Vestige didn't grow quieter the deeper you walked.
It got more specific.
Names on walls.
Dates on windowpanes.
Voices in alleyways whispering things you hadn't done yet.
Cael turned down a corridor tagged with layered sigils — and saw his name scrawled in blood across a vending terminal.
Not just his name.
A sentence:
CAEL VEL: DIED 11:42 PM — INTERFERENCE DENIED.
"Why does it know that?" he asked.
Lira scanned the mark, eyes narrow.
"It's not graffiti."
"What is it?"
"It's a confirmed thread. This place logs death the way a network logs signal drops."
"Can we delete it?"
"We'd have to delete the death."
They kept moving.
Lira left chemical beacons behind to track their route.
Each one blinked blue.
Then red.
Then vanished.
Cael stopped at a corner where the ground dipped unnaturally — a soft funnel-shaped collapse in the pavement.
He'd seen it before.
Not here.
In a simulation.
The third ethics test.
"This is where I failed her," he murmured.
"Who?"
"I don't know. But I remember not choosing her."
Lira turned to say something — and she was gone.
Just gone.
Not warped.
Not dragged.
Absent.
"Lira?" Cael called.
Nothing.
He spun in place.
The street was now daylight.
Different angle. Different decade.
He ran.
Footsteps silent.
Then: a doorway opened beside him, out of sequence.
And she stepped through.
Pale.
Breathing hard.
Holding her stomach.
"Where were you?"
"You died," she said.
"No I didn't."
"Not now. Then. Just now. I watched it."
"How long was I gone?"
"Three days."
He backed away.
"I was right here."
"And I was there. And I watched the system glitch you into death like it was a requirement."
"What did I do?"
"You stepped where they told you not to."
"Who?"
Lira's eyes were glassy.
"The archivists," she whispered.
"They're still alive. Underneath all this."
Then she fainted.
The Keymark buzzed softly on Cael's skin.
"Anchor-class duplicate signature detected."
"Chronological violation in progress."
"Warning: You have reached a location that believes you are already dead."
Cael stared at the cracked pavement.
Then stepped into the dip in the ground.
And felt the world pause.
End of Chapter 22: You Died Right Here