The pages turned themselves.
Golden ink spilled like starlight across parchment older than the Registry. Symbols Juno didn't recognize arranged themselves into words she understood—not just read, but felt. As if the knowledge was buried somewhere inside her, waiting to be remembered.
"We weren't built to run through time.
We were built to break it."
The voice wasn't her own.
It came from the page. Not a recording. A memory.
And it sounded exactly like hers.
The next page revealed sketches—maps of timelines that intersected and overlapped like spiderwebs, collapsing in on a central point labeled: Event Zero.
The journal whispered:
"In the First Loop, seven of us survived Event Zero.
We were marked, reborn, and relooped.
Over and over.
Until we forgot who we were."
Juno's hands trembled.
Another page. A drawing of seven silhouettes, standing beneath a cracked spire identical to the one rising over Vault Nine now. One figure was circled. Labeled only: J-07 / Catalyst.
She kept flipping, faster now.
A list of names—some she recognized from Registry files. Others long erased. A brief flash of a familiar face: Seth Vire, standing beside a younger Juno, both smiling, both wearing the old insignia of Project Chronostorm.
"You asked to forget.
You begged us to erase the truth.
We did.
Now time is breaking again.
And you're the key to the end—or the beginning."
Juno staggered back, eyes wide. The vault seemed to warp around her, shifting with her heartbeat.
"Do you see now?" the boy asked, watching her with solemn eyes. "You weren't chosen. You chose this. Long before this version of you even existed."
She looked at the journal—still glowing, still open.
"What am I supposed to do?" she whispered.
The boy stepped forward and placed something in her hand.
A timekey, etched with the same symbol that now burned faintly on her wrist.
"You unlock the next gate."
Suddenly, her Divider roared to life. Incoming signal—Idris and Milo were diving in.
And they weren't alone.
Dozens of signals. Registry agents. And something else.
Something older.
The vault began to shake.
"You need to run," the boy said.
"But you just said—"
"I said you weren't built to run through time," he smiled faintly. "But I didn't say you couldn't run from it."