POV: Ryuu Takeda
Location: Locker Bay Epsilon → Platform C → Sector 13 Tram → Ryuu's Apartment
Time: 22:14 local — End of Maintenance Shift
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The locker room hummed. Not loud. Just enough to know the lights weren't dead yet.
Ryuu Takeda sat alone in Locker Bay Epsilon, under the dull strobe of a flickering white-blue panel. He peeled off his exo-insulated work suit one limb at a time, like it was something dead he didn't want to admit had once moved with him.
The core-reinforced fabric gave a hiss as it relaxed, discharging faint trails of vapor from pulse stress. Steam curled from where the insulation had warped—not from heat, but from some kind of pulse feedback. Unrecorded, untraceable.
Another underground grid misalignment.
Nothing on the logs.
Too brief.
But his ribs had felt it.
Like a whisper punched from inside.
His knuckles ached. Gauze peeled off in slow, sticky loops.
A scar traced his palm. It hadn't been there this morning.
It throbbed.
He sat down on the bench. Sipped from a thermos.
Cold tea. No taste. Just motion.
Then—
A sound. Soft. Metal-on-metal.
Chain against steel.
He turned—
Nothing.
Turned back
And stopped breathing.
---
The mirror didn't match.
Not delayed. Not distorted.
Just… wrong.
The man in the reflection blinked—when Ryuu didn't. Tilted his head. A moment off.
He was taller. Eyes deeper. Older. Not aged, but worn. Hair a little longer. A faint scorch-mark traced the left cheekbone, and below his eye: a thin, incomplete vow-sigil like a scar made from broken oaths.
Ryuu leaned in.
The reflection leaned back.
Not mimicking but remembering.
Then it breathed.
And whispered:
"Endure."
---
Ryuu staggered backward. His elbow caught the mirror's edge.
Crack.
The glass splintered—fractures spiderwebbing across reality's face.
When he looked again—just him.
Sweating. Ribs aching. Core vibrating under skin like a warning drum.
But the voice… it had been his.
Only older.
Worn, Threaded with static. Fractured. Like a memory too heavy to carry cleanly.
Not me.
But close.
He stared at the spiderweb of cracks for a long time.
Then dressed in silence.
---
Later, at the Sector 13 shift-debrief kiosk, a vendor shoved a crinkled ration pack into his hand.
"Don't burn the wrong name, boy."
Ryuu blinked. "What?"
The vendor walked away.
Confused, Ryuu stepped toward the tram wall.
There—black on concrete, clear as blood, scratched in soot:
[ENDURE. THEN BURN.]
Three words were jagged. Burnt into the grain.
He stared at them.
He didn't remember writing them.
But his fingertips were black. Carbon-stained.
Beneath his nails: ash.
His Core pulsed again.
Slow. Intentional.
Like it had overheard a conversation it wasn't meant to—and agreed.
---
The rail hummed underfoot.
Sector 13 always hummed when recursion was near.
Above him, a flickering spire carried the mark of MIRAGE-3.
[ALIGNED UNDER THE GODBANE FRAMEWORK]
He didn't look directly.
Didn't need to.
---
Back at his apartment, he washed his hands. Three times.
Soap. Water. Scrub. Repeat.
Still stained.
He wrapped the palm with a fresh bandage. Sat at the kitchen table.
Stared at the reheated rice. And he checked for Haruki —
[PERSONAL COMM NODE: Pending Response — USER: HARUKI_T]No reply. Again.
[SCHEDULED UPDATE: DELIVERY LOG HARUKI_T — UNREACHABLE][ARCHIVE REQUEST REDIRECTED]
Ryuu stared at the flickering HUD. Still out there. Or not.
The Core pulsed again.
Once.
Twice.
Then still.
His HUD glitched as he checked his wristband.
[ERROR: ANCHOR SURFACE MISREAD]
[RECURSION BLEED: 1.2% — VISUAL PROJECTION DIVERGENCE]
[FLAG: SUBJECT 11\_ANNOTATION PENDING]
---
"What does that even mean…" he muttered.
He walked to the sink. Looked out the window above it.
And froze.
Someone was standing behind him.
His reflection. Again.
But different.
Same frame. Same mouth. Same eyes—but golden. Hair singed at the tips like it had burned too slow. Ash still dusted the collar.
Posture too steady—Kaelen-like, almost like memory trying to walk upright.
Not Ryuu.
Not really. He turned. No one there. Turned back. Reflection normal again.
No flicker.
Just… quiet.
He walked into the living room. Lights off. No sound.
Sat down.
The room felt heavy. Like breath had texture.
But the microwave door caught his eye.
Dark. Reflective. Perfect.
In its glass, his reflection blinked first.
Then whispered:
"When the name forgets the body, the vow remembers instead."
— Unknown, Fragmented Psalm 7.3 – Ash Spiral Archive (Class-C Suppressed)
The Core beneath his skin thrummed in silence.
And Ryuu Takeda sat alone, across from the ghost of his own name.
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