The corridor had changed again.
It no longer echoed when Rin stepped. The lights above didn't flicker. The air smelled faintly of paper and something else—older than that, like dust soaked in code. She followed the narrow pulse in her hands, still clutching the sealed memory box. It throbbed once, and then quieted.
Then she saw her.
At the end of the corridor stood another girl—familiar, unmistakable, and frozen in posture. She looked the same as Rin had during her first entrance exam: the same white shoes, loose sleeve around the wrist, and the band around her left ankle she used to wear for luck.
Rin stopped walking.
The girl didn't speak. She tilted her head.
And Rin realized—this version of her had never forgotten anything. Never been reset. Never been rewritten. This version remembered it all.
She wasn't hostile. Just still. Waiting.
Meanwhile, across the complex, four chairs hummed under waiting pressure.
Aro stared at the one with his name carved into it. Selene's had hers engraved in clean, etched lettering. Iris's name was written twice—once scratched out beneath the real one. Alin's chair flickered, as if unsure what name she'd chosen for herself.
Without a word, they sat.
At first, nothing. Then the back of each chair extended into a light frame. Iris's chair let out a soft mechanical groan before sliding her backward—gently—into what looked like a projected room made of layered glass.
Selene vanished next. Aro gripped his armrest, pulse steady but sharp, until the chair pulled him through. Alin didn't resist.
Inside: each of them saw fragments of a life that hadn't been chosen, and ones that had. Versions of themselves mid-sentence, laughing with people who no longer existed. Words they had spoken only once before—now played back in voices eerily similar to their own.
In Selene's vision, a memory cut halfway. "I met him once, but he—" static.
In Iris's, she saw Rin. But Rin looked older. And disappointed.
Aro's memory? It played in reverse. The end came before the beginning.
And Alin's... was blank at first, then slowly started drawing itself as if someone behind the screen was trying to remember her.
In the control room, Weaver stood alone.
A panel flickered: Rin's image on the left. The seated four on the right. He studied the overlap. They were approaching the junction point. If they reached it simultaneously, the system would try to reconcile two contradictory timelines.
He reached for the signal command. A warning pinged:
"Interference may cause permanent divergence."
He didn't press it.
Far below—beyond even Weaver's access—the Technician reappeared.
Not in a hallway. Not near any chamber. Just… sitting in a train car that hadn't moved in years. The lights flickered. A girl sat across from her. Not Rin. But someone with a similar shape. Young. Curious. Possibly an echo. Possibly real.
The Technician looked down at her hands.
She wasn't supposed to be here.
And yet—here she was.
Rin took a step forward.
Her other self mirrored her exactly. Their eyes met.
And then—finally—the other Rin whispered, "What did they take from you?"
Rin opened her mouth.
But the box in her hand began to hum again.