The air in the junction felt charged, heavy with things unsaid and memories not yet erased. As Ysel worked the console, Eira's eyes darted between flickering data and the two figures beside her—Kael's taut posture, Ysel's quiet intensity.
Every new line of code felt like a whisper from the past, a ghost trying to speak through the city's perfect façade.
Eira swallowed hard, her throat dry. "If these cleaners erase memories... what happens to the people? To us?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. His gaze flickered to the nearest exit, muscles coiled like a predator waiting. "They don't just erase. They overwrite. Replace what's inconvenient with silence."
Ysel's fingers paused. "I've seen it happen. Friends forget who they are. Parents forget their children. And the system... it calls that 'correction.'"
Eira felt a chill tighten her chest. The faces of her parents flashed in her mind—vacant, unreachable. Had they been rewritten? Hollowed out piece by piece?
She looked away, heart pounding.
A silence grew between them—thick, almost suffocating.
Ysel broke it, voice softer now. "This place is a wound. And every time they run those codes, it bleeds."
Kael took a breath. "That's why we have to be careful. Every question we ask, every secret we uncover... it makes the city notice."
Eira clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms. The weight of their task pressed down like gravity.
"Are we even ready for this?" she whispered, doubt creeping in like a shadow.
Ysel met her gaze, eyes steady. "We don't have a choice."
Kael nodded. "And we're not alone."
For a moment, the three of them stood together, connected not just by their mission but by the fragile threads of trust and fear.
Eira's mind raced—not with plans or strategies—but with the ache of what might be lost.
Could they fight a city that was designed to forget?
Could they hold on to themselves in a place that erased everything that made them human?
The hum of the machines grew louder, a reminder that time was slipping away.
And in that growing noise, Eira felt a trembling hope.
Because maybe—just maybe—they could make the city remember too.
The hum in the junction shifted, no longer steady but fractured — like a pulse skipping beats. Screens flickered, warning lights blinking faintly at the edges of the console.
Ysel's fingers froze. "They know we're here."
Eira's breath caught. The room seemed to shrink, walls pressing closer as if the city itself had drawn a tighter grip.
Kael's voice was low, urgent. "We have to move. Now."
As they turned to leave, the distant echo of mechanized footsteps drifted down the corridors—too precise, too deliberate to be ordinary maintenance.
Eira's pulse spiked. "The Vigils."
Ysel's eyes darkened. "They're faster than we thought."
Fear tightened its grip, but beneath it was something else — the fierce, fragile determination binding them.
They moved through the labyrinth with practiced quiet, but every shadow seemed to watch, every silence was a threat.
Eira's mind flickered with memories—her parents' empty gazes, the sudden forgetting of simple words, the way her own thoughts sometimes slipped like water through clenched fists.
Her hands trembled, and Kael glanced at her, concern flashing in his eyes.
"We hold together," he said softly. "No matter what."
She nodded, even as the walls seemed to close in and the city's perfect surface cracked beneath their feet.
The hunt had begun.
And there was no turning back.