It was cold—not in the way winter whispered through leaves or how a cathedral floor might chill bare feet. This was a deeper cold. A conceptual stillness. A silence between silences.
Alicia floated in it.
She could not feel her body, but she knew it existed somewhere beyond the code and light. Time passed differently here—if it passed at all.
The Core did not hum. It remembered.
She could hear it, in waves. A language not spoken but understood through instinct and spirit. Layers of system architecture unfolded around her, massive as continents. Histories of failed simulations. Of hero candidates. Of users who bore Systems and broke under their weight.
Jay. Rei. Herself.
Threads of memory—some hers, some not—wove past her like ghostly silk. She reached for one.
A classroom. Late afternoon light. Jay, half-asleep, his cheek buried in a book. Miho whispering furiously at him. Alicia, pretending not to smile.
Another thread.
