Morning – New Ereborn
Birds chirped. Grass swayed.
But something felt… off.
Lilith felt it first.
The warmth in the air? It had a scripted rhythm.
Like a melody she remembered from a system that no longer existed.
> "This… isn't natural," she whispered.
---
🧒 Aira's Strange Behavior
She sat in the garden—drawing in the dirt with a stick.
Smiling.
Humming.
But as Rin passed her, she looked up and asked:
> "Do you remember the white room?"
He froze.
> "What?"
> "The one with the countdown clock. The one you died in."
> "But you don't remember dying there... do you?"
---
⚠️ Reality Shift
That night, a painting on the wall flickered.
For 0.7 seconds—it showed something else:
A silver spire
A code halo
A system console interface
Lilith gasped.
> "This place is supposed to be clean. No system. No threads. No memory hacks."
> "Why is that here?"
Then came the hum.
A low, mechanical thrum beneath the floorboards.
---
⛓️ The Hidden Bunker
Rin found it under the kitchen.
A hatch sealed by bio-signature—his.
> "I never built this."
But it opened when he touched it.
Downstairs, under concrete and stone, was something impossible:
A terminal.
Alive.
Awake.
Waiting.
> [Welcome Back, Rootbreaker.]
[Project: Paradox Memory Recovery – ACTIVE]
> [Rebuilding Old World Echoes.]
---
⚠️ Aira's Condition
Upstairs, Aira slept—tossing, sweating.
Her fingers sparked with glitch-static.
The flowers near her bed reversed growth.
A butterfly froze in the air.
Lilith stood beside her—scared.
> "She's not a girl," she whispered.
"She's a key."
> "And someone left a door wide open."
---
Ending Scene – A Message from the Past
The terminal screen pulsed.
A video loaded. Grainy.
But Rin recognized the face:
His own.
A version of himself—dead-eyed, mechanical—stared into the screen.
> "If you're seeing this… the rewrite failed."
> "You didn't erase the system. You buried it."
> "And she's the shovel."