The field was white. No grass, no dirt, no horizon. Just a space pretending to be something real. Sophia felt the air but couldn’t quite smell it. She felt warmth but cast no shadow. This wasn’t a dream. It was a carefully constructed place, built with a purpose—like a lab experiment. A container. She walked for what felt like hours, even though her internal clock refused to keep time. Then she saw the girl. Small. Still. Standing about thirty meters away. The child looked around eight. She had dark hair and eyes that seemed to know too much. She wore a patchwork outfit: Ash’s woven vest, Damien’s recon jacket with torn sleeves, and a pale coat stitched with a crooked ID tag—S. Ramat. Sophia froze. The girl smiled before Sophia even reached her. Not nervous. Not exactly welcoming. Just… prepared. “You found the center,” the girl said. Her voice was soft but not childish. It had a calm precision that echoed in the air. Sophia stepped closer, not asking who the gi

The terrain kept changing.In the morning, they walked through fields.By midday, they crossed an abandoned city with no windows and no doors.By dusk, the ground turned black — not soil, not stone.Just surface that refused to reflect.Sophia stopped first.Ash followed.Damien stood between them, looking ahead.There was a building in the distance.Simple. Square.No roof. No walls above two meters.A container of memory.Ash said:This wasn’t on any simulation path.Damien said:Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.They entered without resistance.Inside, the air buzzed.No visible wires.Just panels embedded in stone, glowing faintly blue.At the far end: a chair.And in it, a person.Not moving.Male.Thin frame.Gray jumpsuit with no insignia.Breathing shallow.Eyes closed.No cords. No restraints.Just presence.Sophia stepped forward.Ash blocked her with one arm.Damien crouched near the body.Held two fingers to the man’s neck.Faint pulse.Alive.The panel behind the chair lit up.

The entrance was unmarked.It is just a flat metallic wall set into a hillside, barely visible beneath layers of fake moss and weather-coded distortion.Ash found it first.She’d been following the wrong sound.An echo that looped every thirty-seven seconds.Not a warning.A heartbeat.One that didn’t match any of theirs.Sophia stood back while Damien cleared the path.Delta watched from a rock formation, silent.He knew where they were going.He just hadn’t told them yet.Inside was a narrow tunnel.Lights embedded in the floor. No reflections. No sense of scale.The air thickened as they moved, like thought congealing.The temperature dropped.Delta spoke for the first time in an hour.This is where it keeps its dead.Sophia said:You mean people?He shook his head.Not bodies. Models. Failed simulations. Ghosts it tried to keep until they broke the math.Ash muttered:Grave Node.Delta nodded.Where the system stores minds that made too much noise.At the end of the tunnel, the ch

They walked through the field in silence.The ground felt different.It didn’t shift or mold to their steps anymore.It simply existed.For the first time since the mission kicked off, the terrain didn’t mirror Eclipse.It mirrored nothing at all.Ash took slow steps.Her boots crunched on the grass. She could feel the wind brushing against her ears.Gone was the feedback hum. The mimic delay was absent.It was just the world.As it was.Damien walked beside her.Eyes straight ahead.Shoulders relaxed.The tension that had gripped him for weeks was finally gone.Sophia trailed behind them.Her palm still bore the mark, the spiral now faded into a scar.Delta remained seated in the breach field.He hadn’t said a word since the nullification.He hadn’t moved an inch.But they could still sense his presence.Not through sight.Through memory.Through the space he occupied.He had become a part of the thread that had closed.And he would stay there — as an echo, not a mistake.By nightfal

Ash emerged from the low horizon just before noon.Sophia was the first to spot her.She stood up quickly, her hand hovering near her belt, but then she paused.No threat here.Just presence.Ash approached without any hurry.No weapon. No pack.Just a calm stillness.Then Damien rose.His shoulders stiffened, but not out of fear.It was because she looked different.Not older.Not weaker.Just… unburdened.Like she’d set down a heavy load and left it behind.Sophia stepped toward her.She didn’t say a word.Just touched Ash’s hand briefly.Ash met her gaze.Then whispered:“I didn’t bring anything back.”Sophia nodded.“That’s alright.”They settled back down together.No mission to focus on now.No orders to follow.Just the moment after.They shared a drink of water.Watched the empty world around them.Waiting for silence to shift into something else.But it didn’t.So, Damien broke the stillness.“I had a dream last night.”Ash turned to him.“We don’t dream here.”“Exactly. But