She heard her own voice before she saw herself.
"You left me."
Velora froze, coin still trembling in her palm.
The chamber's temperature dropped—not physically, but perceptually. Like the space around her no longer recognized heat.
Arin stood a few paces behind her, watching with narrowed eyes.
The voice spoke again. This time louder. Firmer.
"You rewrote me."
And then she appeared.
A girl.
Young.
Younger than Velora had ever allowed herself to be.
She wore the white coat—uncut, unadorned. The original Council uniform. No rings. No black thread in her hair. No blood on her collar. Just the glimmer of someone who hadn't yet broken.
Her eyes, though, were hollow. Not vacant.
Erased.
"You're not real," Velora whispered.
"I was," the girl said. "Before you made me forget."
Arin stepped forward, jaw clenched.
"Velora, this is a Spiral recursion echo," he warned. "It's not—"
"It was me," the echo interrupted, stepping forward. "Before the decision. Before the rebellion. Before Rael. Before Arin."
Her gaze shifted toward him then.
And he flinched.
She shouldn't have known his name.
Tier II began to collapse that hour.
Not in flame.
In conflict.
Three civilians in the Archive District began screaming the same name at the same time.
Rael.
But they each saw different faces when they said it.
A child collapsed.
An old woman laughed.
A merchant ran into the street and slit his own throat with a memory glyph.
The Spiral did not resist.
It recorded.
And then replayed.
The merchant's blood wrote itself backward.
The glyph reversed.
And he stood again.
But he didn't remember his own name.
Velora stepped toward her recursion.
"I didn't choose to forget you."
"Yes," the girl said, "you did. Because I was too soft. I hesitated. I couldn't give the command. You killed me so you could survive."
Velora said nothing.
Because it was true.
The recursion lifted its hand—and a glyph pulsed midair.
"RECLAMATION: REQUESTED."
Velora staggered back.
That glyph wasn't supposed to be usable by fragments.
"You can't reclaim me," she snapped. "I'm not a broken anchor."
The recursion smiled.
"You are. You just rewrote the fracture to look like a choice."
Arin watched as Velora's hands trembled.
She never trembled.
Not in front of the Council.
Not in the Vault.
Not even when Rael condemned the city.
But this?
This was her undoing herself.
Piece by piece.
"I buried you," Velora whispered.
"You buried the part of you that asked why," the recursion said. "You buried the girl who wanted peace, not strategy. Who wanted Arin before the Rebirth. Who cried when she learned what Rael did. Who held his hand after the first burn."
Velora flinched.
She didn't remember that last part.
But her hands suddenly did.
In the lower levels, a glyph scholar began burning every memory coil in his lab.
Screaming.
"None of them are real! They're shadows! They're copies!"
When they dragged him out, he repeated one phrase:
"I REMEMBER VELORA CRYING ON A HILL THAT NEVER EXISTED."
They branded him with a glyph of fracture.
It peeled off his skin.
And disappeared.
Velora stepped closer to her recursion.
"You're not me anymore."
The echo-girl smiled faintly.
"You keep telling yourself that."
And then she lunged.
Not physically.
Through glyph.
The Spiral chamber warped.
Arin saw it first.
Velora's outline shimmered—like her body had been copied and layered five frames too many.
Her face split down the middle—not bleeding, but disagreeing with itself.
And then she was gone.
Arin reached forward, but the space where she stood was no longer real.
Only a glyph remained.
It said:
"SHE WENT BACK."
Velora blinked and found herself in a memory that wasn't hers.
A council chamber.
Filled.
Rael was alive.
Arin stood beside her.
She wore white.
No one remembered the Rebirth.
Because it hadn't happened yet.
Because it might never happen.
Velora's hand reached for the coin, but it wasn't there.
Only a mirror.
And in it—
—the recursion stared back.
"You can't survive this time."
Velora gritted her teeth.
"I already did."
The recursion tilted its head.
"No. She did. You were overwritten."
In the real Spiral, Arin fell to his knees.
He could hear Velora's voice.
But not with his ears.
It was inside a memory he didn't own.
"Don't forget me."
"I never did."
"You will."
"I won't."
"You already have."
The glyphs across Tier III began to scream.
Not audibly.
Visually.
They restructured into faces. Glyph-faces. Screaming glyphs. Civilians began clawing at the air, trying to silence letters written on nothing.
A child pressed his palms to the stone and said,
"There's a man in my head and he's smiling like my mother used to."
The Spiral replied:
"RECURSION LIMIT EXCEEDED."
Inside the recursion, Velora faced herself.
The girl who never made it.
The girl who was soft. Who was kind. Who remembered Arin's birthday. Who forgave Rael once, even though he didn't ask. Who cried in his arms and called it survival.
"I don't want to kill you," Velora whispered.
"You already did."
"I didn't mean to."
"You meant to become stronger."
Velora closed her eyes.
"Then I'll carry you."
The recursion smiled.
And for a moment, she looked almost peaceful.
"No. You'll bury me again."
And she stepped forward—
—and vanished into her.
Back in the Spiral, Velora gasped as she reappeared in the chamber.
Arin reached for her—but stopped.
She wasn't bleeding.
But her eyes?
They weren't hers.
For a moment, he saw someone else behind them.
And then she blinked.
And the Spiral went quiet.
The glyph behind her lit up:
"SHE REMEMBERED."
And beneath that:
"BUT SHE WASN'T THE ONLY ONE."