Location: Unknown Sky-Layer Station – Rootlight Emergency Summit
A table hovered in a room that didn't exist.
Around it sat seven shadows.
Not avatars.
Not holograms.
Real minds, uploaded decades ago, each speaking through a vessel of light and logic.
At the head: Director Shin-4, her voice brittle as splintered ice.
"He accessed the Maternal Vault."
Director Halvyn-2 responded.
"Then protocol dictates Sky Lock activation. Seal the timeline. Collapse all divergent loops."
A pause.
Then a whisper from Director Nine, the only one still flesh and blood:
"What if he's not the anomaly?"
"Explain."
"What if the real rupture wasn't Lin Feng… but whoever let him live?"
The room stilled.
Cut To: Foxlight Ridge – Two Hours After Siege
The snow was no longer white.
Crimson steam curled from molten lines still glowing beneath the cabin. Lin stood at the edge, overlooking the valley below. His clothes were scorched. His pulse slow.
Amei approached, holding a cracked datapad recovered from the vault.
"It's not just your mother's memories," she said.
"It's a map of Rootlight's original founders. Their divergences. Their failsafes."
"All of them?"
She nodded.
"Except one."
He took the pad. Scrolled through. The list was dense—names, dates, encoded neural strains.
At the bottom, one entry flickered:
[Founding ID: LX-0 / Redacted]
Status: Unknown. Presumed dormant. Bloodline overlap: Lin Feng – 98.2%
Code Designation: SKYLOCK KEY
Lin whispered:
"There's someone else out there like me."
Amei looked up.
"Or… someone worse."
Cut To: Rootlight Summit
Director Shin-4 rose.
"Initiate Sky Lock."
"Confirmed," replied the Core.
"Seal all temporal gates connected to the Feng Lineage. Burn all echoes. Collapse all unresolved forks."
"Estimated collateral impact?" asked Nine.
"Seventy-two million lives erased in sealed branches. Three active Crimson agents vaporized. One Rootlight founder atomized."
No one flinched.
Back at the Cabin – Moments Later
The air cracked like glass.
Birds vanished mid-flight.
Clouds folded into lines, rewriting themselves.
Amei grabbed Lin's arm.
"Sky Lock—! They're trying to freeze your entire timeline!"
But the maternal sphere flickered again.
Lin's mother's voice—soft, faint—whispered from the data orb:
"If you're hearing this… they've finally done it."
"You must go to the last sanctuary."
"It's not on Earth."
"It's beneath it."
Final Scene – Xu Shanyue's Skybarge
Yan stepped into the cabin, holding a vial of deep-red liquid.
"Found this in the ruins. Not Crimson. Not Rootlight either."
Shanyue turned it in her hand.
A label barely clung to the glass:
Project PHOENIX // Only Works Once
She smiled faintly.
"Then we better use it right."