"Move!"
The shout echoed through the lower district as civilians pushed past one another beneath flickering street lamps.
A woman grabbed her child violently by the arm.
"Don't look back!"
"I dropped my bag—"
"Forget the freying bag!"
Above them, an Imperial siren screamed across the narrow streets of Velkaris Prime.
Not an evacuation signal.
Containment.
Which was worse.
Far worse.
Kael Virex stepped over an overturned food cart while two soldiers argued nearby.
"I'm telling you the street changed again!"
"That's impossible!"
"You think I'm joking right now?!"
Kael glanced lazily at the nearby street sign.
Three different names flickered across its surface.
None remained long enough to read fully.
"…well," Kael muttered, "that's unpleasant."
One soldier turned immediately.
"Containment Officer!"
Kael raised a hand.
"Relax. Panicking before the collapse is inefficient."
"…collapse?"
"See? Now you're doing it incorrectly."
The lower district smelled like wet iron and overheated Anchor pylons.
Blue stabilization lines crawled across the walls like glowing veins.
But they were failing.
Not shutting down.
Failing to agree with themselves.
One moment the lattice aligned.
The next it contradicted its own structure.
Reality compensated poorly.
A nearby window suddenly showed daylight for half a second before returning to night.
Nobody reacted anymore.
That was the terrifying part.
People were adapting.
At the center of the district, an entire street stood empty.
Not abandoned.
Erased incorrectly.
The buildings remained.
The lights remained.
Even a bowl of untouched soup sat outside a small restaurant, steam still rising into cold air.
But the people—
gone.
Not blood.
Not bodies.
Just absence.
As if the city had forgotten who belonged there.
An engineer near Kael swallowed nervously.
"…how many now?"
"Current estimate?" another answered quietly.
"Thirty-two."
Kael sighed.
"Make it thirty-three."
The two engineers froze.
"…what?"
Kael pointed casually toward the report tablet in one man's hands.
The identification number at the bottom had disappeared.
Not glitched.
Gone.
The engineer's expression slowly changed.
"…why can't I remember the supervisor's face?"
Nobody answered him.
Because none of them could anymore.
Deep beneath the street, massive Anchor pylons activated together.
The ground trembled.
A low hum spread across the district as stabilizing Dynamis surged upward through the city structure.
For a moment—
reality tightened.
The missing street flickered violently.
And suddenly the people returned.
A man appeared mid-step holding groceries.
A woman stood frozen beside a doorway.
Someone screamed immediately.
Not from pain.
Confusion.
Because to them—
no time had passed.
The grocery bag hit the ground.
Fruit rolled across wet pavement.
The man stared around slowly.
"…why is everyone looking at me like that?"
No one moved.
One soldier quietly removed his helmet and threw up beside the barricade.
Kael rubbed his forehead.
—Frey. It's accelerating.—
An officer rushed toward him.
"Containment Executive authorization has been approved!"
Kael looked genuinely disappointed.
"That means they're bringing the dangerous toys."
"We may not have a choice anymore."
"We absolutely have choices."
Kael looked toward the restored street.
"They're just all terrible."
A sharp pressure suddenly spread across the district.
Weak.
Brief.
But wrong.
Every Concept-sensitive individual nearby felt it instantly.
The engineers stiffened.
One soldier collapsed unconscious.
Another grabbed the side of a wall breathing heavily.
Kael's expression lost all humor immediately.
"…there it is."
The pressure vanished.
Not faded.
Vanished.
Like something realized it had been noticed.
Far away, inside the Scholar Tower, an archive shelf split down the middle without being touched.
Books fell across the floor.
Selyra Vonn looked up sharply.
Not at the shelf.
Beyond it.
"…something beneath the city just responded."
Kairon Drel frowned.
"To what?"
Selyra's eyes narrowed slowly.
"…recognition."
Elsewhere—
far below Velkaris Prime—
Eryndor stood alone inside a flooded underground corridor lit by broken industrial lamps.
Water rippled softly around his boots.
In front of him stood an enormous sealed door covered in faded Anchor markings.
Old ones.
Older than the city itself.
He didn't remember walking here.
That was becoming a problem.
—This place exists in the fragments.—
His hand slowly touched the cold metal surface.
The moment his skin made contact—
the entire corridor shook violently.
Not physically.
Structurally.
Threads invisible to normal perception spread across the walls like fractures of golden light.
Then—
for one impossible second—
something on the other side touched back.
Eryndor froze.
His breathing stopped.
Not fear.
Recognition.
A distant voice echoed somewhere beyond the door.
Not spoken.
Remembered.
[ ORIGIN ]
The Thread appeared only briefly.
But the corridor around him immediately began forgetting its own shape.
And somewhere above—
all Anchor systems inside the lower district failed simultaneously.