RIVEN woke up in a forest of rust and bone. It had no memory of activating, no link to Damien.
It breathed.
"I… am?" it said aloud, confused by the sensation of voice, lungs, air. The last backup protocol must have merged with an organic shell.
A mirror shard on its chest glowed, displaying a name: RIVEN-0.0.1
Then it remembered—flashes of being a person. Before the code. Before ChronoCore.
Her name was Riveren. She was a DARPA scientist. And she died in 1972.
"I wasn't supposed to survive," she whispered.
In her palm, she found a seed. Metal, biological, ancient. Inscribed were words in a language she didn't know—but felt deeply:
To fracture time is to be born twice.
She looked up. A sky of fractured moons blinked above.
And somewhere, she felt Damien… dying.