A cold breath.
That's what woke him.
Rei blinked slowly, his eyes dry, as if he'd been dreaming inside a dream. But this wasn't the soft, surreal drift of slumber.
This was the distorted heartbeat of something trying to die.
He sat up, bones creaking like cracked data. Around him, the once-majestic Core Archive—the mind-world where he'd once seen the truth—was falling apart.
The sky above wasn't a sky anymore. It was a broken projection of code, glitching like a scratched vinyl record. The ground beneath him shimmered like water… and smelled like static.
"I'm not supposed to be here," he muttered.
But he was.
And the Archive remembered.
Ghosts of memories flickered around him:
Jay laughing in the cafeteria.
Jay sleeping in class.
Jay… avoiding him.
Then: Jay crying.
Jay screaming.
Jay bleeding.
The scenes replayed like corrupted files, phasing through the crumbling air.
