Ayane dreamt of fire.

Not the violent kind. Not the kind that destroyed. It was quiet fire. Soft. Alive. Dancing through a field of violet light where no city had ever been. She stood barefoot, hands outstretched, the flame curling around her fingers like it knew her.

A voice whispered: Do you remember this?

Then everything shattered.

She awoke gasping in the Orphan Dome infirmary.

White light. Beeping monitors. Sterile silence.

Her body ached. Her mind—it wasn’t quiet. Fragments of places she’d never been clawed at her skull: a collapsing train, a girl screaming from behind glass, Ren bleeding in her arms beneath a broken sky.

But none of it had happened.

Not here.

Not yet.

[SYSTEM NOTICE – THREAD NODE RECOVERY INCOMPLETE]
[ECHO FIELD: UNSTABLE]
[EMOTIONAL PROJECTION ACTIVE – CONTAINMENT MODE: FAILING]

Ayane blinked. The room... shifted. Walls curled inward, then snapped back. For a moment, she saw cracks—not in the plaster, but in the code behind it. As if reality was trying to mask something it couldn’t hold together anymore.

She sat up slowly.

Her reflection stared back from the monitor’s dark glass. Her eyes—still silver—but now flecked with something darker. Almost like smoke had taken root inside them.

“Ren,” she whispered.

The name came with a pressure in her chest, a pull she couldn’t explain.

She stood on shaky legs. No alarms. No nurses. The ward was empty.

Too empty.

As she moved through the corridors, the lights flickered. Echoes whispered along the tile—footsteps that weren’t hers. Snatches of conversation. Laughter. Screams.

[MEMORY BLEED: ACTIVE // RANGE: LOCALIZED]
[CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL OVERRIDDEN BY SUBJECT NODE]

She reached the exit. The door opened without resistance.

Outside, the Dome was... wrong.

Not destroyed. Not broken. Just fractured. The skyline repeated itself in patches—dormitories mirrored like a glitching photograph. The sound of water dripping echoed over and over again, like someone replayed the same drop from different angles.

And above it all: the faint, barely-there sound of a signal. A pulse. Calling.

She knew where it led.

The Static Crown.

[ECHO PATH DETECTED – SUBJECT NODE: A. YUURA]
[STATUS: UNCLAIMED DIVERGENCE – PROBABILITY: ESCALATING]

A small voice broke the stillness behind her.

“You’re not supposed to be awake.”

She turned.

A child stood at the edge of the dome’s path—a younger version of herself. Eight, maybe. Hair short, eyes wide.

“You’re dreaming again,” the child said.

Ayane took a step back. “No... I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You always wake up when he dies.”

Ayane’s breath caught. “Who?”

The child just smiled.

Then the world twisted.

Light stretched. Sound slowed. The sky tore open just long enough for Ayane to see something looking back—not a person. Not a machine. Just an eye.

[OBSERVER PRESENCE: PROXIMITY 0.003 KM]
[STATUS: QUIET MODE DISENGAGED]

Ayane fell to her knees, clutching her head as whispers tore through her skull.

Echo detected. Echo failed. Echo failed. Echo failed.

She screamed—and everything snapped.

A shockwave pulsed from her body.

Windows shattered. The ground cracked. The air shimmered like glass about to break.

And then she was gone.

The Dome lay silent.

In her place: a smoldering mark. A pulse still echoing.

Calling.

Not for help.

For war.