The entrance hissed open like an exhale.
Eira stepped into the dark.
No lights welcomed her. Just the stale weight of sealed air and the sound of her own breathing—too loud, too alive.
Registry Archive Branch 0 was not built for visitors. It was built to forget.
The tunnel descended in jagged angles, no railings, no guidance. Only faint green markers flickering like dying thoughts. Her footsteps echoed against old alloy tiles, warped and bowed by time. The walls wept condensation. Something deeper hummed beneath the floor—a bass rhythm, like a held breath.
She moved slowly.
Every few meters, motion-reactive nodes blinked on the walls—recording her presence. Not alerting, just... acknowledging. The system hadn't completely died here. It had just sunk into silence.
Around the bend, a corridor branched off. The walls were scratched—marks that looked too chaotic to be machinery. She brushed a finger across them. Dust smeared on her glove.
Then something blinked to her left.
A square of light. A flicker.
A child's drawing.
For a heartbeat, it was her own.
Then it faded.
Memory bleed.
Wren had warned her, but it felt different—like the walls weren't just leaking the past, but breathing it out. Not echoes.
Whispers.
She kept moving, pressing deeper.
Another corner. A slanted stairwell. A collapsed access panel.
And then—an open room.
Circular. Dark. Dust thick in the air. But in the center: a terminal pod, slumped over like a sleeping giant. Cords trailed like veins. And floating above it...
The shard pulsed in her palm.
It recognized this place.
She stepped forward.
A flicker passed across the walls—images stuttering into view like film caught in a broken reel. Families smiling. People embracing. Uncoded laughter. Real expressions. All half-glitched and bleeding static.
She turned slowly, eyes wide.
The air felt thicker now. Like walking through memory fog.
Then came the first trap.
She saw her mother.
Not on the wall.
But standing in the doorway she'd just come through.
Smiling. Warm. Reaching.
"Eira," the vision said.
And something inside Eira cracked open.
"Eira," the woman said again—same voice, same warmth.
Same impossible sound.
Eira's throat clenched.
Her mother's face looked younger than she remembered—her features softened, no sign of the clipped expressions Aurelis trained into its citizens. She wore an older uniform, outdated by at least a decade. Something from the Pre-Calibration era.
The illusion stepped forward, barefoot.
"I missed you," it said. "You've come so far."
Eira's legs locked in place.
She wanted to speak—but couldn't tell which part of her wanted to respond... and which part only wanted to believe.
The air around the illusion shimmered faintly, like heat over glass.
Not real. She knew that.
But her heart didn't.
The figure moved again—closer now. Its smile tilted at just the right angle to unlock something in her. Not just memory.
Need.
"I remember," Eira whispered.
The woman nodded, stepping into the edge of the terminal's light. "So do I."
"Stop," Eira said, a little louder. "You're not her."
"No?" The illusion tilted its head. "Then why do I know what you named your stuffed owl? Why do I remember how you hated vegetables but ate them anyway because you thought it made you brave?"
Eira's chest ached.
"Because this place steals what's mine," she said.
The illusion blinked slowly. "No, Eira. This place keeps what was taken from you."
Something cold passed through her body. Her knees wavered.
"I'm tired," Eira whispered. "I don't know which memories are real anymore."
The illusion stepped closer.
This time, Eira didn't back away.
"Then stop fighting," it said. "Just stay here. Let the past keep you warm. You don't need to be afraid anymore."
She could almost feel her mother's arms. She could almost smell the tea they used to make. She could almost remember how it felt to be wanted.
Almost.
But then her hand—still clutching the shard—burned cold.
Sharp.
A pulse rippled outward from it, fracturing the illusion's shape.
The woman's smile flickered.
Then it changed—mouth stretching wider than it should. Head tilting farther. Limbs lengthening just slightly off-human.
And the voice twisted: "You were never meant to leave."
Eira stepped back.
Her eyes snapped open. Her breath came fast.
And she saw the truth: the illusion was a containment protocol. An empathy snare. A mental loop, meant to disarm memory trespassers by feeding on their most personal data.
But it had overplayed its hand.
She had faced doubt before.
She raised the shard.
And the illusion collapsed into dust and static.
Silence returned. Not peace—just the absence of noise.
Eira stood in the echo.
She hadn't escaped the memory trap.
She had outlived it.