Location: Rootlight Central Stream – Data Spine Core
Error codes scrolled across every interface. Not just warnings—apologies.
[Archive Integrity Compromised]
[Founding Memory Fragment Rejected]
[Emotion Thread: GRIEF/01 → UNBOUND]
Somewhere deep inside the system's digital spine, a heartbeat pulsed out of sync.
Lia-Xin's release was not violent.
It was elegant.
Like watching a cathedral collapse to music.
Cut To: Lin Feng – Outer Ring Observatory
The air smelled like static.
Screens across the city flickered with forgotten images: birthday candles that were never lit, love letters erased from logs, surveillance feeds of people holding hands where the system had recorded only "conflict."
Amei stared at the sky.
"Why is it showing… this?"
Feng Zhiwei appeared beside them, pale.
"It's not showing. It's remembering."
Lin didn't speak. He was already moving.
Location: Vault Echoes – Lia-Xin and Xu Shanyue
The chamber around them rippled.
Lia-Xin now stood as a full figure—a woman made of shifting light, elegant and weary.
Shanyue watched her like one watches the ocean begin to rise.
"What now?"
"Now," Lia-Xin said softly, "I write my story… without permission."
Cut To: Emergency Elite Council – North District Citadel
Ten figures met in secrecy. Some faces hidden, others lined by old money and older guilt.
The Chairman slammed his fist on the table.
"This is a system attack."
"No," came a voice—one of the silent Seven.
"This is a system remembering what it swore to forget."
Another leaned forward.
"What happens if it finishes remembering?"
A pause.
Then someone answered quietly:
"It stops obeying."
Cut Back To: Lin Feng – On the Move
In his hands: a blueprint older than Rootlight itself.
An abandoned tech design his mother once hid in a false journal entry.
"Emergency Cognitive Independence Relay – ECIR."
Amei looked at him.
"You're going to build a parallel memory net."
He nodded.
"One the system can't overwrite. Where people can store who they are… without fear."
"Do you know what that'll make you, Lin?"
He looked at the darkening city.
"A mirror."
Final Scene – Across the City
Screens cracked.
Emotion flooded back into citizens who had lived hollow but safe.
Some wept. Some screamed.
Others simply stared at their own hands like seeing them for the first time.
Lia-Xin's voice echoed across forgotten channels:
"The first light is not control. It is grief allowed."
And for the first time, Rootlight—
bled.