—
It didn't split like glass.
It *bent*—like a memory trying to fit into a world too small for it.
Above Tokyo, the sky warped. Clouds reversed. Colors inverted. And then came the *form*—not a creature, not a ship.
A presence. Faceless. Shifting.
Made entirely of remembered possibilities.
—
Ayame's voice trembled. "That's not an entity… it's a memory of *what could've been.*"
Kazuki stepped back. "It's trying to reinsert itself into now."
—
Inside the temple, Hoshiro gritted his teeth as the air thickened.
"Aletheia doesn't just awaken the truth. It drags everything buried back with it."
Lyric looked up. "These aren't mistakes. They're echoes. All the abandoned timelines. All the lives Spiral erased to keep reality clean."
—
One of the memory-forms descended into the city. It looked like a young girl—eyes full of light, hands glitching.
She looked at a family on the street and whispered, "You chose not to have me."
They collapsed, sobbing.
—
Ayame's systems went offline. Not broken—*outdated*.
Kazuki's body started responding to an unknown protocol. Muscles twitching. Vision flashing with a HUD he didn't install.
Hoshiro's mark began to glow.Lyric said, "It's time to choose. Do we silence the past… or let it all return?"
—