The conduit tunnel shimmered with a phosphorescent glow, casting strange shadows that moved just a second out of sync with the trio. As Ayame, Kael, and Yui ventured deeper, the world behind them faded like a dream dissolving with morning light.
"Where does this one lead?" Kael asked, his voice reverberating slightly off the humming walls.
Yui's eyes narrowed. "It's not exactly a place. More like… a pocket between timelines. A memory archive."
"A library?" Ayame asked.
"Sort of," Yui replied. "But instead of books, it stores moments—threads of lives that almost happened but didn't."
Kael gave Ayame a sideways glance. "So basically, regret land."
Ayame smirked. "Let's not stay too long."
At the end of the tunnel, a pulse of light greeted them—a doorway in the shape of a tear, suspended in mid-air. Yui extended her hand, the scroll in Ayame's possession reacting with a flicker of warmth. The tear widened.
They stepped through.
And into silence.
The space they entered was vast. Not wide, not tall—*vast*. A plane of shifting reflections stretched infinitely in every direction, like they had stepped into a pool of still water where gravity was optional. Suspended in mid-air were translucent ribbons, each pulsing gently with light.
Ayame instinctively reached for one.
"Careful," Yui warned. "Those are soul threads. If you touch one too long…"
Ayame hesitated, her fingers a breath away. The ribbon was gold-tinged, humming with a quiet melody that made her heart ache. A moment later, her curiosity won.
She tapped it.
A vision struck her.
A younger version of herself stood on a hill, eyes red from crying. Kael's graduation cap fluttered in the wind nearby—he was walking away, never looking back. She stayed rooted, silent, never calling after him.
Then—snap—the vision broke.
She gasped.
"That was…" she whispered, stunned.
"One of a thousand ways it could've ended," Yui said, her voice unusually gentle. "This place remembers everything we choose not to become."
Kael hovered beside her. "This is either the most romantic or the most depressing place I've ever been."
Yui led them forward.
They walked for what felt like hours—or maybe only minutes. Time felt uncertain here. At one point, a thread passed close to Kael's cheek. It vibrated, showing a version of him with glowing wings, fighting off a serpent in the clouds. He blinked. "I look *awesome* in that one."
Ayame laughed, and even Yui cracked a smile.
But then they saw it.
At the heart of the archive: a black thread, coiled like a sleeping serpent. It pulsed *against* the rhythm of the others.
Yui's face paled. "That shouldn't be here."
"What is it?" Ayame asked.
"It's a null thread," Yui said. "A moment that *tries* to overwrite all others. Usually they're pruned… but this one's alive."
The thread twitched.
Kael took a step back. "Is it looking at us?"
It *was*. Somehow.
Ayame reached for the scroll again. It began to burn with violet light. The map twisted itself into a new shape, forming a key.
A door appeared beneath the black thread.
"I think… we're meant to go through that," she said, not sounding convinced herself.
Yui hesitated. "If we enter, we risk being rewritten."
Ayame looked at Kael. "Do we risk it?"
Kael smiled grimly. "Do we ever not?"
They stepped forward together.
The black thread shivered.
As their hands touched the door, everything shifted. Not just the space—but their *own memories*. Images flickered: Ayame watching Kael disappear in the school hallway that final day, Kael yelling her name across the train station platform, both of them in a void, reaching for each other but never quite close enough.
Then—
Silence.
They opened their eyes.
They were in a classroom.
High school.
But it wasn't theirs.
The walls were glass. The students? Faceless shadows.
A figure sat alone at the back, hunched over a desk.
It was Ayame.
No—not her. A fragment of her.
"I remember this," Ayame whispered. "This was the day I almost gave up. The day I told myself Kael forgot me."
The version of her at the desk trembled, fingers curled tight around a photo.
Kael knelt beside her. "She doesn't know yet."
"Then we tell her," Ayame said, stepping forward.
"No," said a voice behind them.
They turned.
The Custodian stood at the door.
His eyes were dark. No longer glowing. His cloak tattered.
"Some memories are not meant to be healed," he said. "Some wounds must be honored."
Ayame stood her ground. "You're not the Custodian we met."
"No," the figure said softly. "I'm what's left when a Custodian fails to protect what matters."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's ominous."
The figure extended a hand toward the version of Ayame in the classroom. "You touch her, you take on her despair. Are you sure you want that?"
Ayame didn't flinch. "She's me. She *was* me. I already carry it."
She walked forward.
As she knelt beside her shadow-self, the glass around them began to crack.
Kael reached for his blade instinctively, but Yui shook her head. "Let her."
Ayame whispered something to the girl at the desk.
A moment later, the shadow lifted her face.
And smiled.
The cracks stopped.
The classroom began to dissolve—first the shadows, then the walls, then the light.
The Custodian bowed his head. "Then maybe… you have a chance after all."
They were pulled upward, the thread unraveling beneath them. The last thing they heard was the echo of their own voices, merged into one.
"You can still choose. You always could."
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