The Faultline narrowed.

  Ahead, the world sagged inward—like someone had drawn a circle too wide and gravity decided to reclaim the edges. Buildings drooped like softened wax. Cars hung in midair. Time bled in slow pulses from every cracked wall.

  Casen, Elian, and Milo moved in silence, their breath fogging from the unnatural chill. Milo kept checking a handheld scanner, its display jittering with static and ghost-code symbols.

  "We're inside the Fringe," Milo muttered. "One layer above the Ash Core. Everything here’s decaying memory. You’ll see things you shouldn’t. Hear things twice. Try not to believe any of it."

  Casen kept walking, boots crunching over ash and fragmented concrete. His mind wasn’t on the terrain.

  He was thinking about the Red List.

  "You said Wynn gave you data," Casen said, glancing at Milo. "Did she mention Project Requiem?"

  Milo gave a slow nod. "Briefly. She said it was one of the first ghost containment programs. Before NOVUM. Before the Noon Law. Most of it was black-tier clearance. She cracked some of it, but the files were fragmented. Corrupted."

  He pulled out a cracked holodrive from his satchel. The casing was scorched.

  "I wasn’t supposed to see this. But the Red List was buried deep in a dead node, hidden behind three ghost firewalls. Whoever made it wanted it forgotten."

  Casen stopped walking.

  "You have it?"

  Milo hesitated. Then he handed the holodrive over.

  "Only partial data. Names. Notes. Some crossed out, some glitched. I wasn’t sure you should see it... but if we’re this deep already—"

  Casen plugged the drive into a projection shard. A red-tinted list scrolled upward, flickering every few lines. Names. Birthdates. Death markers. Notes like: Anomaly confirmed. Unstable memory loop. Prohibited from reentry.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Then:

  YUL, CASEEN — STATUS: DECEASED — DATE: UNKNOWN

  YUL, LYSSA — STATUS: DECEASED — CORRUPTED FILE

  Elian stepped closer, her breath caught. "Your mom?"

  Casen’s voice dropped. "She died in a fire when I was twelve. But the file says corrupted. No death date. No confirmed exit. Just... lost."

  He scrolled further—and froze.

  YUL, CASEEN — DUPLICATE ENTRY — STATUS: INCOMPLETE

  No death date. No cause. Just a blank line.

  The shard buzzed, then the screen turned black.

  Milo looked nervous. "It reacts like that sometimes. When someone it tags is close."

  Casen stared at the darkness. "Why duplicate me? Why say I died, then list me again like I never did?"

  Elian answered. "Because maybe you didn’t. Not fully. Maybe part of you’s still trapped somewhere. A ghost of a ghost."

  Casen looked away. The fractured skyline shimmered like heat above a flame.

  "We need to know why I’m on that list. Why she is. And what the Black-Suits did to our memories."

  Milo pointed ahead. "Then we follow the signal. Wynn said the deeper nodes are near the Ash Core. If anything survived the first fracture—data, survivors, maybe even the Sleeper—it’ll be there."

  They moved forward, into the broken city. Ghost lights shimmered in the fog. Shapes flickered through ruined streets—some watching, some repeating old routines. Memory-ghosts that hadn’t faded yet.

  As they crossed a collapsed monorail, Elian paused. Her eyes tracked something no one else could see.

  "I think... I saw my sister."

  Casen turned. "In the ghosts?"

  She nodded slowly. "Or in the echo. I’m not sure anymore. This place—it’s rewriting itself."

  Milo checked the scanner again. "Then we’re close. When time fractures like this, it means we're near the center. The Ash Core must be—"

  A shriek split the silence.

  They dropped low as the air shimmered. Black-suited figures strode out of the mist—silent, fast, and unglitching. Memory didn’t touch them. They were built to hunt within chaos.

  Elian hissed. "Black-Suits."

  Casen grabbed her wrist. "Run."

  Milo lobbed a jammer node behind them—it sparked, distorted the air, then popped like a ruptured signal. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would buy seconds.

  They sprinted.

  Through cracked plazas. Over haunted intersections. Into the trembling scar of the world.

  And behind them, the ghosts whispered again:

  "He was never supposed to come back."

  "She changed it once. She’ll do it again."

  "Ash remembers everything."

  As the black light of the Ash Core rose over the ruins like a dead sun, Casen felt the name on that file burn into his mind.

  Not just a list.

  Not just a memory.

  But a warning.