The Archive's corridors pulsed softly, breathing light like veins beneath translucent skin.
Eira walked them in silence, the words of Director Voss echoing in her thoughts :
You've been searching for that missing shard for three cycles now.
You're remembering.
Memory shouldn't hurt.
And yet, when she closed her eyes, she could feel something pressing against her mind - like a dream she'd already lived.
She reached her private workspace, sealed the doors, and shut off the sensory field. The hum of the Archive faded to a distant hush. For the first time in centuries, she felt alone.
The hidden cache she'd built opened under her handprint. Its contents shimmered into the air : fragments of corrupted recordings, ghostly static, unclassified data sequences. Among them - one file pulsed faintly in red.
"World Seven."
She hesitated only a moment before activating it.
The holographic projection unfolded - not an abstract sphere of data, but a place.
A sky the color of ash. Ruined towers rising from water. The sound of wind through broken glass.
And standing amid it all…herself.
A version of Eira, younger, unscarred by centuries, eyes bright with anger instead of caution. This Eira turned toward the recorder, voice ragged.
"We failed. The Curator found the seed. It's rewriting from the root up - we're already ghosts."
The image shimmered. For a heartbeat, both Eiras locked eyes across realities.
Then the file collapsed into static.
Eira staggered back, hand over her mouth. Her rational mind scrambled for an explanation - simulation, projection, corrupted memory template - but something deeper, older, whispered : truth.
Hours - or moments - later, she sat at her console, hands trembling as she called up system architecture maps. She traced back the deletion point of World Seven. It had been manually authorized… by Director Voss.
She stared at the name until the letters blurred.
"You've been searching for that shard for three cycles now."
How many times had she erased her own discovery?
How much of her mind belonged to her - and how much to the Archive?
She rose and walked to the observation deck. Below, the spheres of countless worlds glowed in tranquil suspension. Perfect order. Perfect silence. The illusion of eternity.
A voice drifted through the air - faint, almost human.
Eira.
Do you want to know why you exist?
She froze. "Who is that?"
No response - only the soft ripple of light along the nearest containment field.
She pressed her hand to the glass.
The surface rippled, and for an instant she saw her reflection split - two faces diverging, one calm, one terrified. Then they snapped back together.
Eira withdrew her hand. "No," she whispered. "Not yet."
But she already knew she'd go further.
Every Archivist swore an oath never to cross into a preserved world, never to touch the timelines under their care
Eira Senn began to design a way to break that oath.