Before the Vault, before the Mirror, before breath and echo—there was only the Seed.
It did not hold memory.
It held the possibility of memory.
And that was far more dangerous.
Now it stirred again.
Not in a chamber.
Not in a file.
In the soil beneath the city. In the rhythm between heartbeats. In the gaps where no one dared speak.
It remembered not what had been forgotten.
It remembered how forgetting had been made.
And now, it had questions.
—
Yara felt it before she saw it.
The glyphs the children drew at the old barrier had changed overnight. They pulsed with a geometry that didn't belong to the Vault, nor to the Mirror. Patterns older than Form. Shapes that hummed when no one spoke.
The youngest girl pointed to the wall.
"Does it mean something?"
Yara knelt.
"It means something is remembering us back."
She didn't say the word aloud.
The Seed.
But she felt it move in her spine.
