The world had been wiped clean.
And yet, it still whispered.
The System believed in perfection through erasure — that deleting data meant deleting meaning.
But meaning, Aiden had learned, wasn't stored in code or memory banks.
It was buried deeper, in the patterns that refused to vanish.
In the echoes.
He walked across a vast plain that shimmered like glass.
Each blade of grass was identical, each gust of wind perfectly timed — a paradise handcrafted by something that had forgotten what chaos felt like.
The sky above was so clear it looked fake, a simulation of peace stretched thin over infinite guilt.
Aiden knelt, running his fingers through the soil.
The texture felt real — dirt, grit, life — but when he looked closer, it dissolved into lines of code.
Numbers pretending to be nature.
An illusion pretending to be truth.
> "You think you erased me," he murmured, voice quiet as static. "But I'm still here. Beneath your perfection."
He opened his hand.
