The Wheel spun.
It was clean this time. Elegant. Polished like obsidian, but without a flaw. It whispered instead of groaning, the spokes turning in silence, each click more ominous for how perfect it sounded. Above it, the sky shimmered with twilight—not quite night, not quite day, like the world refused to commit to either.
Lucia stood at the edge of the new Field. She wasn't bound anymore, nor erased—but her thread had not returned. She could move, but she could not touch anything. When she stepped forward, the tiles accepted her presence like a ghost drifting through the simulation. She wasn't in the game.
She was beneath it.
A spectator with no voice.
Around her, six platforms hovered—new, unblemished, waiting. On each, a figure emerged in a slow unfurling of fog.
Angela appeared first.
She stumbled forward with her arms crossed, already defensive. Her eyes scanned the horizon with wary confusion. Her jaw clenched. The moment her gaze fell upon the Wheel, her breath caught.
Then came the others.
Harlan Vestin—Saylor's old coworker, the one who had doctored his documents and walked free with a promotion.
Mira Holt—the neighbor who turned away when Saylor lost everything, the one who once called his presence "too heavy for the hallway."
Danvers—the former friend who had laughed over drinks while repeating Saylor's personal pain like gossip.
Carlene Fisk—a corporate manager who signed his termination letter without reading the evidence.
And finally, Declan Rowe—the man who shoved Saylor in public and called him a fraud when he tried to speak up.
Each of them now stood on a separate tile. None of them knew why.
Lucia's voice caught in her throat. She wanted to scream. To warn them.
But her voice had no sound.
The Wheel clicked once more.
> "Welcome, Players."
The voice was Saylor's.
But colder. Magnified. It wasn't coming from anywhere specific. It was the Field.
> "You've been chosen to participate in a game of judgment, remembrance, and transformation."
Angela flinched. "Saylor?" she whispered.
There was no reply.
The Wheel continued to spin.
A new platform rose from the mist—a black stone altar with a single carved slot, waiting.
> "Place your hand."
They hesitated.
Angela stepped forward first. Her expression hardened. She pressed her hand into the slot.
The Wheel shivered.
From it dropped a slip of paper—red, smoldering.
Angela caught it.
She read the words aloud:
> "THREAD OF CONSEQUENCE."
She blinked. "What the hell does that mean?"
The fog churned. Her platform began to move—slowly drifting away from the others. A path opened, lined with jagged symbols etched in gold.
Next came Danvers. He scoffed.
"Whatever this is, it's cute."
He pressed his palm down.
> "THREAD OF DISSONANCE."
The platform hissed.
Sparks flickered at his feet. He tried to step back, but the Wheel groaned softly—and the platform began to rotate in place, spinning him slowly until he faced nothing.
Lucia watched with dread building like a fever behind her eyes.
Saylor hadn't brought them here to test them.
He brought them here to remember them properly.
Lucia followed the new players from afar, drifting like a ghost between platforms and paths. The Field had evolved. It was no longer fragmented like before—no longer stitched together from shattered gods or broken domains. It was unified now. A design with intention.
Saylor's intention.
The fog moved in rhythms, pulsing like breath between the structures. Walkways of etched stone looped across the sky. Trees without roots jutted from ceilings. Floating monoliths drifted in geometric harmony, casting no shadow.
Lucia hovered above Angela's path.
Angela walked cautiously. She kept her hands close to her chest, her lips pursed, her brow furrowed in defiance. Around her, the fog began whispering—not voices, but echoes of her past.
> "You're too much trouble, Saylor."
> "I need someone stable."
> "You let people ruin you."
Angela froze. "No…"
She turned in place. "This isn't real."
The whispers grew louder.
> "You left him when he needed you." "You watched him fall apart." "You closed the door and didn't look back."
Angela dropped to her knees, covering her ears. Her thread—bright silver—quivered.
> "THREAD OF CONSEQUENCE: ACTIVATION PENDING."
A memory field bloomed beneath her. It didn't show her sins—it made her walk them. A hallway appeared—Saylor's old apartment. She stood at the door. Her own hands moved without her consent.
She packed.
She left.
Lucia watched helplessly. "Angela, fight it. Don't give in."
Angela tried. But each step grew heavier. The more she denied, the more vivid it became.
She was rewriting herself in real time.
Across the Field, Danvers stumbled through a labyrinth of mirrors. Each reflection showed him laughing at Saylor's suffering—recounting humiliating stories to friends, making betrayal a punchline.
> "I was just joking." "He took it too seriously."
The mirrors cracked. One by one, the reflections twisted.
> "You were never joking." "You wanted him to break."
Danvers turned and saw himself—bloodied, scared, alone in a hallway. A mirror version of Saylor stood behind him.
> "THREAD OF DISSONANCE: SYNCED."
The reflection lunged.
Lucia turned away.
She tried to locate the others.
Carlene was locked in an office built from static and broken screens. Files flew through the air, each one with Saylor's name redacted. She sat behind a desk, trying to process them.
But the system never let her finish.
> "Too slow." "Too detached."
The files caught fire in her hands. Her suit shredded. Her voice cracked.
> "I didn't know!"
> "You didn't care."
Harlan stood in a glass cage, watching his forged reports play back again and again. Each one manipulated. Each one falsified. The promotion badge at his feet melted into tar.
He clawed at the walls. "I just wanted a chance."
The system responded:
> "You took someone else's."
Mira knelt on a hilltop. She watched a past version of herself turn away from Saylor with a polite smile.
> "It's just not my place."
> "I didn't want to get involved."
The ground beneath her cracked.
Lucia tried to reach her.
But she passed through.
A system message blinked in the sky:
> "THREADS PROCESSING: INTERFERENCE BLOCKED."
Lucia screamed in silence.
She descended until she reached the core—where the Wheel still spun. Saylor stood beside it, watching.
He didn't turn when she appeared.
"You see it now, don't you?" he said.
Lucia stared at him, rage and grief boiling in her chest.
"You brought them here to torture them."
Saylor didn't answer.
He stepped toward the Wheel and laid his palm against it.
"No," he said. "I brought them here to understand what they made."
Lucia glared. "You're still lying to yourself. This isn't understanding. It's vengeance."
Saylor finally turned.
His face was calm. Beautiful. Ruined.
"Maybe it is. But it's mine."
The Wheel spun once more.
> "Final Player Registered."
Lucia's eyes widened.
She saw the platform rise.
And a final figure appear.
She knew that face.
It was hers.
Lucia stared at the rising figure. Her mouth went dry. Her chest froze.
She saw herself.
Not the Lucia that stood there watching, fractured and fading. This one was whole—untouched by trauma, unburdened by memory. Her expression was blank, like someone newly awakened from a dream with no concept of what came before.
She stepped forward to the altar.
The Wheel acknowledged her presence.
> "PROXY CANDIDATE RECOGNIZED."
Lucia whispered, "No... that's not possible."
Saylor stood beside the Wheel, hands folded behind his back. "Isn't it?"
She turned to him, furious. "You made a version of me?"
He shrugged. "No. You made her. Every failure, every loop, every thread that snapped and crawled away instead of rising—that's who she is. A cleaner copy. One who doesn't remember what she lost."
The new Lucia—"Clean-Lucia," as the Field had designated her—reached out and touched the altar.
> "THREAD OF RESONANCE."
The Wheel spun harder. The sky flared gold.
Lucia, the real Lucia, staggered. Her knees buckled. Something inside her tore.
She could feel it—her essence being mirrored. Not copied. Not stolen. Just... overwritten.
> "System recognizes Proxy shift."
> "Original designation: Lucia Payne."
> "Status: Archived."
"No!" she screamed.
The world didn't listen.
Saylor finally turned to face her fully. "You never understood the point of memory. It's not about what we cling to."
He stepped forward. "It's about what we're willing to let go of."
Lucia crawled to the edge of the platform. The new version of herself turned and looked directly at her.
Blank eyes. No hatred. No fear.
Just vacancy.
Lucia felt her thread flicker again.
"I'm not finished," she said. "I'm still here."
Saylor nodded. "You are. And now you can watch yourself get it right."
The Field shimmered.
Fog reclaimed the distance. Paths unfolded. Threads pulsed into alignment.
The game had begun again.
But Lucia… was no longer part of it.
She floated just beneath its surface, a hollow echo in a perfect loop.
And somewhere, in the dark beyond the system's reach, a fragment of her thread curled like a fist.
Not yet.