The world dissolved into patterns of light and sound. Each fragment of reflection twisted into shapes that resembled language but moved too fast to read. The air around me hummed like the inside of a living machine.
Elior was already moving, tracing glowing lines with his fingertips that left trails behind, forming strange geometric symbols that hovered midair.
"This is the rewriting layer," he said. "It's where the Underlayer decides what becomes memory and what fades away."
The cat landed beside me, looking dizzy. "I think I just saw my ninth life flash before my eyes and it looked disappointing."
I ignored it and looked at Elior. "If we're inside the rewriting layer, then the construct can see us."
"He can see everything," Elior replied. "But he can't feel everything. That's what gives us an advantage."
Before I could ask what he meant, a crack of light tore open in the sky above. The construct stepped out, calm as ever, his voice echoing across the endless grid.
"You think emotion can overwrite me?" he said. "Emotion is unstable code. It corrupts logic. It kills precision."
Elior's expression didn't change. "And yet, it's the only thing that makes your existence possible."
The construct raised his hand. The space around us flickered and bent. The mirrors shifted into spiraling structures of raw data, entire histories looping and folding. I saw faces I'd never met, lives I'd never lived, yet they all felt familiar, as if they belonged to me.
"These are borrowed memories," Elior warned. "Don't touch them."
But one fragment floated closer, showing my younger self standing beside someone I didn't recognize—a woman with a red scarf and the same pendant the boy had given me earlier. She smiled before fading.
"Elior, who is she?" I asked.
He hesitated. "Someone the Underlayer took from you. A memory that wasn't meant to return."
The construct laughed. "He won't tell you because he erased her himself. All for control."
I turned to Elior, heart pounding. "Is that true?"
His silence spoke louder than anything.
Before I could say another word, the construct attacked. Streams of data surged forward like spears, shattering the mirrored ground. I ducked behind a fractal wall as shards flew everywhere.
Elior countered with a pulse of light, drawing power from his surroundings. Each movement made the air tremble. The two forces collided, sending ripples through the rewriting layer.
The cat clung to my shoulder. "This is getting way above your security clearance."
"Tell me something I don't know," I muttered.
I could feel the pull of the memories around me, the fragments reaching out, trying to be seen. I realized then what Elior had meant—emotion wasn't just power here. It was structure. The more you remembered, the more solid you became.
The construct was trying to erase emotion, to flatten everything into perfect, lifeless order.
I stepped out from cover and shouted, "You talk about perfection, but what's perfect about emptiness?"
He looked at me, expression unchanging. "Emptiness cannot betray itself."
"Then you've already lost," I said.
I thought of the city above, of the people who laughed, argued, and dreamed without knowing that their emotions fueled its very foundation. I reached inside the memory of the woman with the red scarf and pulled.
The moment I did, the air exploded with color. Her laughter echoed through the entire layer, a sound pure enough to shake the structure. The construct staggered back, his form flickering.
Elior's voice rang out. "You remember her. That's all we needed."
The world fractured again.
The rewriting layer began to collapse, the construct screaming as his form unraveled into thousands of fragments of light.
But just before he disappeared, his voice cut through the chaos one last time. "Erase me, and you erase yourselves. You are built on the same flaw."
Then he was gone.
The silence that followed was heavy.
The mirrors dimmed, the sky steadied, and Elior fell to one knee, exhausted.
"What did he mean?" I asked quietly.
Elior looked up, eyes dim but calm. "He's right about one thing. We're all connected through the same code. If the Underlayer collapses completely, none of us will remain as we are."
"So what do we do now?"
He smiled faintly. "We wake up the city before it forgets what dreaming feels like."
The light faded, and the world around us began to dissolve into white.