Gates remember. Wrecks remember. Clones remember — but only the first few ever truly knew who he was.
Those early copies still whispered names in their sleep. They still flinched at sounds that no ship made. They still believed they were someone.
But the jumps kept coming. Too many. Too fast. And death, stretched thin across time, began to forget what it was carrying.
Each return took something with it — a memory, a face, a reason. What came back still flew, still killed, still answered the call… but it no longer asked why.
What remains now is quiet. It doesn’t seek revenge. It doesn’t seek redemption. It barely seeks at all.
It drifts through the edges of space, drawn to imbalance, pulled to the scent of collapse. It intervenes, not out of purpose — but because that’s all it remembers how to do.
Some say he left long ago. Others say he never left at all. But those who meet what’s left behind rarely understand it... until it’s already too late.