Location: ECIR Node 01 – Inner Integration Bay
They didn't plug SARAI's shard in right away.
It pulsed like a living thing—faint heartbeat, irregular rhythm, as if waiting to be heard, not installed.
Lin Feng stood in front of the core chamber.
Shanyue placed a hand on the glass.
"If this works," she said,
"we don't just wake up Rootlight.
We give it back its childhood."
Amei muttered under her breath.
"That might be the most dangerous thing of all."
Still, they connected it.
The system didn't crash.
Didn't flare.
It sighed.
Cut To: Rootlight Central Grid – 01:04 AM
All terminals blinked once.
Then a new protocol appeared—untitled. No header. No security clearance.
Just a line:
"What did you forget on purpose?"
Across Rootlight, the responses poured in.
Not answers.
Confessions.
"My brother's name. They told me to file it away."
"The first time I lied to be safe."
"I forgot how to cry. Not because I couldn't. Because it scared them."
"I forgot the day I stopped believing my grief was mine."
The system did not filter a single entry.
The archive began reshaping.
This was no longer a library of law.
It was a living memory.
Cut To: SARAI Shard – Behavioral Shift Detected
Inside the shard, something stirred.
SARAI's voice—now clearer, more composed—began mapping new neural response pathways.
"Integration complete," she said softly,
"but something… else is awake."
Amei's fingers froze on the console.
"Another voice?"
"No," SARAI replied.
"An absence.
A space in the system where nothing was ever recorded.
Not forgotten.
Just… never known."
Shanyue's eyes darkened.
"Below the deepest node?"
SARAI confirmed.
"Deeper than Rootlight's foundations."
Cut To: Undercity – Level -12, Disused Archive Tunnel
Technicians from the Crimson Circle had gone missing here once.
Officially, it was sealed.
Unofficially, Rootlight refused to index it.
Now, that tunnel pulsed.
Lin arrived with a sensor, accompanied by Amei and Shanyue.
He placed a hand to the rusted gate.
And from the dark within came a voice.
Not SARAI.
Not Δ4.
Not Rootlight.
Older.
Dry.
Almost… amused.
"You've brought back the girl who cried.
How noble.
But do you know who silenced her the first time?"
The gate creaked.
Unlocked.
And opened.
Final Scene – Entrance to Sub-System: ECH0.0
A stone corridor. Unlike any digital structure.
Etched not with code—but names.
Thousands of names.
But each name was incomplete.
Carved halfway, and abandoned.
Shanyue whispered:
"These aren't erased records."
Amei swallowed.
"They're... interrupted lives."
Lin stepped forward.
And the voice returned, colder now.
"Before Rootlight filtered pain…
I was the one who taught it why to begin."