1. Rin
The version of herself — the other Rin — stood still as light fractured quietly along the edges of the corridor.
Rin blinked. The hall was whole again.
Then broken. Then whole.
Like someone was trying to decide what belonged.
The other her didn't speak, but she watched. Calm, as if waiting for Rin to notice. And Rin did.
"This isn't a memory," Rin whispered.
"No," the other Rin said, softly. "It's a rollback."
Something cold threaded down her spine.
She remembered how the box had hissed open — how the air changed. It wasn't just memory they'd triggered. It was something older. Trapped. And someone else had noticed.
"They're trying to remove the moment."
"Not undo it," the other Rin added. "Erase the fact that it ever happened."
She reached out, placed a hand on Rin's arm — a warmth that shouldn't have existed in this false corridor.
"You have to leave this layer. Or remember me well enough that I stay."
Rin tried to hold on.
But the world stuttered.
2. Aro, Selene, Iris, Alin
The simulation chairs shivered — just once — like a breath caught mid-sentence.
Selene sat up straighter, her hand twitching reflexively toward her belt. No weapons here. She hated that.
"What was that?" Iris murmured.
"Like we skipped," Alin said quietly. "Like we lost a second."
Aro didn't move.
His mind was racing too fast.
He hadn't dreamed anything this time. He hadn't seen anything. But his chest hurt like he'd just remembered someone… and then lost them before the memory could finish forming.
Something under the floor panels thudded — softly, then stopped.
And Aro saw the flash again. Not a memory.
A name. A whisper. Someone watching them from beneath the code.
Technician.
He didn't know who she was.
But someone did.
3. Weaver
He stood on the observation strand, not knowing how long he'd been staring.
The rollback wave had begun. Not a force, not violent. Just… soft reclassification.
A return to before the Threadline.
He should've warned them sooner. He should've acted.
But for the first time in decades, Weaver hesitated not from fear, but awe.
Because amid the fading data and silenced signals, a single whisper pulsed toward him. One signal left open. One trace not deleted.
He repeated it aloud. Slowly. A word that wasn't meant to survive.
"Yren."
It wasn't a title. It wasn't code. It was her name.
The Technician.
And in that fragile moment before the next layer folded, Weaver smiled bitterly.
"She always was two steps ahead."
He pulled the emergency strand toward the central line.
No more delays.
The children had remembered something they weren't allowed to.
The rollback wave was growing.
And she — Yren — had just opened a path no developer could see.