The golden eye at the core of the thing drifted closer to the surface. "You want to know what I am."

Mana nodded, once, trying to keep the gun steady.

"I am the Arbiter," the polyhedron said. "Keeper of the Archive, witness to every ending, and executor of protocols far older than the fiction you call history." It rotated, every movement precise but unhurried. "You are here to be judged. Or, perhaps, to judge me. After four million, seven hundred thousand cycles, it can be hard to remember who wrote which part of the script."

Mana felt a surge of adrenaline, the kind that usually hit just before a kill. She forced herself to breathe, and watched as the floor beneath her flickered—runic lines extending from her boots, mapping her position as if drawing a crime scene outline.

The Arbiter’s tone never wavered. "You are the first Bridge-Entity to survive the spiral test. The last did not fare so well—her Core was… insufficient." The light in the shape dimmed, then flared again. "I count those failures. It is my function."

"Why me?" she managed.

"You contain the threshold. The possibility of more than zero. Of less than one." It said this as if it were the punchline to a very old, very private joke.

Mana edged forward, not sure if she was being lured or pulled. "You're not going to kill me?"

"I could," the Arbiter said, with the same detachment that one might use to discuss rain. "But that would defeat the purpose of waiting, don't you think?" Its facets spun, and the runes along the chamber walls echoed the motion, the blue light multiplying in intensity.

The room vibrated, the air itself thickening until Mana could feel the atoms crowding her skin.

Outside, from beyond the glass-smooth wall, the approach of the Jäger was unmistakable. Boots, the heavy pace of the Kommandant, the click and hiss of a plasma weapon prepping to breach.

Mana glanced back, calculating time to entry. Maybe a minute, less if they had demolition.

The Arbiter laughed—a sound that started in her ears but resolved behind her teeth, a perfect sine wave of mirth. "You wish to know what comes next, yes? This is the problem with the young. You crave conclusion."

"Isn't that your job?" she said, hearing Fox's sarcasm in her own words.

"Yes, yes," the Arbiter agreed, almost with pride. "But only when the protocol says. There is a beauty in process."

The runes at her feet had reached up to her knees, a lattice of light that tingled against the armor. She recognized the sensation—like the first time Fox had connected to her Core, that threshold between zero and one when she wasn't quite weapon, wasn't quite human. There was a terrible beauty in this process, she thought, watching the light trace its deliberate path upward—the same beauty she'd felt in those seconds before a kill, when everything narrowed to the perfect geometry of execution.

Mana looked around, searching for options. No weapons in the chamber, no cover, just the shape and its infinite attention.

The Arbiter’s golden eye narrowed, or perhaps it simply focused harder. "You could run," it offered. "But the only way forward is through. You must decide, now: Do you wish to open the way?"

She hesitated. In her life, all her decisions had been simple: kill or not, live or die. This was neither.

"Show me," Mana said.

The walls responded, each rune flaring in time with her heart. The polyhedron expanded, its faces multiplying, each new surface reflecting fragments of her existence—combat sequences, training simulations, the endless blue of old sky she'd only seen in contraband media files. The whole room began to spin, not fast, but with the certainty of a planet. In the noise of it, Mana felt a vertigo that was almost euphoric.

The Arbiter’s voice came through the maelstrom, warm and steady. "So many before you chose not to risk it. They ended as dust, or as tools for lesser men. But you… you have the flaw. You always say yes, even when you should not."

The floor vanished.

Mana floated, or fell, or both. The polyhedron unfolded into a spiral, and in its center, the golden eye shone like a sunrise she had never believed she’d see.

In that moment, a memory surfaced: her father, hands shaking, asking if she wanted to go home. She had said yes, not because she believed it, but because it hurt less than refusing.

"Yes," Mana whispered.

The Arbiter accepted, with infinite grace. "Then let us begin the fold. Seventeen seconds."

He began counting aloud, just as before, but now the numbers meant something. Each tick brought the walls in tighter, the blue light boiling into white, the sound of the Jäger now just a rumor. At thirteen, Mana felt her Core ignite, every port along her skull erupting in perfect, blinding heat. At seven, the air smelled like new grass, the kind from the child-memories of old Earth. At three, the Arbiter said: "You may wish to close your eyes."

She did.

The light behind her eyelids was the only thing in the world.

When the room returned, it was unchanged, yet everything had shifted. The polyhedron hung before her, its surface now mapped with a single, perfect rune where dozens had been before. The same rune the blue light had burned into her retinas.

"I have removed the sigil that obscured the real entrance," the Arbiter said, golden eye contracting slightly. "The price for this revelation will be calculated later."

Mana looked around, expecting the Jäger to burst through the wall, but they were gone. No sound, no presence, only the two of them.

"You have questions," the Arbiter said.

She found her voice. "Where am I?"

The golden eye smiled, though it had no mouth.

"Still in the archive. But not in the one you know. The true archive. Eden is close, Mana. So very close. But first, we must attend to the guests."

And now, from the outermost ring of the chamber, the sound of boots. Dozens, maybe hundreds. The Jäger had found the way, just as she had.

Mana raised her weapon, but the Arbiter only laughed, soft and affectionate.

"Now we see what the Bridge-Entity can do."

The walls began to hum, the blue light vibrating at a pitch that resonated in her molars. The polyhedron whirled, facets spinning, and the golden eye fixed on the chamber door.

"Thirty-seven seconds until breach," said the Arbiter, counting again, "and the story resumes."

Mana squared her stance.

She'd never been good at improvisation.

The Arbiter began his count at thirty-seven, the numbers spoken with the careful articulation of a nursery rhyme. He hovered at the center of the chamber, golden eye dilated, every facet reflecting the data of the world—Mana's posture, the Jäger's pace, the pulse of the oncoming storm.

"We have to move. The Jäger—" Mana's voice tightened around the words.

The Arbiter's golden eye dimmed, then brightened. "Jäger? Oh. The large, loud creatures with the blades." A dismissive pulse. "They are... inconvenient. But irrelevant."

"They're going to kill us."

"Unlikely. They cannot harm me. And you..." the polyhedron spun. "You are far more durable than you believe."

At thirty-five, the hum in the walls rose to a low drone, deep enough to vibrate her teeth.

At thirty-two, the air above the Arbiter's core began to shear, splitting and folding back on itself, a Möbius wound in space. The light leaking from it was not white, not gold, but the color of what came before those, a radiance that existed only in the gaps between numbers.

Mana’s grip on the plasma katana tightened. She cycled the blade to max output, knowing it would burn out within minutes, maybe less.

At twenty-six, the outermost door detonated inward. The Jäger did not waste time with tactics; they poured through the breach in perfect silence, their faces bone-white beneath the blue of the chamber’s light. Behind them, the Kommandant. Even from across the room, she could see the new lattice of crystal that had grown across his left arm, a weapon grown directly from the wound she’d given him hours before.

"Seventeen," said the Arbiter, voice untroubled.

Mana positioned herself between him and the breach.

The first Jäger reached her. She feinted right, then drove the katana left, through the soft seam at the inside of the thigh. The plasma burned clean, cauterizing instantly. The Jäger fell, but not before wrapping its arms around her waist, trying to crush the air from her lungs. She jammed her elbow up, broke its jaw, heard the cartilage snap. The grip loosened.

The next came in low, trying to sweep her legs. Mana backpedaled, letting the blue-lit floor slide her across the circle. She reversed the grip on the blade, stabbed downward, pinning the attacker’s hand to the floor. The Jäger’s other fist caught her in the ribs, and a hot, sharp pain lit up her side. She choked, but did not drop the weapon.

"Eleven," said the Arbiter.

Mana pivoted, ducking a swing from the Kommandant. He moved slower than the others, but with a terrible finality—each motion perfect, wasted nothing. He grabbed a fallen Jäger by the ankle, hurled it at Mana with the casual grace of a discus thrower. The corpse hit her mid-chest, sent her tumbling back. She rolled, landed on her knees, and yanked the sidearm from her hip. Three shots, all at the Kommandant’s head. The first two impacted, fracturing the helmet. The third went through the eye-socket, a spray of blue and white, but he did not stop.

The Arbiter's golden eye tracked her movements with clinical precision. "Eight," he said, then added with something like approval: "Ihre Form ist übrigens ausgezeichnet. Sehr... ökonomisch."

Mana turned just in time to catch another Jäger on the blade’s length. The plasma ate through its torso, the scent of burning synthetic flesh coating her tongue. This close, she could see the runes etched into the Jäger’s bones, the same blue as the wall, the same pattern as the Archive. The enemy was learning.

Her breath was ragged, each inhalation a fresh laceration. The pain from her wounds threatened to become real thought, but she forced it back, made it fuel.

"Five," said the Arbiter, "and, if I may add, you are performing approximately seventeen percent above baseline. Well done."

The Kommandant closed the gap. He no longer bothered with weapons, just his own hands, and the crystal growing from them. Mana dodged left, but he anticipated, pinning her arm between the wall and his body. She felt the bone grind. With her free hand, she triggered the emergency burst on the katana. The overcharge flared, the blade slicing through the Kommandant’s wrist and half his forearm, splattering the wall with molten blue.

He howled, for the first time. The sound was nothing like a man’s—more like the pressure wave that precedes an earthquake. Mana staggered back, only to find herself face-to-face with another Jäger, smaller, but with a faceplate covered in old scars.

It smiled, showing all its teeth, then slashed at her with a hidden blade. The edge caught her in the meat of the thigh, a line of fire running from knee to groin.

"Two," said the Arbiter.

The room was full, now—Jäger everywhere, fighting not as a unit, but as a chaos of teeth and hate. Mana kicked the smaller Jäger away, then grabbed the blade embedded in her leg and used it to slice open another’s throat. She felt blood down her boot, hot and slick. She did not slow.

The Kommandant’s remaining hand clamped down on her helmet. The crystal dug into the visor, carving lines into the glass. Mana twisted, shoving her own broken arm up into the Kommandant’s chin, then, with a yell that was more pain than rage, drove the katana into his open mouth. The blade exited through the skull, carrying half the head with it.

The Kommandant toppled, heavy as a dying planet.

Mana tumbled after, the pain in her leg now a scream. Her free hand found the seam at her hip—three traces right, three traces left—the motion automatic as breathing. Blood slicked the tactical weave under her fingertips, but the familiar hexagonal pattern remained intact, a ritual that had anchored her through a hundred missions, grounding her against the agony.

"One," said the Arbiter. "Prepare for transition."

At the center of the chamber, the rift bloomed. The air folded, inverted, became a lens focusing all the blue and gold into a single, blinding point. The gravity in the room shifted—up and down made no sense. Mana grabbed the Kommandant’s fallen body, braced her boots against his back, and aimed herself at the rift.

A last Jäger, helmet already split, tried to catch her as she passed. Mana drove the katana up, under the chin, and let the force of the leap carry her through the enemy and into the new world.

As she touched the rift, Fox's voice broke through, clear for the first time in minutes: "Mana! Where are you—" Then silence. Golden silence. The pain vanished like a memory belonging to someone else.

For a moment, she hung between seconds.

Then the Archive, the Jäger, the Arbiter—everything—collapsed into a spiral of color and memory, and she felt herself dissolve, then reassemble, then dissolve again.

"Zero."

She lays on grass. Real grass. Above her: a sky that isn’t blue, but isn't wrong either. It was gold.

"Eden," she whispers.

The Arbiter: "Home." He sounds sad.