Present moment. Location: unknown rollback layer, between collapsed realities.
He stands in a corridor that doesn't exist — not fully. The walls are raw code, flickering in and out like memory trying to forget itself. Footsteps echo, though there is no sound.
He isn't dressed in anything visible. He has no true form — just the vague outline of someone who once held authority, now stitched together by sheer will.
His name is gone.
Even he doesn't say it anymore.
Instead, he listens to the signal — the one sent not long ago by a Weaver who should have known better. It pulses faintly through the rollback layer, distorted but traceable.
"They're reaching the threadline."
"She opened the box."
"He remembers."
He doesn't flinch. Doesn't pace. He simply recalculates.
He thought they'd given up.
He thought they'd unravel in confusion, the way most anomalies do.
But here they are:
A girl who confronts herself.
A boy who remembers more than his line was coded for.
A signal sent by a Weaver who hesitated — which means, perhaps, still loyal.
He speaks for the first time in what could be centuries.
"Patch nothing. Observe nothing. Collapse it all."
His voice is quiet, brittle, like a file half-corrupted. But the command spreads. The rollback layer responds. Small universes dim. Threads bend inward.
He's not acting out of rage.
He's acting because he believes he is still right.
They will not become like the Threadwriter.
He won't allow another Threadline Event.
Because that is what they don't understand:
The Threadwriter didn't "appear."
It was born from breach, a convergence error he buried — or tried to.
It was his mistake.
And now, it has disciples.
Elsewhere, something shifts. A light fades. But not all lights.
One of the children — the quiet one — looks up. "Something's… gone."