The wind in the Field no longer howled. It breathed.
Lucia sat alone beneath the fractured Wheel, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around them like they might hold her together. The sky above no longer spun with violent light or fractured reality. It just existed—neutral, drained of memory, the color of ash caught in static.
Naomi was gone.
That much was fact.
But the world hadn't mourned her.
It had simply adjusted.
Lucia's presence was now recognized by the system. Her access threads had been relinked. Her signature marked her as Field Avatar: Active. She could touch the broken glyphs in the air and feel the lines of command behind them. It should have felt empowering.
Instead, it felt like sitting in Naomi's coffin.
Saylor hadn't brought her back to give her control.
He'd brought her back to silence her—to twist her grief into governance. The chains she'd once used to fight with now coiled silently around her wrists, uncommanded, their links dulled. She hadn't summoned them. They had simply appeared—assigned, not earned.
A distant clatter echoed through the air, shattering the false peace.
Lucia turned slowly.
Eren had collapsed again.
His breathing was shallow, his shoulders hunched. He sat slumped against the base of a broken spire, hands twitching involuntarily. His eyes were half-lidded but alert, staring at something that wasn't there.
Lucia stood, legs stiff and aching.
She crossed to him in silence.
"Can you move?" she asked softly.
He blinked. "Does it matter?"
She knelt beside him. "It always matters."
He looked at her then—really looked. "You're not her."
"I know."
"I watched him wipe her out." His voice cracked. "I watched, and I couldn't stop it."
Lucia didn't respond. The air between them held the weight of too many losses.
After a moment, Eren spoke again. "Why'd he bring you back?"
Lucia traced her finger along a crack in the stone. "Because he wants control. And because I terrify him just enough to keep me close."
"You gonna fight him?"
"I don't know."
Eren closed his eyes. "Then we're already dead."
"No," Lucia said quietly. "Not yet. But it's getting close."
She stood and stepped back, glancing upward. The Wheel hovered, silent now. It no longer burned. It observed.
She could feel the threads behind it.
She could follow them if she wanted.
The system was open to her in a way it hadn't been in years. Saylor had seen to that—an ironic gift meant to trap her. But she could see further now. She could feel the fracture Naomi had left behind.
A wound in the Field.
Still healing.
Still pulsing.
Not closed.
Lucia turned to Eren. "I need you to get up."
He didn't answer.
"I'm not asking you to fight," she continued. "I just need you to move."
Eren stirred. "Why?"
"Because if I'm going to walk into the core and speak with the god who rewrote us, I'd rather not do it alone."
He coughed—once, bitterly. Then stood.
Lucia offered no smile, no comfort. Just a nod.
"Let's go," she said.
And the Wheel began to spin again.
The path to the core was not a straight one. It never had been.
Lucia and Eren walked across unstable terrain, where time folded like paper and logic unraveled beneath every footstep. Platforms floated and spun in quiet orbit around fractured spires. Bridges formed as they approached, then vanished behind them like mist remembering how to forget.
Eren walked behind her, limping but silent. The last of his kinetic power was buried under confusion and fatigue. His thoughts looped on the same memory: Naomi reaching for something beyond her grasp—and then disappearing. Not dying. Not falling.
Erased.
Lucia paused at a plateau split by a hanging shard of obsidian. On the far side, thin trails of code-light flickered through the air—signs of the deeper subsystems, the ones locked even from gods.
Eren stopped beside her. "Are you sure this is the way?"
"No," Lucia answered honestly. "But it's where she would've gone."
They crossed.
On the other side, the Field changed. The colors grew deeper. Sounds grew thinner. The very air changed texture, like wading through threadbare cloth soaked in static.
Lucia raised her hand.
A glyph blinked into being—an ancient one, etched not by the system but by intent.
Saylor's mark.
The seal shimmered. Waiting.
Lucia breathed in. "This is it."
Eren exhaled slowly. "And if he's waiting?"
Lucia clenched her fist. "Then we speak like we remember."
She pressed her hand to the glyph.
And the Field opened.
---
They emerged into the Core Chamber—a circular space of obsidian and smoke, surrounded by mirror-shards suspended midair. Each shard played a different version of the Field. Some still showed Naomi. Others showed worlds that never existed. In one, Saylor was chained. In another, he was absent.
And in the center stood the Proxy Altar—a spire of bone and data wrapped in glowing scripture.
Saylor sat beside it.
Not in a throne.
On the floor.
Lucia froze.
He looked at her like she was already bleeding.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
"I never should've left."
Eren stepped beside her.
Saylor's eyes flicked to him. "You have no part in this."
"I did," Eren muttered. "Before you burned it."
Lucia walked forward. Each step was a betrayal of every fear she still carried.
Saylor didn't rise.
"Why?" she asked.
Saylor blinked. "You were the last clean thread."
"You mean obedient."
He nodded. "Same thing."
Lucia's voice dropped. "You erased her."
"I removed an error."
Eren took a step forward. "She was human."
Saylor turned to the Proxy Altar.
"She was unstable. And she would've burned the whole Field to reclaim a memory that didn't belong to her."
"She belonged here more than you," Lucia whispered.
Silence.
Saylor finally stood.
"I built this world," he said. "Not for worship. Not for power. But to outlast the ones who failed before."
Lucia shook her head. "You built a graveyard and called it a game."
He took a step toward her.
"I built a system to survive."
"And all it does is kill the ones who remember."
They stood inches apart.
Saylor's breath hitched.
"I brought you back because you were the only one who understood."
"I did," she said. "But you made sure I couldn't anymore."
Saylor's face broke for a moment—just a flicker of something real. Not command. Not design.
Regret.
But it passed.
Lucia turned to Eren.
"I want you to see what's behind the altar."
Eren hesitated.
"Why?"
"Because whatever's left of her... might still be in the mirrors."
Eren stepped cautiously behind the Proxy Altar.
Lucia followed, her pulse thudding like static against her ribs. The core chamber was built to reflect—not light, but possibility. The mirrors floating above the black floor weren't glass—they were temporal fragments, holding false futures, ruined paths, erased players, and echoes too stubborn to die.
Behind the altar, seven of them formed a jagged semicircle. Each mirror shimmered with an internal rhythm, like a heartbeat buried beneath water.
Eren paused in front of the first.
It showed a version of Naomi standing atop the Wheel, her arms outstretched, wrapped in chains of golden light. She was speaking, but the mirror made no sound. Her mouth moved as if she was naming each of the players who had fallen before her.
Lucia pressed her palm to the mirror's edge. "This isn't playback," she said. "It's retention. The Field remembers her—but only in displaced threads."
Eren's voice cracked. "So she's still here?"
"Pieces."
He moved to the second mirror.
This one showed Saylor—on his knees, hands soaked in blood not his own. Naomi stood behind him, faceless, her form flickering like she was being decided.
Lucia frowned. "It's showing divergents. What could have happened."
The third mirror showed something different.
Not Naomi.
Not Saylor.
Lucia.
But it wasn't her.
It was the version of herself that never broke away. She stood beside Saylor, wearing a crown of wires, issuing commands like a machine.
Lucia recoiled. "No..."
Eren looked at her. "It's what he wanted, isn't it?"
She didn't answer.
The fourth mirror cracked without warning.
A long, jagged line ran through it, splitting the scene of Naomi as a child, running toward a home that never existed. The reflection bled gold and purple before fading into dust.
Lucia felt it. Like a memory she didn't have.
"She's trying to come through," she said. "But the mirrors weren't built to let her."
Saylor's voice echoed across the chamber. "Because she wasn't meant to survive this system."
Lucia turned.
He hadn't moved, but his presence filled the air.
"You're watching," she said.
"I'm always watching."
Lucia faced the final mirror.
The glass shimmered. This one was different.
There was no scene. No player. Just a thread—thin and golden, running horizontally across the surface, vibrating with gentle light.
Lucia narrowed her eyes.
"She left something behind."
Eren stepped forward. "What is it?"
Lucia didn't answer.
She reached toward it.
Saylor's voice sharpened. "Don't touch it."
Lucia's hand stopped inches from the surface.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because it's not part of the design."
Lucia looked back. "Neither are we."
Her fingers touched the thread.
The mirror exploded.
But there was no shrapnel.
Just light.
Naomi's voice echoed—quiet, fragile, like a song left unsung.
> "You can erase me. But I wasn't just memory."
> "I was choice."
Lucia stood frozen, the light wrapping around her hands.
Eren turned to Saylor. "What now?"
Saylor didn't reply.
For once, the god had no command.