—
The city paused—not in silence, but in *anticipation*.
Every heartbeat, every flickering streetlight, every glitch in reality leaned toward a single moment.
Hoshiro stepped forward.
"I was built to preserve the Spiral. Trained to control chaos. But maybe... that was the flaw."
He turned to the sky.
"Maybe we were never supposed to *control* memory. Only understand it."
—
The memory-forms began to shimmer.
Some wept.
Some waited.
Others... vanished—finally seen, finally acknowledged.
Ayame's systems sparked back online. "They're stabilizing. Not erasing. Integrating."
Lyric grinned faintly. "Truth doesn't destroy. It *grounds*."
—
Kazuki rose. "So what now? We rebuild with them?"
"No," Hoshiro said. "*We remember with them.*"
—
High above, the faceless presence folded in on itself. Not defeated—but fulfilled.
The sky unraveled back into blue.
Just blue.
—
In the temple, the Spiral Core pulsed once… then dimmed.
For good.
—
The reset child smiled.
"Now... it begins."
—