Location: Foxlight Ridge – Sublevel Access, 6:14 a.m.
The floorboards creaked differently.
Lin paused.
"That sound," he murmured, tapping a heel again.
Amei, seated beside the fire, frowned.
"Cavity?"
He nodded. Brushed aside the rug and pried up the boards. Beneath the old pine slats was a seam—metal, not wood. A lock blinking faint green.
Amei leaned in.
"That's not Crimson tech. It's older."
"It's my mother's," Lin whispered.
Flashback Fragment – Lin's Age 9
Snow fell thick that day too.
His mother, wrapped in a red scarf, held his hand as they climbed this mountain. Her voice was gentle but firm.
"One day, you'll forget me."
"No," child Lin insisted.
She knelt.
"Then bury something here. Somewhere your heart will remember, even if your mind doesn't."
Back to Present
Lin placed his palm on the vault.
A faint scan. Then a click.
The hatch hissed open, exhaling dust and silence. Stairs led down into cold blackness.
Subterranean Chamber – Memory Stabilization Vault
The chamber was dimly lit, hexagonal, walls lined with mnemonic crystal. In the center floated a sealed orb of living data—amber-like, pulsing gently.
Amei touched the edge of the orb's containment field.
"A maternal anchor sphere…"
She turned to him slowly.
"Lin. This wasn't built for you. This was built by you."
He blinked.
"What?"
She pointed to the inner layer—engraved faintly with a looping inscription.
"For the child I will never know again. But who must survive anyway."
And beneath it, a symbol:
LF-0.
"Zero?" Amei whispered.
"You were the first? The original Lin?"
He staggered back.
His memories—fractured and distant—shuddered like glass.
Cut To: Crimson Circle Deep Containment, Sichuan Sector
Xu Shanyue descended into the oubliette beneath the rail archives. Yan waited outside, arms crossed.
Inside: a man, pale and blindfolded, bound with zero-point chains.
A founder of Rootlight.
Xu stood before him.
"You created the Rootlight collapse protocol. We stopped your hunter. But not your rot."
The man smiled faintly.
"And yet… the key still eludes you."
Xu leaned in.
"Tell me. What was Lin Feng's mother hiding?"
The man's smile vanished.
"The seed."
"Of what?"
"Of rebellion."
Back in the Vault
Lin touched the sphere.
Warmth flooded his spine.
Images filled the room—memories locked outside the known timeline:
His mother running diagnostics on his infant neural pattern.
Rootlight engineers debating ethics.
Amei's name listed on a 'compatibility' trial roster years before they'd met.
He reeled.
"They built us… to need each other."
Amei said nothing.
Just reached out.
Their hands touched the orb, together.
And the system responded.
[Maternal Anchor Repaired – Sync Level: 71%]
[Warning: Rootlight Seeker-Class Entity En Route]
Final Scene – The Ridge Outside
The mountain wind howled.
And on the horizon—black specks approached, gliding.
Dozens.
No longer hunting a fugitive.
But a founder's son.