The Inversion Pulse

The light streaming from Kael’s hand coalesced into a geometric lattice — shifting, recursive patterns that hovered in the air like living equations. Around him, the Heart Core chamber pulsed with volatile energy. Cracks spiderwebbed along the chitin walls, and gravity spasmed in unnatural jolts. Time stuttered.

“Kael, step away from the lattice!” Commander Kzex’s voice shrieked through the comm-speakers. “You’re feeding it!”

Kael didn’t move.

He wasn’t entirely Kael anymore.

The Duskling influence — ancient, mathematical, unbound by space — wasn’t possessing him in the traditional sense. It was merging with him. Not replacing, but expanding.

Visions bled into his consciousness:

A universe without Chitin Prime, dissolved by entropy long ago.

Another version of Kael, with a human face, living on Earth, staring at a computer screen.

And deeper still — a universe where the Myrminians never existed, and the insect gods were just myths in ancient texts.

The Inversion Pulse was coming — a theoretical event known only in forbidden colony scrolls. A full cosmological reset. The Dusklings wanted it… but they also feared it. Because it didn’t just erase — it rewrote.

Kael could see the threads now — reality's code, exposed like a nervous system without skin. With one decision, he could pluck the strand that tethered Chitin Prime to its timeline… and everything would invert.

He hesitated.

Then—

“No,” said Kael aloud.

He didn't want to become their tool. Not for unweaving. Not for rewriting.

Instead, he channeled the lattice’s energy inward — focusing not on destruction, but containment. He remembered Vryx's words: You are the key.

If that was true, then Kael could seal the gate from both sides.

But it would cost him his place in this timeline.

The Heart Core began to fracture, glowing violently as Kael synchronized with the dark matter field. Dusklings shrieked — the first sound they had ever made — as the gate began to fold in on itself, warped by Kael’s decision.

All across the colony, Myrminians collapsed as reality corrected itself in violent convulsions. Time froze, reversed, and re-threaded.

Then silence.

Kael was gone.

So was the gate.

In his place, at the center of the Heart Core, was a black chrysalis — smooth, glowing faintly with the last of the Duskling lattice.

Vryx entered the chamber, antennae trembling. “He didn’t unweave… He became the lock.”

Commander Kzex stood beside him, speechless.

Deep within the chrysalis, Kael dreamed.

Not of Chitin Prime.

Not of war.

But of something new.