It began with names.
Slipping. Changing. Vanishing.
First from the records.
Then from the conversations.
Then from the eyes of the people who were supposed to remember.
Velora stood alone in the north wing of the Council Hall, surrounded by faces painted in oil and shadow.
None bore plaques. None carried names.
The portraits were rumored to represent the original founders of the Rebirth Accord but no one could verify that anymore.
They weren't history.
They were decoration.
One portrait, however, always drew her eye.
A woman in white. One braid falling over her left shoulder, gold in her eyes, and the faintest touch of grief in the corners of her mouth.
It wasn't her.
But it could've been.
There was a scratch across the glass. Not accidental. Not obvious.
Just enough to distort the face if you looked long enough.
Velora didn't blink.
Footsteps echoed behind her quick, clipped, nervous.
Two junior archivists rounded the corner, their voices a whisper at first.
"District Six is collapsing faster than projections."
"No surprise. They've had three memory layers in two months."
"Half the citizens can't tell if their parents were real."
The taller one Talen or Talden carried a stack of Rewrite logs.
The smaller one Mira, or Nira fumbled with a datapad that stuttered every time she tried to input a name.
"What do we do when they start forgetting themselves while they're still awake?"
Velora spoke before they noticed her.
"You record it," she said, voice soft but blade-sharp.
They froze.
Talen stiffened and bowed. Mira/Nira nearly dropped her tablet.
"Councilor Velora," she stammered. "We—we didn't see you there."
"No," Velora said. "You didn't."
She stepped toward them slowly, white coat whispering along the polished floor.
"Who oversaw District Six before the current Rewrite sequence?"
They exchanged glances.
"I… I believe it was Councilor Renn?" Mira offered cautiously.
Velora tilted her head. "Renn?"
"Yes," Talen said, forcing a nod. "He approved the tier-four reprogramming and
"There is no Councilor Renn," Velora interrupted.
Silence.
"There never was."
Their confusion was genuine.
"Someone else held that seat. Someone who voted against the first Rewrite wave. Someone who remembered too much."
A flicker of realization crossed Mira's face.
"Tessa," she whispered.
Velora's gaze sharpened.
"You remember her?"
"I saw her name once in a flagged log. I thought it was a corrupted record."
Velora took a step closer.
"It wasn't."
She left them shaken and walked the Archive that night.
The Archive didn't sleep. Neither did she.
There were levels beneath the main chambers where the air hung heavier. Where even the candles flickered differently like they knew too much.
She turned a corridor that hadn't existed on most maps in decades.
The walls there were raw. No sigils. No surveillance nodes.
Just stone and memory, if you could still hear it.
She stopped before a wall she'd once carved into herself.
Not her name. Not her truth.
Just a reminder:
"Truth bleeds slower when no one speaks it."
She pressed her palm to the wall and waited.
No mechanism clicked.
No magic activated.
But the wall listened.
Alastor's voice didn't startle her.
Nothing he said ever did.
"You're still walking the dark corners," he said.
Velora didn't turn. "Someone has to."
"There are no answers down here."
"No," she said. "Only the parts they erased. The mistakes they thought we wouldn't come back for."
He stepped beside her.
They stood in silence for a long moment, listening to the air whisper like an old wound.
"You think this is all unraveling," he said.
"I think it already has," Velora replied.
She turned to him now, and in her eyes was the kind of fatigue that couldn't be measured in hours.
"I spoke with two junior archivists today. They thought a Councilor existed who never did. They misremembered a vote that was never cast. Their records contradicted their minds and neither noticed."
"They've undergone three layerings in sixty days," Alastor said. "It's expected."
"Expected?" she snapped. "You expect people to forget the shape of their own shadows?"
He didn't answer.
She softened not in tone, but in posture.
Like a blade sheathed only halfway.
"I checked the old vault," she said.
Alastor stiffened.
"It opened for me," she added. "With the coin."
"What did you find?"
She reached into her coat and handed him a thin folder.
He opened it and stared at the top line:
Subject: Calen Vex
His jaw clenched.
Velora watched him closely.
"There's no body," she said. "No cause of death. No disappearance report. Just a single authorization."
He didn't respond.
She stepped closer.
"You knew him."
It wasn't a question.
Alastor closed the file slowly.
"I knew of him," he said.
Velora said nothing.
They both understood the lie.
When she returned to her chamber, the coin was waiting on the table.
She hadn't brought it. She never did.
It was there every time she remembered enough to come back.
She sat, not to rest, but to center.
The coin didn't move.
Didn't glint.
Didn't beckon.
But it existed.
That was enough.
She reached out and held it in her palm.
One side was blank.
The other bore the Hollow Star eight points. Uneven. Unkind.
She didn't flip it.
She didn't need to.
Because the coin had already chosen.
And the Rewrite had already begun again.