The sky above the Field shimmered with faultlines—golden veins pulsing behind a cracked illusion of calm.
Naomi stood at the edge of what had once been a Trial arena, though now it looked like a ruined cathedral suspended in a skyless void. The stone beneath her boots still remembered her weight. It pulsed in tiny waves, reacting to her presence as though the world itself was beginning to remember her.
Tomas was silent, still adjusting to the fragments of memory Naomi had helped anchor back into place. He walked slowly now, one hand pressed to the side of his head like he was holding himself together. Eren marched ahead of both of them, fists clenched, face unreadable. His kinetic aura was back—faint and uneven, but real.
The path forward had no markers. Just shattered architecture, gravity wells, and luminous data scars floating in midair. But Naomi knew where to go.
She could feel it.
The Field was whispering.
Echoes.
Not words. Not language. Just direction.
---
They reached the edge of a broken bridge. Its midpoint had collapsed into a swirl of impossible geometry. Shapes that weren't real looped endlessly. Time bent there. A structure that existed in all directions at once, and in none.
Tomas hesitated. "Is this... a trap?"
Naomi stepped forward.
"No. It's a link. This is where her trail picks up again."
"Lucia's?" Eren asked.
Naomi nodded. "This is her echo chain."
She didn't explain how she knew. Some truths don't require explanation—only recognition.
---
Vault – Observation Node
Saylor watched the three players with narrowed eyes.
He'd seen the chain activate. He'd watched the fractured memory tether root itself to Naomi's aura like a seed catching fire.
"So you buried breadcrumbs, Lucia," he muttered. "Even in death you couldn't leave well enough alone."
His fingers hovered above the emergency purge command.
But he didn't press it.
Not yet.
This was new.
Naomi wasn't restoring memory.
She was following it.
And something about that unnerved him more than any rebellion.
He pulled open a hidden file—marked only with a symbol: a broken wheel inside a jagged crown.
Inside the file, code flared to life. Not his.
Lucia's.
The original Echo Chain protocol.
Even now, fragmented, her code was moving.
Living.
---
Field – Chain Point One
Naomi stepped across the broken bridge, her foot pressing down on air that solidified just beneath her weight. Tomas followed. Eren jumped the final gap and landed hard, cracking the invisible floor.
The moment they crossed, the atmosphere changed.
A sound—not quite thunder, not quite voice—rippled through the air.
Whhhhmmmmmmmm.
From the fog, a figure emerged.
Lucia.
Or what remained of her.
Not flesh. Not code.
An imprint.
She hovered three feet off the ground. Her arms were outstretched like someone falling upward. Her eyes burned bright silver, and data threads poured from her chest like open circuitry.
Naomi dropped to one knee—not in submission, but in shock. Her breath caught in her throat.
Lucia spoke without moving her mouth.
> "This is the first link."
> "He severed me. But he could not unwrite me."
> "If you've found this, you carry resistance."
> "If you continue, you carry the burden."
The air grew cold. The sky above warped—blackening into fractured stars.
Lucia's echo looked at Naomi.
> "You can still walk away."
> "But if you take the chain..."
The voice shifted—sorrowful now.
> "There's no going back."
Eren stepped forward. "No one's going back. We're ending this."
Lucia's form flickered. Glitched.
> "Then remember this:
> Every truth resisted becomes a weapon."
Her arms folded inward. The threads collapsed into her chest. And the form imploded—quietly, reverently.
In its place floated a chain link made of light. It hovered between the three of them.
Naomi reached for it.
When her fingers closed around it—
—the Field shook.
The shockwave was silent.
No tremor. No crack.
Just pressure—a sudden shift that pressed against Naomi's skull like a hand trying to pull her backward through time.
The moment she touched the link, she was no longer standing.
She was falling.
Not through space. Through memory.
---
Memory Depth Sequence: Accessing [Lucia.exe] Archive Thread 1
---
Lucia stood on a platform of white stone beneath a violet sun.
She was whole here. Not a glitch. Not a ghost.
This memory was hers, and it played like a dream she had saved for someone else.
The field around her was empty. Just open horizon. No gods. No players. No wheel.
But in her hands she held the first schematic for the Trials.
Paper—real paper—folded and smudged with sweat and ink.
Naomi watched from behind, unseen but present, as if she were riding shotgun in Lucia's consciousness.
Lucia was younger here. Her voice steadier. Her eyes clear.
"I thought we could build something that tested people's spirit," she said aloud, maybe to no one. "Not their loyalty. Not their obedience."
She knelt and placed the schematic on the ground.
A ring of sparks ignited around it.
It began to burn.
"I didn't know what Saylor would turn it into."
Her voice broke.
"I didn't know he'd turn me into a weapon."
---
Field — Naomi's Body
To Tomas and Eren, Naomi's body had frozen in place, her eyes glowing with pale silver light.
Eren reached out. "She's locked in."
Tomas nodded. "She's walking her Echo Thread."
"Can we pull her out?"
"No," Tomas said. "We have to guard her while she walks it."
A gust of wind swept through the broken sky.
And with it came Saylor's countermeasure.
A new Trial spawned from the data fog—twisted and ancient, crawling with chains that snapped and uncoiled like vipers.
Tomas drew his weapon.
"I'll hold them off."
Eren stepped forward beside him.
"Not alone."
---
Vault – Emergency Monitor Alert
> NAOMI: ECHO CHAIN RESONANCE EXCEEDING SAFE PARAMETERS
> LUCIA.EXE ARCHIVE THREAD 1: LIVE MEMORY ACCESS IN PROGRESS
Saylor's eyes widened.
"That file was locked."
He began typing frantically.
> FORCE MEMORY CULL — LEVEL 6
> USER: SAYLOR COGNI – OVERRIDE KEY RECOGNIZED
> ...ERROR.
> PERMISSION DENIED.
---
Memory Thread – Lucia's Final Words
Lucia stood over the burning paper.
She looked up.
Directly at Naomi.
Her voice was faint now.
> "If you're seeing this… it means I left it all behind. Every memory. Every line of code. I turned them into weapons."
> "But I made one final gift."
She pointed behind her.
Naomi turned.
And saw a door standing in the middle of the void. Old. Wooden. Marked with Lucia's symbol—a cracked circle wrapped in thorns.
The voice whispered once more.
> "Open it. End what he started."
Naomi turned the handle.
And the Field roared back to life.
The door opened without a sound.
Naomi stepped through.
She didn't know what she expected—flames, screams, light, a system alert. But the moment she crossed the threshold, there was only stillness. Stillness so deep it felt ancient.
Her feet touched solid ground, but it wasn't stone or code. It was something older.
A wooden floor, warped and dark with age. The walls around her were tall and curved like the interior of a clocktower. Massive gears hung motionless in the air above, embedded in no mechanism, rotating without moving. Shadows curved with them, but there was no light source.
At the center stood a table.
A real one.
And seated at it—Lucia. Not a flicker. Not an echo. Not a ghost.
Lucia.
Her skin bore the cracks of code strain. Her hair was a tangle of black thread streaked with silver. One eye flickered between organic and artificial. But she was alive in this space, breathing, conscious.
Naomi couldn't speak.
Lucia gave her a tired smile. "Took you long enough."
---
Field – Outer Edge
Outside the portal, the Trial constructs descended—twisted beings of stone and memory, wrapped in purge chains that unspooled midair like hungry metal.
Tomas screamed as he hurled back one of the entities with a burst of destabilized energy, his weapon overheating in his hand.
Eren detonated a shockwave, knocking three of them off the platform. But they kept coming—more of them, growing faster with each error logged in the system.
Tomas shouted over the noise, "She better find something in there soon!"
---
Inside the Chamber
Naomi finally found her voice.
"You're real."
Lucia nodded. "As real as you."
"How?"
Lucia leaned back. "I buried this version of myself in the system's core before Saylor rewrote everything. This room? It's the only part of me he couldn't touch. Because he never saw it."
Naomi stepped closer. "Then why wait?"
Lucia folded her hands. "Because I needed someone who could open it. And not just open it—survive it."
She gestured to the space around them.
"This isn't memory. This is seed code. The raw structure of the first Trial."
Naomi blinked. "The first?"
Lucia nodded. "Before gods. Before spins. Before death. It was a test of clarity. If the Field still remembers this... then it can remember truth."
She stood slowly, joints creaking like old hinges. She walked to a second door on the far end of the room and placed her hand against it.
"I can't go any further."
Naomi stepped up beside her.
Lucia looked into her eyes. "Everything after this is yours."
Naomi asked, "What's behind it?"
Lucia's smile faded.
"Saylor's first failure."
The room shook.
Outside, the Trials screamed louder.
Lucia pressed her palm to Naomi's chest.
> "Whatever happens—don't forget who you are. He can rewrite your story, Naomi. But he can't live it."
She turned to static.
And vanished.
---
Field — The Return
The door Naomi entered shimmered.
And she stepped back out.
Her eyes glowed violet. Her hands pulsed with two threads of light—Lucia's and her own.
The sky above twisted as if recoiling from her.
She raised her voice.
"ENOUGH."
The Trial constructs froze mid-step.
Eren and Tomas collapsed to their knees from the sudden silence.
The Field reacted.
> NAOMI STATUS: DUAL RESONANCE CONFIRMED ADMIN SUPPRESSION OVERRIDE: PENDING
Naomi pointed her right hand to the sky.
A chain formed.
Not metal.
Not code.
Memory.
It spiraled upward, latching onto something invisible.
A voice—Lucia's voice—echoed from within Naomi.
> "You followed the Echo Chain." "Now break the anchor."
Naomi pulled.
And the world began to unravel.