The city had always looked faceless at dawn, all steel and glass veiled in mist. But that morning, it felt like the buildings themselves were watching him.
Ethan tightened his grip on the phone in his pocket as he stepped out of his apartment. He hadn't left in days, too consumed by the Restore. Yet staying in one place had nearly killed him—he could still feel the Watcher's static hand reaching for him in the dark.
And now, with the progress bar frozen at 82%, he needed answers.
He needed proof that Liora had ever existed outside his own memory.
The café on Maple Street should have been familiar ground. It was where Liora used to drag him for "brain fuel" before exams, ordering an absurdly sweet latte she never finished.
He sat at their old corner booth, staring at the chalkboard menu. The same specials. The same chipped mug.
But no trace of her.
He asked the barista casually, "Hey, do you remember a girl who used to come here a lot? Liora? Dark hair, red scarf, ordered caramel lattes all the time?"
The woman tilted her head politely, then shook it. "Sorry, no one like that comes to mind."
Ethan's stomach sank. "Are you sure? She was here almost every day with me. She—"
He stopped.
Because the barista's name tag glitched. Just for a second. The letters warped into symbols before snapping back.
He forced a smile, thanked her, and left quickly.
Outside, the cold air hit harder than it should have. His breath came in ragged puffs as he pulled out his phone.
The bar buzzed.
Restore Progress: 84%.
It was working. Every denial, every missing trace—pushing her closer to the surface. But the cost was mounting.
By noon, he found himself at the old university library. It was quiet, nearly empty, dust motes floating in shafts of sunlight.
He made straight for the archives. They had kept everything—attendance sheets, student projects, yearbooks. If Liora had been erased, maybe the old paper records had resisted.
Hours passed as he leafed through files, his fingers growing numb from the dust.
And then, he saw it.
A yearbook.
His photo, awkward smile, hair unkempt.
And beside him—her.
At least, it should have been.
But the picture was corrupted. Not torn, not faded. Corrupted, like a bad JPEG printed on paper. Her face was smeared with static, her name replaced by a blank underscore.
Ethan slammed the book shut, trembling. He pulled out his phone, snapping a picture—proof.
But when he looked at the photo he'd just taken, his blood ran cold.
The corrupted image had spread. Now even his own face was blurred, smeared into noise.
The phone buzzed again.
Restore Progress: 86%.
Hands shaking, he stuffed the yearbook back. He needed more. Something undeniable.
He searched his own old notes, stored in the stacks. Scribbled in margins, half-finished problem sets.
And there it was: his handwriting.
Liora was here.
Three words scrawled in pen.
Except as he stared, the ink shifted. The letters warped until it read: Error: Subject Not Found.
Ethan's knees nearly gave.
His own memories were betraying him.
He shoved the notebook away, gripping his hair. "No, no, no—this isn't me losing it. She was real. She was—"
A sound cut him off.
The scrape of something heavy across the marble floor.
Not footsteps.
A drag.
Slow. Relentless.
Ethan froze. His pulse thundered in his ears as he looked down the library aisle.
At first, nothing. Just shelves, silence, dust.
Then the lights above flickered, one by one, darkness creeping closer.
And in that darkness, a shape unfolded.
Too tall. Too bent. Limbs like static lines, reaching between shelves. Its head jerked as though buffering between frames.
Another Watcher.
His phone buzzed violently in his pocket.
LIORA: Run.
Ethan bolted.
The library's silence shattered into chaos.
Ethan sprinted between shelves, breath ragged, shoes slamming against marble. Behind him, the scrape grew louder, like claws raking through stone. The Watcher moved without rhythm, glitching forward in stuttering bursts, each step folding reality in on itself.
The overhead lights winked out one by one, plunging the aisles into rolling darkness.
"Shit, shit, shit—"
Ethan skidded around a corner, nearly toppling into a cart of books. He shoved it behind him on instinct. For a second, he thought he'd bought time—until the cart lifted into the air, unraveling into particles of static before vanishing completely.
The Watcher didn't walk around obstacles. It deleted them.
He ducked low, weaving through the maze of shelves, desperate for an exit sign. Every corner looked the same. Every row stretched into infinity, books warping into unreadable glyphs as he passed.
The phone buzzed in his pocket, but he didn't dare look.
He didn't need to.
The glow from the screen pulsed brighter with every second, illuminating his path in sickly white light.
He risked a glance back—instantly regretting it.
The Watcher was closer. Its head jerked at impossible angles, body flickering in and out of reality. Limbs stretched too long, bending around shelves like wires.
And its face—
No. It didn't have a face.
Just a hollow, gaping void that seemed to swallow the light.
Ethan's chest clenched. He pushed harder, lungs screaming, every muscle begging to stop.
But the thing was gaining.
He rounded another corner—and nearly collided with someone.
A girl.
She stood in the aisle as though she had been waiting. Short, sharp-cut hair. A black hoodie. And eyes that flicked up from a glowing tablet she held in her hands.
"Finally," she muttered.
Ethan gaped. "Wh—what are you doing here?!"
"Helping you, obviously." Her voice was steady, unafraid. "Unless you'd prefer being deleted."
She raised her tablet. Strange glyphs scrolled across the screen in rapid succession.
The Watcher lurched into view.
The girl didn't flinch. She tapped her screen once, and symbols exploded outward in a circle of light, filling the aisle.
The Watcher slammed into the barrier. The air shook with a deep, broken sound, like corrupted audio files dragged across gravel. The creature convulsed, its limbs glitching violently against the glowing script.
Ethan staggered back. "What the hell—"
"Keep your voice down," the girl snapped. She tapped a command, and the glyphs tightened, forcing the Watcher to recoil, its form fuzzing.
"Who are you?" he demanded, voice cracking.
She spared him a sharp glance. "Call me Raven. And you're Ethan Vale, the one running a Restore."
Ethan's stomach dropped. "How do you know my name?"
Her lips quirked, though it wasn't quite a smile. "Because you're not the only one fighting the erasure."
The barrier faltered. Static bled into the glowing glyphs, eating at the edges. Raven swore under her breath.
"We don't have long. Move!"
She grabbed his wrist and yanked him into motion. Ethan stumbled after her as she navigated the aisles like she'd memorized the place. Behind them, the Watcher slammed into the shelves, tearing reality itself as it clawed forward.
They burst through a staff door into the stairwell. The emergency light buzzed overhead, casting everything in pale green.
Raven slammed the door shut, slapped a sticker covered in the same glyphs onto the metal, and the sounds dulled to silence.
For now.
Ethan pressed a hand against the wall, chest heaving. "You—you knew that thing was here."
"Of course." She leaned against the railing, tablet tucked under her arm. "They always show up around Restores. It's how they contain us."
"Us?"
Raven tilted her head, studying him. Her eyes were sharp, almost too sharp. "You really don't know, do you?"
Ethan shook his head, still panting. "All I know is—she's real. And they're trying to erase her."
Raven's gaze softened, just a fraction. "Liora."
His heart stuttered. "You… you know her name."
"I know what she is." Raven's voice lowered, suddenly grave. "And if you're at eighty-something percent, then you're in more danger than you realize."
Ethan's phone buzzed again. He pulled it out with trembling hands.
Restore Progress: 89%.
The number glowed bright, pulsing.
Raven leaned closer, eyes narrowing at the screen. "Damn. You're farther than I thought."
"What does that mean?" Ethan asked.
"It means," she said carefully, "that the closer you get to finishing a Restore, the harder the Watchers will come for you. And if you succeed… the system doesn't just let it happen. They'll rewrite everything to stop her from coming back."
His grip tightened on the phone. "I don't care what they do. I'm not giving up."
For the first time, Raven's expression cracked. She looked at him not like he was reckless, but like she understood.
"Then you'd better be ready," she said. "Because once that bar hits ninety percent, you won't be able to hide anymore."
The emergency light flickered above them, shadows bending unnaturally against the wall.
Ethan shivered. "Hide from what?"
Raven met his eyes, and her answer was a whisper.
"From everyone."
The stairwell hummed with uneasy silence. The glyph-sticker Raven had slapped on the library door glowed faintly, holding back the static clawing just beyond.
Ethan sank onto the bottom step, gripping his phone so tightly his knuckles whitened. He still couldn't shake the sound of the Watcher's distorted scream, rattling in his chest like broken glass.
Raven crouched across from him, her black hoodie shadowing sharp eyes that seemed far too calm for someone who'd just faced a monster.
"You shouldn't be alive," she said bluntly.
Ethan let out a humorless laugh. "Yeah, tell me about it."
"I'm serious." She tapped her tablet, pulling up cascading lines of code-like text. "A Restore that's reached eighty-nine percent? Anyone else would have been deleted by now. Either you're impossibly lucky… or she's stronger than I thought."
Ethan's pulse stuttered. "She. You mean Liora?"
Raven's gaze snapped up. "That name again. You actually remember her. Even now."
"Of course I do!" His voice cracked, raw. "She was—she is—everything. And I don't care what this system or these… things try to tell me. She's not gone."
Raven studied him a long moment, then sat back on her heels. "Then I'll give you the truth. But once you hear it, you won't be able to un-know it."
Ethan swallowed hard. "Then tell me."
Raven's voice dropped, threaded with something heavier than cynicism—grief, maybe.
"The world isn't as stable as you think," she began. "It's coded. Not literally like a computer simulation—but like a system that edits itself. Memories, records, even entire people can be rewritten."
Ethan's skin crawled. "You're saying reality… glitches itself?"
"Not glitches." Raven's eyes darkened. "Censorship. Watchers are enforcers. They erase what the system decides shouldn't exist. People. Ideas. Love."
Ethan felt cold spread through his veins. "Then why me? Why Liora?"
"That's the part I don't know yet." Raven's fingers tightened on her tablet. "But I know this much: when someone resists erasure, they generate fragments—echoes of memory that can be restored. That's what you're doing, whether you realize it or not. You're forcing the system to rebuild her piece by piece."
Ethan's gaze dropped to his phone. The progress bar pulsed softly at 89%, like a heartbeat.
"She's fighting her way back."
Raven tilted her head. "And you're helping her. Which makes you a Restorer. And that…" She exhaled slowly. "That makes you dangerous."
Ethan rubbed a hand over his face, the words heavy in his skull. Dangerous. Restorer. None of it mattered, not compared to the fact that Liora was still reaching for him.
He pulled out his old laptop—dusty, cracked screen, nearly useless without Wi-Fi. But somewhere inside it, he still had files from when they studied together.
He opened a folder.
His breath hitched.
Every document inside was blank.
No, not blank—each file name had been overwritten: "Error: Subject Not Found."
He almost slammed it shut, until he noticed one file hadn't been changed. A single folder buried three levels deep.
Fragments.
Heart pounding, he opened it.
Only one document was inside.
He clicked.
And a message appeared—simple text, black on white.
"Ethan, if you're reading this… it means they tried to erase me. Don't trust the gaps. Don't trust what they replace me with. I'm real. I'm still here. Find me."
His throat closed. His hands shook over the keyboard. "Liora…"
The phone buzzed violently.
Restore Progress: 91%.
The screen blazed so bright it lit the stairwell.
Raven leaned forward, eyes wide. "She left you a fragment. That's… that's not supposed to be possible."
Ethan snapped his head up. "What do you mean?"
"Fragments are just echoes. Corrupted. They don't talk back. They don't leave instructions." Raven's voice cracked for the first time. "She's fighting harder than anyone I've ever seen."
Ethan clutched the phone to his chest, vision blurring with hot tears. He could almost hear Liora's laughter, feel the brush of her scarf against his wrist.
For a fleeting moment, it was like she was right there with him.
But then Raven's words pierced through.
"Don't trust what they replace me with."
Ethan's eyes flicked up at Raven.
She was watching him too intently. Too closely.
And hadn't she known his name the second they met? Known about Liora, even though the entire world seemed to have forgotten her?
He swallowed hard. "Why are you helping me?"
Raven didn't blink. "Because if you finish the Restore, you'll prove it can be done. And maybe…" Her jaw tightened. "Maybe I'll be able to bring back the one they took from me."
Her mask slipped just long enough for Ethan to glimpse raw pain beneath it. A mirror of his own.
Still, a coil of unease tightened in his gut.
Liora's warning whispered in his mind. Don't trust the gaps.
The glyph-sticker on the stairwell door flickered.
Raven stiffened. "It's breaking through."
The static hum grew louder, rattling the railing, seeping into their bones.
Ethan's phone buzzed again, brighter than ever. 92%.
The shadows beyond the door warped, limbs pressing against the barrier.
The Watcher wasn't alone this time.
Shapes multiplied in the darkness.
Ethan's blood turned to ice.
"How many are there?"
Raven's answer was a whisper.
"Too many."
The stairwell shook.
The glyph-sticker on the library door sizzled, smoke curling from its edges. The static hum had grown into a roar, deeper than thunder, vibrating through the concrete walls.
Ethan pressed back against the railing, clutching his phone so hard it dug into his palm. The glow from the screen painted his face in harsh white.
Restore Progress: 93%.
Too fast. Too unstable.
Raven was already on her feet, tablet in hand, thumbs flying over the screen. Glyphs cascaded across it, spinning into geometric patterns of light. Sweat dripped down her temple.
"Hold them off," she muttered. "Just a few more seconds—"
The sticker dissolved.
The door slammed open without a touch.
And the Watchers poured in.
The first one crawled across the threshold, limbs scraping, body spasming between frames. Another followed, taller, its void-face twitching as though struggling to render.
Then more. Three. Five. Seven.
Ethan's vision blurred. His body screamed at him to run, but where? The stairwell was a dead end.
Raven shouted, her voice sharp as glass. "Stay behind me!"
She slammed her palm against the wall, and a glyph-circle flared across the stairwell floor. The Watchers jerked as though repelled, their limbs thrashing against the barrier.
But the circle cracked.
Each impact splintered the glowing lines like glass under strain.
Ethan's phone buzzed harder than ever.
95%.
The Watchers shrieked—not with mouths, but with distortion. Their screams layered, high-pitched screeches threaded with whispers.
And in the noise, Ethan heard words.
"Not… real."
"She… never… existed."
"Delete. Delete. Delete."
His skull felt like it was splitting open. He dropped to his knees, hands clamped over his ears. But the voices burrowed deeper, stabbing at the core of him.
He thought of Liora's smile. Her scarf brushing his cheek. Her whispered confession after their last exam.
He screamed back, raw and desperate: "She's real! YOU CAN'T ERASE HER!"
The phone blazed in response.
96%.
The glow surged outward, forming a halo around him.
The Watchers recoiled, static limbs snapping back. Their void-faces tilted as though confused.
For the first time, Ethan realized—his defiance itself was fueling the Restore.
"Get up!" Raven's voice cut through the noise.
Ethan staggered to his feet. Raven's barrier was fracturing, cracks spiderwebbing through the glyph-circle. Her tablet's glow dimmed, battery screaming with warnings.
"I can't hold them!" she yelled.
One Watcher shoved through the crack, its arm distending into a jagged spear. It lunged for Raven.
Without thinking, Ethan grabbed the broken railing and swung. The metal bar passed through the Watcher's arm, but the creature flickered, glitching violently before retreating.
It wasn't damage. But it was resistance.
Raven gave him a sharp, almost feral grin. "Good. You're learning."
Another slammed into the barrier. Then another.
The circle shattered.
Static flooded the stairwell.
Raven tackled Ethan against the wall just as a void-hand slashed where his head had been. Sparks of static burned the concrete.
"We need an anchor point!" Raven barked.
"What the hell does that mean?!"
"Something of hers—something real!"
Ethan's mind raced. He dug into his backpack with shaking hands. His fingers brushed against fabric.
A scarf.
Red. Frayed at the ends.
Liora's.
He yanked it free, holding it up like a banner.
The Watchers froze.
Every void-face turned toward it, twitching violently, distortion peaking into a deafening scream.
Ethan's phone exploded with light.
98%.
The scarf glowed in his hands, threads unraveling into streams of luminous code that wrapped around him like armor.
For a heartbeat, he felt her—warmth, laughter, a whisper in his ear.
"Don't let go."
The Watchers attacked all at once.
Raven chanted glyph-commands rapid-fire, symbols spinning from her tablet into shields and spears of light. Ethan swung the scarf, its glowing strands lashing like a whip.
Every strike didn't destroy the Watchers—but it forced them back, glitching, howling.
But there were too many.
One lunged low, knocking Raven's tablet from her hands. It shattered against the stairs.
Another swiped at Ethan, static claws ripping across his jacket. His skin burned with white-hot pain, but he clung to the scarf.
The phone buzzed violently, the screen cracking from the force.
99%.
Almost there.
Almost—
The glow surged outward, swallowing the stairwell in blinding white.
For an instant, the Watchers froze mid-motion, their forms fracturing into static.
And then—
The world shifted.
The stairwell dissolved into endless blankness, pure white stretching in every direction. The Watchers stood frozen like statues, locked in place.
Ethan gasped, disoriented. "What—where are we?"
Raven stood perfectly still, her face pale in the endless glow.
"This," she whispered, "is the Core. You've pushed the Restore too far."
The phone vibrated in Ethan's palm, the progress bar pulsing one last time.
100%.
He stared at it, heart hammering. "That's it. She's back. Liora's—"
The screen shattered.
And her voice filled the air.
"Ethan."
It was clear. Whole. Beautiful.
His throat closed. "Liora…"
But her next words turned his blood cold.
"Don't trust her."
His eyes shot to Raven.
She stood frozen, unreadable, eyes glinting in the pale void.
And then she smiled.