carried against the hum of the servers.
The shadows didn’t stop.
Silas didn’t flinch. He stood in front of the console as if hypnotized, his skin flickering faintly with static.
“They’re not ghosts,” he said. His voice came out hollow, doubled, like something else was speaking with him. “They’re data fragments. Memories the machine couldn’t erase cleanly. Each cycle leaves residue.”
One of the shadows lurched forward. Its head lolled at an impossible angle, and Riven caught another glimpse of Arlo’s features, stretched across its skull.
“Residue?” she demanded. “That’s Arlo.”
Silas shook his head slowly. “No. That’s what’s left of Arlo. A copy overwritten too many times. He’s not alive. He’s not… him.”
But even as he said it, his voice cracked.
The shadows swarmed.
Riven’s body tensed. She expected claws, teeth, cold hands, but instead—one passed through her.
It didn’t hurt. Not physically.
But inside her head, a hundred voices screamed at once. Arlo’s laugh. Jace’s cursing. A child’s sob. A woman praying. A man shouting something about “protocol seven.”
Riven collapsed to her knees, clutching her skull.
The machine wasn’t just repeating reality. It was feeding on it.
Silas knelt beside her, his hands trembling. His pupils flickered like broken pixels.
“They’re trying to anchor,” he muttered. “They want out. They need bodies to stabilize. That’s why—” He broke off, swallowing hard. “That’s why you hear them more than I do. You’re still an anomaly. The system can’t overwrite you.”
She forced her head up. “Then what do we do?”
For a moment, Silas’s expression wasn’t his own. His face twitched, and she saw something behind him, like another version flickering through—Silas with burned skin, Silas with hollow sockets, Silas screaming with no sound.
When he spoke again, his voice wasn’t only his:
“Find the Anchor.”
The servers roared. Screens blazed with a storm of symbols and faces, crashing over one another in dizzying waves. The shadows shrieked without mouths.
Riven’s heart pounded. She remembered what Arlo had said in the static bloom field—Tell me you’ll remember me.
They weren’t just shadows. They were echoes of every version of themselves that hadn’t survived the cycle.
And now they wanted her to carry them forward.
Riven staggered toward the console, toward the storm of light and static.
The machine was alive.
The machine was hungry.
And it remembered everything.
Episode Eight:
The Last Reset
The console’s glow spread like sunrise, washing the room in sterile light.
Riven stood before it, her hands shaking. The server racks buzzed with a mechanical heartbeat. She could almost swear it was synced to hers—pulsing faster every time she let fear creep closer.
Silas leaned against the wall, twitching like a corrupted video frame. His voice was distant, almost swallowed by the static in his throat.
“You go in… it rewrites you,” he rasped. “But you… you might make it back. You’re not like the rest. You resisted erasure. You’ve always been the… error.”
Riven stared at him. His face flickered between dozens of versions—smiling, burned, dead-eyed. She couldn’t tell if she was still talking to her Silas or just one of the machine’s ghosts.
“Why me?” she asked.
He almost smiled. “Because you don’t belong here.”
The console flared white.
The shadows shrieked without sound.
And then—she was falling.
The meadow.
Always the meadow.
The Static Bloom flowers bent toward her, glowing like fractured lanterns. Wind pressed against her skin but carried no sound. It was like stepping into the pause between heartbeats.
And there—standing in the center of the field—was her.
Another Riven.
This one’s skin was paler, her eyes black pools reflecting no light. She wore the same clothes, but torn, stained, aged. Her lantern swayed in her hand, dim but steady.
“I knew you’d come,” the Other Riven said. Her voice was calm, almost relieved.
Riven swallowed. “Who… what are you?”
The Other tilted her head. “I’m you. Or rather, what’s left of you. I’ve lived this cycle… too many times. Every time I tried to break it, it folded me back in. But each reset left a scar. And now I’m… this.”
Riven’s stomach turned cold. “You mean I’m destined to become—”
“Yes,” the Other said simply. “Unless you succeed where I failed.”
The meadow pulsed. The sky above split, showing cracks of flickering light—faces, moments, half-memories. Arlo laughing. Jace running. Silas screaming.
“What does the machine want?” Riven asked.
The Other Riven’s expression hardened. “It doesn’t want anything. It just is. It’s a loop built on sacrifice. Each cycle demands anchors—souls caught in its teeth to keep it turning. You’ve seen the ghosts. You’ve felt them. They’re fuel.”
“And me?”
“You’re the anomaly. The loop can’t erase you because you don’t originate from this reality. You’re… borrowed. That’s why you’re the only one who remembers.”
The words hit like a punch. “Borrowed? From where?”
The Other smiled, but there was no joy in it. “That’s not for me to answer. But it’s why the choice will fall on you.”
The meadow darkened, flowers bending as though in mourning.
“You can break the loop,” the Other said softly. “But if you do, the anchor collapses. Everyone tied to this cycle will be erased completely. No echoes, no residue, no chance at memory. Gone.”
Her black eyes fixed on Riven’s. “Or you accept your place. Carry the cycle forward. Live with the burden of remembering when no one else will.”
Riven’s heart thundered in her chest. Her throat closed.
Arlo’s voice echoed in her mind: Tell me you’ll remember me.
Jace’s laugh. Silas glitching. Faces of people she didn’t even know.
If she broke it, she’d free them all. But she’d destroy them too.
If she carried it, they’d live on in fragments. Forgotten, but not gone.
The meadow pulsed again, waiting.
The Other Riven extended her hand. “It’s time to choose.”
The sky above shattered into blinding static.
Riven closed her eyes.
And stepped forward.
Episode Nine:
The Choice
The meadow fractured. Petals rose like shards of glass, suspended in air, frozen in the static of the loop.
Riven stood in the center of it, staring at her Other. That pale mirror of herself with blackened eyes and a voice like echoes.
“You choose now,” the Other said. “Break it—or become it.”
The words pressed on her chest, heavier than any spirit she’d ever felt.
The First Path: Break the Loop
Riven’s fists clenched.
“No more cycles. No more resets. I won’t let this thing feed on us again.”
Her voice cracked but carried weight, sharper than the hum of the machine.
The Other’s face softened with something like pity. “You’ll end everything. You’ll kill them.”
“They’re already dying. Every time. Over and over. Better to end the machine than leave them as fuel.”
She raised her hand. The Static Blooms bent inward, collapsing toward her palm as if magnetized by her will. The sky split wider, light pouring through in violent threads.
Jace’s laugh flickered above her. Arlo’s voice. Silas’s eyes.
She screamed and crushed the light in her fist.
The meadow detonated into white.
And then—silence.
When her eyes opened, there was nothing. No field. No sky. No faces. Just endless dark.
Her body was weightless. The hum of the machine gone.
She had done it.
But she was alone.
Utterly, irreversibly alone.
The Second Path: Accept the Loop
Her hands trembled.
She stared at her Other, and for the first time saw not a monster—but exhaustion. Loneliness carved into her bones.
Riven whispered, “I can’t let them vanish. Even if they forget, even if I’m the only one who knows… at least they still exist.”
The Other smiled faintly. “Then you’ve chosen the burden.”
Riven stepped closer. The meadow’s petals leaned toward her, glowing dimly. She could feel the cycle’s pull, threads of memory knitting around her wrists like chains.
Above, the sky stitched itself shut, closing the cracks.
Jace’s laugh faded. Arlo’s voice dimmed. Silas’s glitch stilled.
But the echoes remained, pressed into her mind like scars.
Her lantern flickered in her hand, then burned brighter, casting shadows across the field.
She would remember them. Every version. Every failure. Every life lived and lost in the loop.
Even when they did not.
Especially when they did not.
The meadow stilled.
The Other Riven exhaled, relief breaking across her face like sunlight.
“You’ll do better than me,” she whispered, fading into mist.
Riven was alone. But no longer uncertain.
She turned toward the glow of the machine as the cycle rewove itself around her.
When she opened her eyes, she was back in the basement of the server room.
The console glowed with new text:
Cycle Reset: Team Hollow Veil. Version 17 initialized.
Jace’s voice came from behind her, casual, unaware. “Camera’s rolling. You ready, Riven?”
She smiled weakly, tears in her eyes. “Yeah,” she whispered.
Her lantern burned steady at her side.
Epilogue:
The Black Veil Protocol
The console screen pulsed faintly in the dark.
[Cycle Status: Unstable]
The air in the server room felt wrong, as if reality itself had split into overlapping channels, both broadcasting at once.
If She Broke the Loop
In one thread, the machine lay in ruins. The humming was gone. The servers sparked in silence, gutted wires trailing like veins cut open.
Riven stood in the middle of the wreckage. Her lantern was dark now—snuffed.
There were no voices behind her. No laughter. No footsteps.
The town above had dissolved into gray fog, houses collapsing inward like ash. Even the trees of Dovewood leaned, then shattered into dust.
She walked alone through the emptiness, her boots crunching on ground that dissolved as soon as she stepped.
The world was ending, but it was hers.
She whispered their names into the silence—Jace, Arlo, Silas—as if the sound itself might hold them together one last time.
No answer came.
Only her breath.
Only her voice.
And then, nothing.
If She Accepted the Loop
In another thread, the machine pulsed steadily, wires alive, the hum resonant and steady like a heartbeat.
Riven’s lantern glowed bright against her thigh, warming her hand.
She heard footsteps behind her. Jace’s voice, casual, almost bored:
“Camera’s rolling. You ready, Riven?”
She turned. Jace, whole and smiling. Arlo adjusting his bag. Silas scrolling through his tablet, muttering about calibration.
All of them alive, unscarred, unaware of what had come before.
Her throat tightened. She smiled through the tears. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m ready.”
But her eyes lingered on them as if memorizing every detail.
Because she knew.
When the cycle reset again, they’d forget. And she’d still carry everything.
Her lantern flickered once, then steadied.
The Overlap
The console flickered between the two outcomes.
[Cycle 17 Initialized]
[System Collapse Imminent]
Text overlapped, fighting for dominance. One line glitched through, jagged and sharp:
THE PROTOCOL CONTINUES.
For a moment, it seemed the two Riven’s—one alone in the dark, one trapped in the loop—were staring at each other across the divide.
Both chosen.
Both damned.
Both eternal.
And then the screen went black.
The Black Veil hummed once more.
Whether as ruin, or as repetition, it endured.
End.