POV: Shared
Location: Sector 13 Central Square
Time: Midday — Commuter Interval 3
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The plaza was built on bones and overtime.
White tile laid over scorched concrete. Holo-screens flickered over half-erased knight engravings. FedCode vendors lined the walk, hawking "ancestral relics" printed in someone's basement.
If you didn't look too hard, you could believe it was modern.
You could believe nothing had ever burned here.
---
Ryuu Takeda walked the east platform, an earbud in one ear, gloved hand still raw from last night's weld.
His cheap TitanTech jacket clung too tight, collar folded high like it could hide fatigue. His Core hadn't pulsed since the dust incident—but his ribs still ached.
He hadn't slept.
Not really.
Not since he watched a man vanish and the air pretended it hadn't happened.
---
A tram passed on the upper rail.
Below, Audrina Cromwell stepped through a precinct gate and into the tide of civilians.
Different directions.
Same square.
Same breath.
The city held them like strangers caught in the same storm.
---
A man climbed onto a stone bench near a MIRAGE kiosk. Barefoot. Twitching.
Ryuu almost didn't look twice—probably just another recursion-junkie, a "looprunner." But this one didn't mumble system memes or talk to reflections.
This one spoke.
"The vow walks again."
His voice was too clear.
Too sharp.
Too loud.
The plaza froze.
A vendor dropped a synthfruit bag. A child began crying.
The man stood in front of a data-stall, fingers smeared with ash and blood.
Eyes blown wide with dilation. Veins jittered like burnt-out circuits. Mouth stretched—unnaturally.
Audrina stopped mid-step.
Ryuu's breath hitched.
"The Ash-Warden returns!"
"The Eleventh Flame walks with skin!"
MIRAGE spoke.
[UNSANCTIONED MYTH DECLARATION DETECTED]
[CONTAINMENT ORDER: SILENT PROTOCOL]
No warning flare.
No boom.
No aura flash.
No scream.
The man blinked—
And was gone.
Not ash.
Not flame.
Just erased.
The kind of erasure that doesn't just remove presence—it removes memory.
Like the world had blinked and pretended he was never there.
It removes the proof one existed at all.
Only a single smudge remained.
Charred black.
Kneeling shape.
Mouth frozen open.
Ryuu stared at it.
Unmoving.
Audrina dropped her drink. She didn't even register the crash.
Her hand hovered near the locket. Her Core didn't burn—but something else stirred.
Across the plaza, a boy stood by the old fountain. Chalk dust clung to his fingers.
He drew across the white basin edge:
ENDURE > ASCEND
Ryuu stared.
He didn't know why it looked familiar.
Didn't remember ever seeing it.
But it felt like something Kaelen would've said.
He didn't know who Kaelen was.
Only that —
When the world cracked like this, it felt like Kaelen had been the one holding it together—
And Ryuu had arrived too late to help.
---
His Core surged.
He stumbled to his knees.
Heart racing.
Breath shallow.
And for a moment—so fast he could have dismissed it, he wasn't himself.
He saw a Knight. Or what was left of one. Cloak melted. Hands wrapped in echo-script. A vow sigil burning in the air behind him.
And further back:
A battlefield of blood and ruin. Familiar. Too familiar.
---
Audrina's locket clicked.
Once.
Then turned ice-cold.
A wave of static passed through the crowd.
No one noticed.
Except three pigeons, which dropped from mid-flight. Eyes flickering pale-white, like corrupted code.
Above, a long-dead billboard glitched for 0.6 seconds.
It replayed a tram cam sequence from earlier.
Ryuu was in it.
Except—he had already left that scene.
In that replay… he was walking away before he'd ever arrived.
---
MIRAGE logged it:
[MEMORY ECHO: SUBJECT_11 — VISUAL OVERLAP DETECTED]
[RECURSION BLEED: PASSIVE. NO INTERVENTION.]
[VOW FRAGMENT: ALIGNMENT UNKNOWN.]
[RECURSION ENTITY: KA...EN / ERROR: VOW-LINK BREACH]
---
Ryuu blinked.
The reflection in the courier stall window didn't match his face.
Not wrong.
Just… aged.
Hair longer.
Cheekbones sharper.
Armor flickering at the edges.
Eyes like someone who died standing.
Then it was gone.
---
Audrina knelt beside the soot-smear.
Pressed a gloved finger into it.
It didn't feel like ash.
It felt like memory scorched into matter.
"Did you see that?" she asked.
No one answered.
The crowd had already moved on.
Routine had already rewritten the moment.
She stood.
Ryuu, nearly a hundred feet away, turned—unconsciously. Just a glance. Just a pull.
They didn't see each other.
But they felt it.
For one second, Sector 13 held its breath.
And the world forgot to exhale.
---
Interlude - Civilian POV:
Vendor. 43. Sector-born. Still unpaid for the synth-apples.
He'd been selling since dawn.
Didn't care for myths. Didn't care for rebellions. Just paid rent, dodged recursion checks, and kept his stall running.
But when the barefoot screamer vanished
And the kid in the maintenance jacket dropped like someone unplugged his soul—
He swore he saw two boys.
One reaching forward.
One already walking away.
Same face.
Same weight.
Same name, the city kept forgetting
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"What vanishes in the moment is only forgotten if no one dares to name it again."— Fragment 3.8B, Psalms of the Hollow Line
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