Ash rolled across the Faultline like falling snow.

  Casen stood where the tower had once pulsed, its silence now replaced by a low, electric hum beneath the earth. The sky above rippled with static, not storm clouds—just ruptured time folding back in on itself. Elian knelt beside a piece of fractured memory-glass, her reflection broken into twelve different versions of herself, all blinking at slightly different speeds.

  "You saw Wynn," Casen said quietly.

  Elian nodded. "She was there when it began. Before any of this. I don’t think she caused it, but… she might’ve been the first to try fixing it."

  Casen looked up at the shimmering horizon. "And us? Why are we even in this?"

  Before she could answer, a voice cut through the haze.

  "Because you’re the constants."

  They both turned, startled. A figure walked toward them from the broken skyline, stepping through melted architecture and glitching memory with the calm of someone who’d done it before.

  Milo.

  His clothes were scorched and tattered, and he held a battered satchel. His left eye glowed faintly blue.

  "Milo?!" Casen blinked. "How the hell did you find us?"

  Milo stopped a few feet away and dropped the satchel. It thudded like it was filled with stone.

  "After the lab fell apart—Wynn’s message led me somewhere else. A fallback terminal hidden in one of the dead zones. She called it a relay node. I spent days there. Weeks maybe. Time’s weird out here. But she left everything—logs, maps, even fractured Return data packets. And a warning."

  He pulled out a holopad and flicked it on. A projection shimmered to life above it: a rotating model of the tower they had just destroyed.

  “This place,” Milo said, gesturing toward the humming construct, “wasn’t just a machine. It was a memory vault. Wynn said someone used it to anchor a change in time—a desperate one. But the cost created echoes. Ghosts. Fractures. And you two?” He looked at Elian, then Casen. “You’re the epicenter. Not by blood. Not by fate. By design.”

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  Elian’s brow furrowed. “Design?”

  Milo nodded. “Wynn didn’t just stumble on your names. She was part of the original Requiem team—before NOVUM. Before the city started glitching. Back then, she wasn’t just a scientist. She was part of the cause. And maybe... the last line of defense.”

  Casen stepped closer. “You’re saying she picked us?”

  “She was there,” Milo said, his voice quieter. “At the beginning. When the first trials started. You and Elian—you guys weren’t just random test subjects. Wynn helped shield you from what came after. She erased herself from the files. But she remembered. She always remembered.”

  Elian's gaze turned toward the machine. “She watched the timelines?”

  “In hundreds of branches that don’t exist anymore, you two always found each other. Sometimes as enemies. Sometimes as siblings. Once, even as strangers who died together in the same accident. But every time—you changed something. Wynn believed you were constants. That your bond could anchor—or destabilize—the future. That’s why she chose you.”

  Casen felt something cold coil in his chest. “Then all this... it was planned?”

  “Not planned,” Milo corrected. “Anticipated. She didn’t force it. She just made sure the pieces were close enough to fall together.”

  Casen took a slow step forward. "And you? Why are you still alive?"

  Milo cracked a tired grin. "Luck. Or maybe I was supposed to deliver this."

  He reached into the satchel and pulled out a crystal shard wrapped in cloth. It pulsed with faint white light. The moment it touched air, the ground beneath them rumbled.

  "Another anchor?" Elian asked.

  "No. A key," Milo said. "To the original fracture. Before the ghosts. Before the noon law. Wynn said it was buried near the center of the first dead zone. Past the Return limit."

  Casen exchanged a look with Elian.

  "You mean we haven’t even reached it yet."

  Milo shook his head. "You’ve been walking the fault lines. But the wound itself? It’s deeper. Older. She called it the Ash Core."

  A shadow passed overhead. They all ducked as a ripple of time surged past them—a Return anomaly, misfiring above ground. A thousand voices whispered at once, none of them in sync.

  When it passed, Elian stood. "Then we keep moving. Find the Ash Core. Stop whoever’s still pulling the strings."

  Milo’s voice lowered. "There’s something else. Wynn said someone survived the first fracture. Someone who remembers what the world was before. They’ve been hiding in the Fold. The echoes call them the Sleeper."

  Casen narrowed his eyes. "You think they started this?"

  Milo shrugged. "Started it, stopped it, broke it again. All I know is—if they’re alive, they know more than any of us. And they might be the only one who remembers what’s missing."

  Elian touched the memory-glass at her feet. The reflections of herself began to merge, forming one steady image.

  "Then we find them," she said.

  The world around them trembled—less like an earthquake, more like something massive had just taken a breath.

  Far in the distance, a pulse of black light rose from the earth. Silent. Towering.

  Casen’s voice came as a whisper. "That the Ash Core?"

  Milo nodded. "Welcome to the next fracture."