It didn't start with panic.
It started with laughter.
A child's laughter.
Wrong.
Not cruel.
Not mocking.
Just misplaced—like it didn't belong in the world it echoed through.
Velora stood at the edge of District Eleven's southern quadrant, where the stone walkways met collapsed fountain ruins. The sector had once been a cultural hub—poetry carved into stone, music embedded into public squares, faces lit by memory instead of code.
Now it was quiet.
Quiet in a way that felt intentional.
The kind of quiet that suggested the city itself was trying to forget the ground it stood on.
She stepped past a cracked arch and down into the lower promenade, where three citizens waited behind a Council line of woven glyphs and pale-blue warding light.
Alastor stood nearby. His posture was tight. Controlled.
But his coat sleeves were unbuttoned.
That was never a good sign.
"There's been a ripple," he said. "Memory contamination. Possibly localized."
"How bad?" Velora asked.
He gestured toward the stone circle at the center of the square.
A boy stood alone within it.
No older than seven. Barefoot. Grinning.
He was singing.
"Turn it once, turn it twice—
If it lands, you pay the price…"
Velora froze.
"Where did he hear that?" she whispered.
"We don't know," Alastor replied. "The mother claims she never taught him. The father has no record of a memory cluster involving that phrase. No trace in any Council broadcast, no historical preservation logs."
Velora stepped toward the boy.
He didn't look scared.
He didn't even look present.
His eyes flicked toward the sky like he was watching something behind the clouds.
"The Hollow Star never blinks," he said softly. "Even when you bury it."
Velora knelt in front of him. The light of her coat caught the flicker of a forgotten glyph beneath the dust—a marking she hadn't seen in five years.
It belonged to Rael.
"Do you remember where you heard that song?" she asked.
The boy blinked. His pupils shrank.
"It came in a dream," he said. "The man with the eyes that don't match told it to me."
She stilled.
"Did he have a name?"
The boy paused.
"No name," he said. "But he had a coin. And he said it was mine."
Back at the Archive, Velora stood over the civilian dream registry logs.
Dreams weren't supposed to survive the Rewrite.
Not clearly. Not for long.
But Lessa wasn't the only one now.
The boy—Callen, the file said—was the fifth anomalous subject in two weeks.
Each remembered a different man.
But all described a coin.
And all called him "the one who knew before forgetting was allowed."
Alastor reviewed the names beside her. His jaw was clenched again.
"This is growing faster than we thought."
"It's not growing," Velora said. "It's waking."
Alastor passed her another file.
"This came in an hour ago."
She opened it. The file was half-censored—Council seal, high-level access code, one section completely blacked out.
Only one message remained at the bottom.
LEAK DETECTED. SOURCE UNKNOWN. PHRASE CIRCULATION CONFIRMED:
"HE STILL LIVES IN THE GAPS."
Velora's throat tightened.
"That's the second time this has surfaced."
"It's spreading like a meme," Alastor said. "But only among those flagged as forgotten."
"Which means someone's targeting the gaps in memory."
"Or living in them."
Later that night, Velora walked alone.
The Archive didn't settle like the rest of the city.
It moved when she didn't. It pulsed when she breathed too loud.
She entered the mirror room again.
The same mirror. Same dull bronze rim.
Same crack through her reflection's eye.
This time, she didn't hesitate.
She reached forward—and her reflection did not move in sync.
"You're starting to ask the wrong questions," the reflection said.
Velora froze.
"You're not memory," she whispered. "You're not a dream."
"No," the voice said. "I'm what's left behind when the dream dies and memory gets rewritten too many times."
She stepped back.
The mirror rippled.
"Who are you?"
The reflection smiled. Not hers.
"I'm the version of you that stayed," it whispered. "The one that never let Tessa die. The one who never buried the truth beneath clean phrases and white walls."
"You're not real."
"That's what they said about Rael."
The mirror went still.
Her own face stared back.
But the braid was gone.
The coat was red.
And in her hand?
A coin.
Spinning.
Endlessly.
Velora awoke in her room—though she didn't remember walking back.
The candle on her desk had melted entirely.
The coin was gone.
In its place sat a torn piece of parchment with a single phrase:
"Tell them you buried a god, and memory will forgive you."
"Tell them the truth—and it never will."