POV: Audrina Cromwell
Location: Tramline 4A, Central Sector Loop
Time: 07:40 local — Peak shift rotation
---
They said Sector 9 was clean. Polished steel, filtered air, and security drones that didn't flinch. But Audrina Cromwell knew better.
Clean didn't mean safe.
And silence didn't mean peace.
She stood near the tram's central spine, coat still damp from morning condensation, her fingers brushed the locket at her throat. Cold. Heavy. Quiet.
She hated when it was quiet.
---
Audrina Cromwell didn't look like someone who doubted herself.
Long raven-black hair fell straight and sharp past her shoulders like a statement she never said aloud. Her blue eyes weren't just blue—they glowed faintly, like midnight electricity, always half-hiding the weight they carried.
But beneath the uniform, beneath the coat and badge and locket she never took off, there was a silence that didn't come from peace. It came from knowing too much, too early.
From remembering things no one ever told her. From waking up with breath in her lungs and someone else's war playing behind her eyelids.
She didn't talk about it.
She just stood, still and silent, on the tram to nowhere, pretending the quiet wasn't screaming.
---
She stood in the middle of a half-empty tram, staring at a stain on the window that looked suspiciously like a melted angel...
Black Tea in one hand. Glove tucked under the other. Her badge blinked red once—scan error, again—and MIRAGE offered zero sympathy.
["ID mismatch. Recalibrating fragment anchor."]
She rolled her eyes. "I'm still me. Sorry to disappoint."
A man coughed behind her. Someone in civilian whites muttered something about sub-core exposure. A kid two seats down doodled in a paper notebook—actual paper, which was technically illegal.
The tram curved past a recursion splice checkpoint, where armed MIRAGE enforcers stood motionless—eyes shielded, fingers always near the triggers.
Audrina didn't flinch.
Then the locket around her neck ticked. Once. Mechanically. Unnaturally. In Violet.
She moved to the window seat, fingers clenching the locket instinctively. It hadn't pulsed in six months. It was supposed to be dead—just a relic from a mother she could barely remember and a knightline she wasn't allowed to claim.
She froze.
Violet meant recursion. Violet meant "things that should've stayed buried".
Her spine straightened. She pressed two fingers to it beneath her collarbone.
No. Not again.
She hadn't heard it click since—well, not since the last blackout.
["Pulse Sync: 4%."]
Her breath caught.
The locket should never sync with anything. It was off-grid. Untraceable. A gift from someone she no longer remembered receiving.
["Pulse Sync: 5%."]
"Get off the tram," her voice said. She blinked.
It hadn't been a thought. It had been a command.
["Sector anomaly approaching. Recursion density: elevated."]
"Stop using that word," she muttered.
MIRAGE didn't answer.
Of course it didn't.
She looked up.
A boy had passed in the opposite car. Dirty jacket. Maintenance suit. Head down. She hadn't noticed him board.
The locket pulsed again.
MIRAGE flickered on her datapad, unprompted:
[PROXIMITY ANOMALY: FLAMEBOUND CORE DETECTED]
[LOCKET SYNC: 2.3% — ILLEGAL MATCH]
She shut it off. Quietly. Calmly. Like that would stop whatever was happening.
"Not now," she whispered.
But the train windows began to blur. And for just a moment, as they passed through a dark tunnel, she swore she saw her reflection look back—and behind her, a battlefield of broken armor and vows unspoken.
Then it was gone.
She gripped the locket tighter.
"Who the hell are you?" she muttered.
Across the city, Ryuu leaned against a rail wall and whispered the same thing.
"Who the hell am I?"
---
The tram doors hissed open at Central Hub.
She stepped out into the heat shimmer of the plaza and immediately regretted it. The plaza always smelled like too much memory.
Vendor lights flickered under recursion-safe domes. Stone tiles hummed beneath her boots—a weak echo of vow energy long since drained. This place used to be holy. Now it was a mall with extra psalms.
She adjusted the coat over her uniform. Patted the locket once. Then Walked.
Down past the atrium. Left at the fallen knight statue, whose name had been redacted by time. Right through the gate lined with caution sigils etched in corporate bronze.
"This shouldn't be here," she said quietly.
And she wasn't wrong.
Her HUD flickered once—just once, and a different name scrolled across the bottom corner.
"Ashworth."
She stopped.
So did her breath.
She blinked—and it was gone.
---
Audrina dropped into her usual café spot. Ordered tea. No sugar.
The same seat. The same chipped mug. The same regret.
She always sat here after patrol. It grounded her. This time, her hands trembled before the first sip.
The locket pulsed again—just once.
And this time, when it did, the lights above her glitched. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough for her to feel it in her molars.
A waitress walked past her—then stopped.
"Hey, you're not from the Fracture Zone, are you?"
Audrina blinked.
"No."
The waitress tilted her head. "Weird. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"Like you remember the burn."
Then she walked off without waiting for payment.
---
Later, at the precinct, Audrina filed three reports:
* One interference in the dream-mapping logs
* One untagged sigil burning under the checkpoint wall
* One misidentified identity from the MIRAGE registry
Her superior approved none of them.
"Don't chase myth echoes. You'll end up like the Ash Warden sympathizers."
She stared at the rejection slip.
It didn't say she was wrong.
Only that she wasn't approved to be right.
---
That night, in her apartment above the bakery line, Audrina laid the locket flat on her desk.
The surface was clean.
The air wasn't.
The moment her fingers left it, the locket clicked. Once. Then again.
She closed her eyes.
Didn't dream. Not exactly.
She stood in a place beyond memory.
And saw a battlefield. Not in front of her. Inside her.
Ash falling upward. Knights kneeling to no one. A hall carved from vowlight. Broken swords embedded in black stone. A voice echoed from somewhere behind her eyes:
"She who hears the echo too early must choose twice: silence or sorrow."
At the center of the hall was a door.
And on the door—A single glyph burned.
A name she couldn't remember.
But her heart recognized it anyway.
When she woke, the locket had stopped glowing.
But the window was open, though she hadn't touched it.
And in the fogged glass of her reflection, she saw a figure behind her—
A knight, face hidden, cape torn.
And in the reflection's eyes—
Her own.
Burning violet.
---
"Some names are not remembered-they are rehearsed by the world until someone is born to carry them again."
— Fragment 9A, Psalms of the Hollow Line
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