The original Archivist stood before them like a paradox made flesh.
Lio's breath caught in his throat as he stared at the impossible figure. This wasn't another fragment—this was him, but whole. Complete. Unmarked by the terrible choices and sacrifices that had carved hollow spaces in his soul. The original Archivist's eyes held depths that Lio had forgotten he once possessed, before the weight of infinite stories had broken him into pieces.
"You're not real," the silver-haired fragment whispered, her voice trembling with recognition and disbelief. "You were shattered. We are the shards of what you became."
The original Archivist smiled—a expression so genuine, so unmarked by pain, that it was almost unbearable to witness. "I am as real as any choice that was never made. As real as any story that was never told." His gaze swept across the fragments, and in his eyes was something that none of them had seen in eons: hope without desperation.
