Saylor watched from the edge of the core chamber, not as a god nor as a tyrant, but as a curator of a familiar performance.
Lucia stood illuminated by the mirrorlight, golden threads dancing around her fingers like strands of Naomi's ghost. Eren braced beside her, eyes wary but alert, the tension in his body suggesting motion even as he remained still.
They thought they were close to something.
Saylor let them think so.
He could end this.
A single override. A flicker of true code. A gesture, even. The Field still recognized his primacy. The altar still bent toward him like a spine remembering the whip. The very air inside the core knew who its architect was.
But he did nothing.
Not yet.
Because sometimes power wasn't in exertion.
It was in restraint.
Lucia lowered her hands. The golden thread remained, now anchored midair—suspended by nothing, humming softly.
Eren whispered, "What is it doing?"
Lucia stepped back. "Listening."
Saylor tilted his head, curious despite himself.
"Naomi's thread isn't code," Lucia said, eyes narrowing. "It's reactive memory. It only responds to truth."
Eren frowned. "What truth?"
The thread pulsed.
Saylor said nothing.
Lucia turned to the Proxy Altar. "Say it."
Saylor raised a brow. "Say what?"
"The truth you buried."
He chuckled. "Which one?"
Lucia stepped forward. "The one where you weren't always in control."
For a fraction of a second, Saylor's mask cracked.
Just enough for the thread to vibrate violently.
And the Field around them shifted.
Not collapsing.
Revealing.
The chamber's silence fractured as the golden thread quivered in the air—tuned not to commands or systems, but to truth.
Saylor remained still, arms folded behind his back, his posture unreadable. But his eyes, dark and fathomless, watched every shift of light like a predator studying prey too feeble to pose a threat.
Lucia stepped closer to the thread. It pulsed in her direction, humming softly, responding not to her power but to her intention.
"This isn't just memory," she said. "It's a test. A witness."
Eren hovered behind her, uncertain. "What is it waiting for?"
Lucia didn't answer.
The thread brightened—warm, steady.
And then it unraveled.
It didn't snap. It spooled—a spiral of light unfurling like silk, tracing a path from the mirror's remnants across the altar and toward the platform where Saylor stood. As it reached him, the light dimmed, folding inward.
A second later, the chamber responded.
One of the floating mirrors shattered—not violently, but as though accepting its obsolescence. Behind it, a hole yawned open in the chamber's logic. Not a portal. Not a rift.
A memory.
Lucia stepped forward involuntarily.
The air smelled of fire.
The Trial of First Judgment.
A moment from long ago, buried beneath a hundred overwritten systems. But the thread had found it, and now it played like a stage drama unfolding in real time.
Saylor stood center stage, years younger, his eyes alive with conviction. He was speaking before a crowd of architects—those who would become the Field's first creators.
Lucia gasped. "He wasn't alone."
Dozens of them stood around him. Familiar faces distorted by time. Naomi's. Hers. Others—vanished now. Trial designers. God-crafters. People who had believed in something.
And Saylor...
Was pleading.
> "If we let the system evolve unchecked, it will collapse under chaos."
> "We need structure. We need consequences. The gods are not enough—we must bind the Field to order."
Someone in the audience challenged him. A younger Lucia.
> "You're afraid of what we made. But isn't that the point? It's supposed to challenge us."
> "The Field is a crucible—not a cage."
Saylor's past self turned to her, gaze fierce.
> "If we don't anchor it now, it'll unravel."
> "And we'll all become part of its game."
The scene flickered, faded.
Lucia staggered back.
Eren's voice broke the stillness. "He didn't build the Field to control players."
Lucia finished for him. "He built it because he was terrified of becoming one."
Saylor didn't move. "Truth," he said, his voice calm. "Is a weapon. Like anything else."
The golden thread curled toward him now, wrapping gently around his wrist.
It didn't burn.
It bound.
Saylor's fingers twitched.
Lucia narrowed her eyes. "Even now, you're still pretending to be above it."
Saylor said nothing.
But the golden thread was not done.
It pulsed again.
The chamber shifted.
Second memory:
Lucia—lying in the aftermath of Trial 4, her body torn, her chain shattered. Naomi beside her, cradling her head, whispering something.
> "You don't have to be a weapon."
Lucia's breath caught.
That memory wasn't recorded. It wasn't stored. It wasn't part of any Trial's archive.
"Where is it pulling from?" she whispered.
Eren looked to Saylor. "Did you save it?"
Saylor closed his eyes. "No."
Then how—
The thread brightened again.
Third memory:
Naomi, standing before a mirror—her mirror. Reaching toward it, whispering:
> "Even if he erases me, I left pieces behind."
> "Not in the system. In them."
The light surged.
The memory collapsed.
And Lucia felt it all at once:
Naomi hadn't fought to destroy the Field.
She had fought to make it remember.
Not in code. Not in archives.
In people.
In witnesses.
Lucia stepped toward Saylor, her voice quiet now.
"You didn't just fail to stop her."
"You preserved her. In us."
Saylor exhaled slowly.
His hand lifted.
The Field stilled.
The golden thread dimmed.
For a moment, Eren braced—certain it was the end.
But Saylor only said:
"Then show me."
Lucia frowned. "What?"
"You think there's more than control," Saylor said. "Prove it."
He stepped aside.
"Take the altar."
Eren stared at him. "Why are you letting this happen?"
Saylor's voice dropped.
"Because I want to see if anything you remember is stronger than what I built."
The golden thread snapped backward—now pointing toward the Proxy Altar.
Lucia turned to Eren.
Together, they stepped forward.
Lucia stepped first.
Her boots made no sound on the obsidian floor as she approached the Proxy Altar, the golden thread trailing in her wake like a line drawn between possibility and ruin. Eren followed, each step more certain than the last, though his face still bore the echo of Naomi's loss.
Saylor remained still, arms folded, his silhouette perfectly aligned with the lightless spire at the edge of the chamber. The Wheel above turned slower than ever—as if watching.
The Proxy Altar pulsed as they neared. It wasn't a machine. Not entirely. It was an amalgam: bone, memory, scripture, and sacrifice. The place where commands became laws. Where choices were rewritten into algorithms.
And now, Lucia stood before it.
The thread uncoiled.
Not into her hand, but into the space between them.
> FIELD NOTICE: INPUT RECOGNIZED PROXY CLAIM PENDING ENTER MEMORY OVERRIDE CODE
Lucia shook her head. "No code," she whispered. "Only truth."
The Field hesitated.
Then the altar responded—not with an error, but with silence.
She closed her eyes.
"I remember Naomi," she said. "But not because she saved me. Because she saw me. Because she gave me a name when this place only gave me roles."
Eren stepped forward. "I remember her blood on my hands. Not because she died—but because she stood up when the rest of us knelt."
Lucia opened her eyes.
"I remember that I wasn't brave. Not then. But I am now."
> MEMORY CODE ACCEPTED
The altar cracked.
Golden light surged outward, not destructive, but clarifying—erasing the control chains woven into its foundation.
Saylor stepped back a single pace.
He didn't stop them.
Because for the first time in a long time, he wasn't sure what would happen.
Lucia reached for the altar.
And touched it.
The world inverted.
A surge of heat passed through her body—not pain, not power, but recognition.
> PROXY STATUS UPDATED: THREAD VALIDATED PROXY TYPE: HUMAN MEMORY / TRUTHBORNE
The chamber shook.
But not from collapse.
From realignment.
The mirrors above snapped back into place—no longer flickering between divergent timelines. They showed only one now:
This one.
The one where Lucia stood tall. Where Naomi's thread burned golden in the code. Where Eren—fractured and uncertain—stood not as a soldier, but as a witness.
The altar faded.
The golden thread dissolved.
And a new one appeared—thicker, more vivid, coiled around Lucia's chest like a second heartbeat.
> THREAD GRANTED: PROXY DESIGNATE — ECHO WEAVER
Saylor's voice finally broke the stillness.
"Now we'll see if remembering is enough."
Lucia turned to him.
"It has to be."
The chamber dimmed.
And above, the Wheel stopped.
For the first time in its long, haunted life...
It waited.