The seed pulsed like a heartbeat trapped in amber, buried just inches below the surface of their yard yet radiating something vast—older than the fractures, older than time machines, older than the Collective itself. It throbbed in steady rhythm, sending tremors through the soil and up into Tylor's bones. Even as he stared, he knew they had uncovered something they weren't meant to find.
"It's not tech," Elias murmured again, crouching beside the pit. His scanner was dead, fried the moment he got near. "No readings. Just a blank pulse. Like it's refusing to be understood."
Amaira edged closer, sketchbook in hand. She flipped to a page she hadn't drawn. No one had. A spiral—perfectly detailed—surrounded a tree's roots and bled into a shape unfamiliar yet eerily familiar: a door made of glass and metal, its frame fractured like cracked ice. The word DORMANT was scrawled beneath in her handwriting, but she swore she hadn't written it.
"Why does it look like the door in my dream?" Kayla whispered, voice thin. "I keep seeing it. The one with the red light leaking through the cracks. And someone's behind it, but… I can never see who."
The seed pulsed again.
Suddenly, the tree above them shifted. Its leaves rustled though no wind moved. From within its hollow base, something fell—softly at first, like paper. Tylor bent down and retrieved it: a photograph, brittle and worn, edges curled with age. The image made his heart stutter.
It showed their backyard, but not as it was now. The grass was dead, the sky a burnt-orange haze. A younger version of Tylor—no more than ten—stood alone near the oak. Behind him, half-shrouded in shadow, stood another child. Same height, same posture… but the face was scratched out.
"I've never seen this," Tylor breathed, "but it's me. I mean—it's this yard."
Lina studied the photo over his shoulder. "Are you sure it's not some kind of doctored memory implant? The Collective—"
"No," Elias interrupted sharply. "This predates them. This isn't Collective tech. This is something else—echoes. Something that folded itself into time when it broke."
Kayla's eyes widened. "What if… the seed doesn't just remember fractures? What if it remembers people lost because of them?"
The group fell silent.
Then the recorder from the garage—still left on the workbench—crackled to life on its own. Elena's voice returned, layered over static. "If the Spiral begins to recall names, it's already too late. Identity is the last tether. If it speaks a name you don't remember, run."
As if on cue, Amaira gasped and pointed to the seed. Letters were surfacing on its side—glowing faintly, etched one by one like a message burning into bark. The name was unfamiliar to them all:
ISAAC.
"Do any of you… know an Isaac?" Lina asked, voice hollow.
No one did.
But Tylor couldn't shake the feeling that the name meant something. That he had known it. That someone had erased it—from time, from memory, from them.
The seed pulsed once more, harder now.
And from far off—beyond the tree line—came a child's laugh. Hollow. Distant. And all too familiar.