The snow had followed them.
Kael noticed it first—a fine, glassy powder stuck in the folds of his chronosuit, humming softly against his chest like a dying tuning fork. Myra tried brushing it off his shoulder. It fell in slow motion, then disintegrated before it hit the ground.
"This isn't residue," she said, frowning. "It's coded."
They stood in a narrow corridor of Anchor 7B-Δ, better known in ChronoCore records as The Memory Spiral. A classified anchor, only accessible with backdoor coordinates—which Myra had "borrowed" when she rewired her Mapper core to accept dream-logged frequencies.
"I shouldn't have brought us here," she said, voice low.
Kael raised a brow. "And yet, here we are."
The Anchor looked like a city built by emotions rather than architects. Every structure curved toward something invisible. The buildings had no doors—only slanted apertures like sighs frozen in architecture. Floating walkways twisted across midair, occasionally changing direction based on who was watching.
Most disturbing: no people. Only echoes.
Myra reached for her neural pen and etched a rune into the air, activating her cognitive thread. A memory-echo appeared instantly—a man walking in circles, muttering a sentence:
> "I said the wrong name when I woke up. I said the wrong name when I woke up…"
He vanished before completing the third loop.
"Echoes are looping wrong," Myra said. "The anchor is oversaturated. Too many stored impressions. It's starting to glitch."
"From what?" Kael asked.
Myra hesitated. "From me."
Kael blinked. "Come again?"
She nodded, ashamed. "I trained here. Before you met me. Before I joined the ChronoKnots. This is where they tested long-term emotion imprinting. Every mission agent has to leave part of themselves behind to calibrate the anchor. They said it was safe."
"And it wasn't?"
Myra didn't answer.
A gust of wind tore through the walkways, and Kael turned sharply. Across the plaza, standing perfectly still beneath a leaning obelisk of frozen regrets, was another Myra.
Identical.
Except her eyes were static.
"Fragment," Myra whispered. "Old imprint."
The clone didn't move. Just stared.
Kael approached carefully, hand on his tether core. "You left your memories here, and now they've built a version of you?"
"It remembers everything I've ever suppressed," Myra said, her voice shaking. "Every emotion I wasn't allowed to carry on missions."
The clone lifted one hand.
A pulse echoed out like a chime, and suddenly Kael saw them—hundreds of Myras. Walking the streets. Standing in towers. Watching. Crying. Laughing. One sat on a rooftop, screaming into the wind.
Kael stepped back. "They're not glitches. They're fragments. Leftover shadows from the pieces you gave up."
"I didn't know they'd grow."
Behind them, a sound cracked through the air—like someone slicing film through a projector.
A voice, layered and intimate:
> "Do you want them back?"
Kael spun around.
Standing in the street was Kaelen.
Not a projection. Not a recording.
But calm. Present. Too real.
He didn't smirk. Didn't threaten. He just looked tired.
Myra reached for her disruptor. Kael touched her wrist—don't.
Kaelen raised his hand and the echoes stopped moving. Every Myra froze. Every breath halted.
Kaelen stepped forward. "This Anchor was never meant to store so much grief. But you… you gave it everything."
"Why are you here?" Kael asked.
"To show you what you've forgotten," Kaelen said, eyes not on him, but on Myra. "This isn't about me. It never was."
He turned to the sea of fragments.
"They miss her."
Myra said nothing. Just stared at herself—hundreds of versions suspended in regret.
"Why didn't they delete me?" she whispered.
Kaelen turned. "Because even broken timelines want to remember the ones who cared."
He walked past her, into the wind.
And with him, the city began to fold inward—gently. Not as a collapse, but like a story closing its eyes.
Kael and Myra activated the tether.
As they vanished into shimmerlight, Myra whispered, "I don't want to forget them."
Kael nodded. "Then don't."