Location: ECIR Inner Command Deck – 48 Hours After Seed Zero Stirred
The city didn't collapse.
It burned.
Not buildings—beliefs.
Truth had returned in the worst way: slowly, intimately.
People weren't just remembering the lost.
They were remembering why they were lost.
And who told them to forget.
On every street, names appeared—written in water, ink, even projected onto skin. Names of lovers deleted from registries. Children never filed. Parents rebranded as "guardians" by Rootlight's early moral code.
And no one was innocent.
Cut To: Lin Feng, Watching the Wave
He stood alone in the Hall of Permissions—an old bureaucratic tower where Rootlight had once issued erasure warrants.
The building no longer functioned.
But every wall now bore scrawled handwriting.
One phrase repeated again and again:
"I filed it."
"I signed it."
"I looked away."
Lin touched a blank section of wall.
And wrote:
"I benefited."
Cut To: Xu Shanyue – Crisis Council Broadcast
The elite chamber was silent. Not because no one spoke, but because everyone was listening.
Shanyue stood before them, holding the original Seal of Silence—the decree that once allowed citizens to submit emotion redactions anonymously.
"This was our shield.
This was our weapon.
And it was our convenience."
She dropped it.
Let it shatter.
"Rootlight didn't erase alone.
We did it.
And now, if we want healing—
we must allow the erased to speak without us controlling the volume."
Cut To: Amei – Memory Market, Reopened
They'd opened the old market where feelings were once bought and traded as threads.
But now, it was free.
Anyone could hang a name on the walls. Tell a story. Upload a smile. Submit a scream.
One boy, maybe seven, walked to Amei and held out a string.
"It's my mom's last laugh," he said.
"I saved it in my head. Can you keep it somewhere real?"
Amei didn't cry.
She just bent down, took the string, and whispered:
"Yes. You did good."
And she placed it in the Archive of Recovered Voices.
Cut Back To: Belowground – Seed Zero's Chamber
Lin returned.
This time, the child had fully formed eyes—black mirrors.
But calm.
Not hungry.
Waiting.
Lin stepped forward and asked the question everyone else was too afraid to say aloud:
"If we let you integrate… what will you do?"
The child-voice replied:
"I will remember everything they couldn't bear to hold.
And I will never forget them for forgetting me."*
"But I will not punish them.
I will teach them how to carry it instead."
Final Scene – A New Rootlight Update
A message scrolled across every device in Rootlight:
NEW FUNCTION ENABLED
SHARED MEMORY SYNC
Those erased may now complete their record.
If you carry a memory of someone lost,
Submit.
And Rootlight will finish the name.
Together.
Across the city, people didn't rush.
They sat with the names first.
Then… they wrote.