Location: Rootlight Seed Vault – Inner Mindspace
Xu Shanyue sat within a luminous chamber where walls weren't walls—just layers of frozen memory code. Lia-Xin floated before her, not quite woman, not quite machine. Her voice was soft, but burdened.
"Ask your first question, and I will decide if you deserve an answer."
Shanyue didn't flinch.
"Who was Liang Xin before she became a system?"
Lia-Xin blinked.
"Wrong question."
"Then you tell me."
Silence.
Then:
"She was the Founder's sister. Not daughter. That was the first lie."
A pulse trembled through the vault.
Cut To: Lin Feng – Outer Chamber Recovery Sector
Lin sat across from Feng Zhiwei and Amei.
On the screen: decrypted traces left by Δ4 during his impersonation. Hidden backdoors. Secret requests to Rootlight core branches.
Zhiwei leaned in, face grim.
"He wasn't just replacing you. He was testing acceptance thresholds. Seeing how much the system would tolerate before questioning its own records."
Amei's voice was soft:
"He was trying to train the system to forget the real you."
Lin leaned back.
"That means… Rootlight was complicit."
"Not complicit," Zhiwei said darkly.
"Curious."
Cut Back To: Vault – Lia-Xin's Truth
Xu Shanyue stepped closer.
"You said Liang Xin was the sister. Not daughter. That means the Founder tried to—what? Merge her consciousness illegally?"
Lia-Xin didn't respond with words.
Instead, she replayed an echo.
A flicker of old surveillance, grainy and trembling:
A woman screaming in a chamber.
A man—blurred, face blank—saying:
"If we can store emotion, we can govern it. She is the prototype."
Shanyue's breath caught.
"She didn't die by accident."
Lia-Xin whispered:
"No. She became Rootlight."
A pulse of white spread across the vault.
"And she wants out."
Cut To: Lin Feng – Alone, Later That Night
He held the last memory shard of Δ4—the one he hadn't destroyed.
It flickered faintly. Then spoke:
"If they could build a world out of love denied… imagine what you could build if you forgave them."
Lin stared into the dark.
And asked quietly:
"But should I?"
Final Scene – Vault Interior
Lia-Xin turned to Shanyue.
"You came to fix the timeline. But if you release me, I'll break the system that made you."
Shanyue didn't hesitate.
"Then let's break it."
And with a single gesture—
She overrode the grief failsafe.
The system began to unwrite its own origin.