She arrived wrapped in silence.
A tall figure draped in ruined Archivist robes, the insignia burned out and replaced with chalk runes that shimmered unnaturally. Her face was hidden behind a porcelain half-mask, cracked like dry earth. She said nothing. Not with her mouth. Her voice came from a device at her throat—modulated, synthetic, and utterly human.
"You want to speak with the dead," she said, "but you don't yet understand what death means."
Rin and Kuro met her in the ruins of an old cathedral—its stained-glass windows long shattered, its altar overgrown with ivy and roots that pulsed with forgotten energy. The place felt sacred, though no one prayed here anymore.
"I'm not here for ghosts," Rin said. "I want the truth."
Luma knelt and placed a small object on the floor. A projector, humming softly.
It activated—and the air shimmered. Memories appeared as holograms: flickering images of children playing, families laughing, soldiers dying. All of them ended abruptly—cut off by white light.
"These were the early erasures," Luma said. "The mistakes. The practice runs."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"You are the culmination."
She stepped closer. Her presence was immense, even without words.
"Archivist Zero didn't die. He scattered. And the pieces of him infected the world like sacred rot. You carry one of the final echoes. Not just resistance, but remembrance—the ability to overwrite what they've taken. To resurrect the narrative."
Rin's breath caught. The weight of that statement settled in his bones.
"You're saying I'm a… vessel?"
"No," Luma said. "You're a fuse. The explosion hasn't happened yet."
Before Rin could ask more, the cathedral groaned—its walls trembling. The lights dimmed.
"They've found us."
Luma stepped back. Her voice softened.
"You can't save everyone. But if you remember me—if you remember this—I will never have died for nothing."
She pulled a shard of memory from her own chest—glowing white and shaking violently. With a whisper of prayer, she shattered it.
And disappeared in a flash of blinding silence.