The tunnels breathed.
Not with air, but memory. Each footstep echoed like it was disturbing something older than the cities above, older even than the Collapse. Theo and Ayen descended slowly through a ruptured maintenance shaft, lit only by the pale glow of Theo's thread lens and the flickering blue of Ayen's wrist-light.
Rust clung to the walls like dried blood. Vines threaded through cracked stone. Every surface told a story in silence.
"This used to be a magrail junction," Theo whispered, more to himself than her. "Back when the Silver Crown still had layers."
Ayen's voice was dry. "Back when people could commute without tripping over ghosts."
She glanced back. "You sure these tunnels still connect to the lab?"
Theo adjusted his lens. Thin silver threadlines danced in the air ahead, barely visible unless you knew what to look for. "They do. The origin residue's stronger down here. And the closer we get, the more the threads remember."
They walked in silence for a while. Far above, the city might still be humming with Warden patrols and resonance sweeps—but here, the world was buried beneath time. Forgotten.
Until the corridor changed.
Without warning, the walls began to shimmer. The grime faded, replaced by the faint outline of pristine steel and old signage. Holographic echoes blinked in and out—ghosts of people walking, waiting, living. A young girl skipping across a station platform. An elderly man tuning a broadcast near a vending drone.
But they weren't real. Not anymore.
Ayen stopped cold. "What is this?"
Theo's expression darkened. "Thread-burn. The place is remembering too hard. The residual imprint's looping."
"You mean… this is a memory?"
"No. This is a scar."
He stepped forward and the world flickered. For an instant, he stood in a station bathed in white light. Clean rails. Orderly walls. A broadcast chimed overhead: "Next transfer to Crown Archive departs in two minutes. Please stand clear."
Then the scream came.
High. Human. Cut off mid-breath.
And then—darkness again.
Theo stumbled, his pulse spiking. The air smelled of burnt ozone.
Ayen caught him by the shoulder. "Theo!"
He straightened, wiping his brow. "We're close. Whatever caused the fracture in this district—this is where it touched down first."
"Should we be worried?"
"We already are."
They moved slower now, the tunnel gradually widening into what had once been a transit hub. Benches crumbled under moss. A torn banner still flapped faintly in artificial wind. Theo paused near a shattered display terminal.
"This was the entry point to Lab Zero."
Ayen raised an eyebrow. "There was a zero?"
"There was always a zero. The place they built before they knew what they were tampering with."
She crouched beside a half-buried console, running fingers across the surface. "Doesn't look like much now."
Theo pulled out a small device from his coat—a resonance pulse emitter. He set it on the ground. It began to hum.
The threads responded.
Silver lines burst into view like veins illuminating beneath skin. They twisted and converged on a single wall, a blank expanse of stone no different than the rest—until Theo stepped toward it.
The wall shivered.
A door, long hidden beneath thread masking, rippled into visibility. A faint glyph pulsed at its center: the spiral sigil of Project Origin.
Ayen exhaled slowly. "That's it. That's your doorway."
Theo nodded, heart tight. "Once we go in, there's no guarantee we come out the same."
Ayen stood beside him. "Nothing's been the same since the day you reset. We've all changed. Just… don't go forgetting who you are in there."
He glanced at her. "I won't. Not this time."
He placed his palm on the glyph.
It accepted him.
The door slid open with a hiss like a long-held breath.
A corridor stretched beyond—unlit, untouched, waiting.
Theo stepped through first, the silver threadlines spiraling around him like strands of fate remembering their weaver.
Ayen followed.
Behind them, the wall sealed.
And somewhere deep inside the buried lab, a light flickered to life for the first time in years.
Time remembered them.
Now it was their turn to remember time.