The first report came from the outer boroughs.
A woman on a tram platform collapsed, screaming names that no one recognized—until her sister, watching from the crowd, broke down sobbing. They had shared a brother. His name had been erased.
In a market near the southern docks, a vendor stopped mid-transaction, staring into space. She began reciting dates, arguments, moments from a marriage that had supposedly never happened. Her husband, standing nearby with another woman, turned pale.
All over the city, cracks spread—not in walls, but in belief.
People started remembering.
And memory, once passive and shaped, now fought back.
Some resisted.
A man threw a chair through a storefront window after his daughter asked why her school records had changed. He couldn't answer—not because he didn't know, but because he did. He remembered both versions.
Elsewhere, a professor locked himself in his study, weeping silently as lecture notes rewritten years ago now reasserted themselves unbidden.
Kael watched the chaos unfold through the Nexus' external feed. No sound played, but none was needed.
It wasn't war yet.
But it was rupture.
Lira stood beside him, hands clasped tight.
"Some of these memories—" she said. "They were sealed for a reason. Painful. Damaging."
"They deserve the choice," Kael replied.
She looked at him. "What if they can't handle it?"
Kael turned back to the feed. A child stared at a parent like a stranger.
He exhaled.
"Then they'll have to learn. Like I did."