The Council's Report Room was never meant to be quiet.
It buzzed with data.
Spoke in streams and charts and rewritten logs.
But tonight, it held its breath.
Velora stood alone at the central console, her fingers moving across projected runes that pulsed faintly with low-frequency energy.
The screen in front of her displayed something that wasn't supposed to exist.
A duplicate.
One that should've been erased in the last Rewrite cycle.
Citizen Code: Lessa Moraine
Status: Unflagged
Anomaly Tag: REM-003
Note: Subject recalls an individual not present in historical records.
Velora stared at the final line:
"Recollection includes detailed emotional memory, consistent identity reference, and a name."
"Caden Moraine."
There was no "Caden Moraine" in the archive.
No record.
No burial.
No birth.
And yet—Lessa remembered.
Velora called up the girl's residence record. Sector 8C. Low-tier housing.
No history of Rewrite resistance. No behavioral alerts.
She should've forgotten, like the others.
Like she was programmed to.
Instead, she remembered someone who didn't exist.
And the system flagged her as the error.
The corridor outside the archive pulsed with faint blue sigils embedded in the walls—tracking heat, movement, pulse rhythms. Velora walked straight through the sensors. They recognized her code. Feared her presence. Let her pass.
Alastor waited near the east stairwell, arms folded, coat immaculate. He looked like he hadn't moved in hours—but she knew better. He always moved when no one was watching.
"I need access to Subject Lessa Moraine," Velora said without preamble.
"You've already reviewed her logs?"
"She remembers a brother."
"There's no record of him."
"I know."
He raised an eyebrow. "And you believe her?"
"I believe the Rewrite is slipping."
Alastor's jaw tightened. Just slightly. The only tell he allowed himself.
"You're starting to sound like Rael."
Velora's gaze didn't flinch.
"He was right about one thing."
"That memory resists?"
"No," she said. "That it learns."
Sector 8C smelled like damp concrete and boiled ink.
The housing units were stacked like forgotten ideas—modular, compressed, colorless. The kind of place where memory went to dissolve.
Velora approached Unit 203. No guards. No locks. No surveillance nodes online.
The door creaked open before she could knock.
Lessa Moraine stood in the entryway, eyes wide, hair tangled, ink-stains on her fingertips.
"You're her," the girl whispered.
Velora didn't answer.
"I've seen you in my dreams."
Velora stepped inside without permission.
The apartment was bare. A mattress on the floor. Blank walls. A table with torn paper edges and a single pen worn to its core.
Lessa stared at her like she might vanish if she blinked.
"You're the one who remembers too, right?"
Velora's throat tightened. "Tell me about Caden."
Lessa sat down on the floor, legs crossed like a child being called to confession.
"I don't know when it started," she said. "One day, I just… missed someone."
"Describe him."
"He was taller than me. Had this stupid lopsided grin. Said the world was fake before I even knew what that meant. He used to draw symbols on our ceiling with chalk he stole from school."
She paused. Bit her lip.
"I looked for him in the database. Nothing. Not even a blank entry."
Velora sat across from her, white coat pooling around her like memory.
"Why do you think you remember him?"
"I don't know. Maybe… maybe I forgot wrong."
Velora leaned forward, gently placed something between them.
The coin.
Lessa stared.
"I've seen that."
"Where?"
"In my dreams. But it's always spinning. Never lands."
Velora didn't move.
Lessa reached toward it, then pulled back.
"He said something once," she whispered. "Before he vanished."
Velora's pulse slowed.
"What did he say?"
"They won't take me from your mind. Not if you keep drawing me right."
Velora looked at the torn papers on the floor.
Each page had the same sketch. Over and over.
A boy. No face. No name. But the silhouette—always the same.
Velora stood.
"You're not broken," she said quietly. "The world is."
Lessa blinked.
"Will they erase me?"
"Not if I speak first."
As she left, she heard Lessa whisper behind her.
"Don't let them steal him again."
Back in the central Archive, Alastor was already waiting. Of course he was.
"She's drawing him," Velora said.
"I know."
"She remembers everything."
"She's not the first."
Velora stepped forward.
"She's the first I'm not letting disappear."
Alastor's expression didn't change.
"I received a message while you were gone."
Velora frowned. "From who?"
"No source. No sender. Just a phrase, repeated twelve times."
He handed her a slip of paper.
Even in the digital age, some things needed to be written.
Velora read the phrase once. Then again. Then a third time.
It wasn't a code.
It was a warning.
"He still lives in the gaps."
She looked up.
"Is this about Rael?"
"I don't know."
"You think this is a trick?"
"I think," Alastor said, "this is the part of the story we were never meant to read."
Velora didn't sleep that night.
She sat by her candle, the coin in her hand.
Outside, the city rewrote itself one word at a time.
And in a room the system forgot to purge,
A girl still remembered her brother.
A coin still refused to land.
And a god still whispered through the cracks of the Rewrite.