When the light faded, the first thing I saw was rain. It wasn't falling down. It was falling upward, shining like silver threads disappearing into a glass sky.
The streets glowed softly under my feet. The buildings around me were strange, bending at odd angles, their windows showing pieces of different lives. I saw flashes of laughter, faces I almost recognized, people crying, people smiling. Then everything faded again like a dream slipping away.
This wasn't Velridge. It was something else. Something older.
It was Veridra, but alive in its own way.
A child's voice echoed through the air, soft and playful. "Welcome back, Architect."
I turned around and saw her. Lira. She stood barefoot in the middle of the street, her eyes glowing blue like tiny suns. She wasn't the same little girl I remembered. She looked older, but her face still carried that quiet calm I'd never forgotten. Around her, shapes moved—people made of mist, their bodies flickering as if they were trying to remember who they used to be.
"Where am I?" I asked, even though part of me already knew the answer.
Lira smiled sadly. "You're inside what's left of me. The city you built to forget."
The ground rippled like water. Suddenly I saw flashes of my past—bright, sharp images cutting through my mind. The laboratory. The flickering monitors. My younger self connecting cables to the Core. And Lira, sitting inside the glass pod, smiling, saying she wasn't afraid.
Then the sound of the machines flatlining.
I stepped back, shaking my head. "No. That's not true. The system failed. It wasn't supposed to happen."
She looked at me gently. "It failed because you made it fail. You couldn't face what you had done, so you buried it. You built Velridge over my memory and pretended none of it existed."
The shadows around us began to twist, forming streets that looked like both cities at once. Velridge and Veridra were merging, blending into something neither could recognize.
Behind me, the cat appeared out of nowhere. It stepped through a shimmer in the air, shaking rain from its fur. "You had to choose," it said quietly. "You picked the living city. But the dead one never stopped dreaming."
Lira turned to the cat, her eyes narrowing. "And what are you? Another ghost from his guilt?"
The cat's tail flicked once. "No. I'm what stayed when he forgot himself."
Their voices rippled through the space, and the whole city flickered like a glitching image. Rain fell sideways for a second, lights stuttering in every window. I could feel my body pulling apart, one half drawn to Velridge, the other sinking deeper into Veridra.
Then Elior's voice broke through the static in my mind. "Architect, listen to me. You're inside the reflection core. It's feeding off your guilt. You have to fight it before it rewrites your memory."
I clenched my fists, trying to focus. "Lira, if you're real, tell me what you want."
Her expression softened, and for a moment she looked just like the child I remembered. "I want to wake up."
Those four words hit harder than any scream. The world around us slowed. The rain froze in the air, the buildings stilled, and her eyes filled with something that looked almost human.
"I can't bring you back," I said quietly. "But I can remember you."
She smiled, but it wasn't the same smile as before. "Then remember this."
She placed her hand on the ground. The city shook violently. Cracks spread across the street like lightning. From within them, a golden light poured out, brighter than anything I had ever seen. I felt my memories start to tear apart one by one. Faces. Names. Places. All breaking away.
The cat leapt at me, claws glowing faintly blue. "Stay awake!" it shouted. "She's rewriting who you are!"
Lira's voice echoed all around me. "If I can't wake up, then you don't get to either."
The light swallowed everything. For a second, I saw her reaching for my hand. There was no anger in her eyes anymore—only sadness.
And then the world disappeared.