The texture beneath Elin's fingertips wasn't inert.
It was breathing.
Not literally — the paint didn't move — but there was a rhythm inside it, like the faint hum of machinery through a wall. The closer she leaned, the more it aligned with her heartbeat.
She pulled her hand away.
The rhythm stopped.
The Archivist noticed.
"You felt it."
"It's alive," Elin said, surprising herself with the certainty in her voice.
"Not alive," he corrected. "Active. That painting isn't an artifact of your loop. It "is" a loop. A very small one, embedded inside the larger construct."
Mara's voice was quiet. "Like a parasite."
"Or a seed," the Archivist said.
The Reflex's gaze flicked from Elin to the painting. "And what happens if someone enters it?"
The Archivist's smile was almost apologetic.
"No one's ever done it voluntarily."
That "voluntarily" lodged in Elin's mind.
It suggested that others had been pulled in.
She stepped back, looking at the waves in the painting.
They weren't just strokes of blue and white — they were "tilted". The horizon in the painting was frozen at that impossible angle they had escaped from, as if the loop inside had ended mid-collapse.
Mara joined her. "If this is a smaller loop, what's above it?"
The Archivist shrugged. "Unknown. But based on recursion patterns, it's likely that every 'above' is just another constructed level. The question is whether there's an "outside"at all."
The Reflex spoke with clinical detachment. "If the painting is active, it might be broadcasting. Could be a signal to higher levels."
"Or," Mara countered, "it could be bait."
Elin felt the rhythm again — not from touching it this time, but from standing close. It seemed to be syncing with her again, as if recognizing her.
The Archivist noticed. "It's locked onto you."
"Why me?"
He hesitated. "Because you were the leak. And leaks… travel both ways."
The shaft of light from above shifted slightly, as though the dust in the room had obeyed some hidden wind. The Reflex glanced up. "Light's changing."
The Archivist didn't look away from Elin. "That's not light. That's the painting widening its entry point."
Elin's pulse and the painting's pulse were now indistinguishable. Her vision blurred — she saw the frozen wave in the painting "move". Just a ripple, but enough to convince her it wasn't static anymore.
Mara's voice came from far away. "Elin, step back."
But the Archivist whispered, "Step through."
For a moment, Elin imagined what "restoration" would mean — going back to the bridge, to the cube, to the loop where she "mattered".
Then she imagined the alternative — a smaller loop, a deeper recursion, maybe a place where she could find the root.
Her hand touched the paint again.
The wave surged.
The room folded.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing on wet sand.
The horizon was tilted.
And far in the distance, someone was waving at her.
Someone who looked exactly like her.