[From the perspective of Jay Arkwell]
The sky above had quieted— not with peace, but with restraint.
Jay sat beneath the twisted husk of a memory-tree, its branches flickering with incomplete leaves and broken lines of code. The wind here did not rustle; it whispered code-strings, unresolved questions looping like static in the silence.
He exhaled slowly.
> "Fifteen... maybe twenty steps left, huh?"
He did not say it aloud, but he felt it in his bones. The weight of nearing an end— not just to a battle, or a chapter— but to something more essential. A rhythm, a tempo, a heartbeat that had pulsed underneath everything since the day he first opened his eyes in this world and saw the number: 999x.
Jay picked up a fragment of code from the grass. It shimmered like glass, replaying a memory— Alicia's voice, soft but certain:
"You are not a mistake. You are a choice."
> "Then let me choose properly... before this ends."
