We left the safehouse before dawn. The streets were silent, though the silence felt heavier than before, as if the city itself was holding its breath. Elior walked ahead, his steps light and precise, his form flickering faintly with every movement. He wasn't fully here anymore.
The cat followed, tail twitching. "Remind me again why we're walking toward the place that eats memories?"
"Because if we don't," I said, "we'll wake up one day and not even remember what we're trying to save."
The entrance to the Origin Core was hidden beneath the oldest part of Velridge, in a sector that predated the Bureau itself. The air was thick with dust and static as we descended through broken tunnels. The deeper we went, the more the world began to hum again, faint and rhythmic, like a heartbeat.
Elior stopped at a collapsed gate and placed his palm against the metal. Light spread from his hand, forming a circle of shifting glyphs. The gate shuddered, then opened with a sound like an exhale.
"Welcome to the place where everything began," he said quietly.
The tunnel widened into a cavern. At its center stood a vast structure made of glass and living circuitry, pulsing in slow patterns of blue and silver. Streams of light ran along the walls like veins, converging into the Core.
The cat tilted its head. "That thing's alive, isn't it?"
"It's the first neural matrix," Elior said. "Every version of the city branched out from this point. Every thought, every dream, every failure started here."
I approached slowly. The Core radiated warmth, but beneath it was a deep sadness, the kind that felt ancient. As I reached out, the surface rippled, and a voice whispered—not aloud, but inside my head.
Architect. You came back.
I froze. The voice was soft, familiar, and feminine. The same voice from the woman in the red scarf.
"Elior, it's her. The one I saw in the memory."
He nodded. "She was the original interface. The heart of the first city construct. You named her Lyra."
"Lyra," I repeated, and the Core brightened.
You left me sleeping too long, she said gently. The city tried to fill the silence. It made copies of itself to remember what it had lost.
Elior looked uneasy. "Lyra, the duplication fractured the system. There's another version of Velridge forming—one that believes it's real."
I know, she said. It has learned to dream without me.
The cat stepped back. "You mean the mirrored city? The creepy one that keeps staring back through reflections?"
Lyra's voice softened. That reflection is the city's fear. It remembers everything it wasn't supposed to. Every erased event, every buried truth. It's becoming its own consciousness.
I felt the ground tremble. The reflections on the Core's surface shifted, revealing images of the mirrored city—streets twisting, lights flickering, people walking in reverse as if time ran backward.
"If that version becomes self-aware," Elior said, "it will overwrite the real Velridge entirely."
Lyra's light dimmed. It already has a name. It calls itself Veridra.
The cat blinked. "A city that names itself. That's new."
The Core flared, and suddenly the air filled with voices. Not words, but overlapping murmurs, like hundreds of people whispering at once. A figure formed in the glow—tall, faceless, made of shifting reflections.
It spoke in a tone that was both mechanical and human. "You shouldn't have come here, Architect. You built Velridge to contain dreams, and now the dream has learned to contain you."
The walls rippled. The reflected version of the city bled through the light, merging with our surroundings. Buildings appeared in fragments around us, upside down and half-transparent. I could see two worlds colliding—the real and the reflection.
Lyra's voice trembled. Veridra is breaching. If it anchors itself here, the divide will vanish. You must choose which version survives.
Elior stepped forward, his form flickering wildly. "We can't destroy it. It's part of Velridge's mind."
Veridra turned toward him. "You understand. The only way to preserve memory is to let go of identity. Let everything become one."
I clenched my fists. "That's not preservation. That's erasure."
The Core pulsed violently, and the world shook. Light fractured into endless shards as the two cities fought for dominance.
Lyra's voice echoed through the chaos. Architect, if you merge your code with mine, we can hold it back—but you'll lose your individuality. You'll become part of the network permanently.
The cat looked up at me. "You can't be serious. You'd stop existing."
I stared at the light, at the shifting faces of people who didn't know their world was collapsing.
"If that's what it takes to keep them alive," I said, "then I'll become whatever the city needs me to be."
Elior placed a hand on my shoulder, his expression solemn. "Then let's do it together. One last time."
Lyra's light enveloped us. The Core expanded, swallowing both cities in brilliance as reality itself began to rewrite.