Darkness. No sound. Then… whispers.
"You shouldn't be here." "Who are you?" "Whose memory are you stealing?"
Rin floated in a black void. Faint, flickering images pulsed around him—moments frozen in time: a mother's laugh, a soldier's last words, a child crying over a broken toy. He tried to move, but every twitch of thought dragged him through someone else's memory.
He hit the floor hard. Light flooded in. He was in a hospital hallway. Nurses passed by, but none of them saw him. Ahead, a young boy sobbed outside a hospital room. A man in a long coat stood beside him—his face hidden in shadow. The boy clutched a photograph.
It was Rin. But younger.
Rin's breath caught. "This is… me?"
He rushed to the door and looked inside. His mother lay motionless in bed. Machines were silent. Her hand drooped from the edge of the mattress, a small note clenched in her fingers. "If you remember me, you'll never be alone."
White static crashed in. The world fractured like glass.
Rin gasped and shot upright. He was back in the library basement.
Kuro stood over him, arms crossed. "You saw something."
Rin held his head, reeling. "That… was my memory. From when she died."
"No," Kuro said flatly. "That was your record of it. What they haven't taken yet."
"I don't care what it's called," Rin snapped. "I saw her. I felt it. She left a message. She wanted me to remember her."
Kuro's eyes narrowed slightly. "Then you're not like the others."
He walked to the wall—a chaotic sprawl of burned notes, old photographs, and scratched-out names. "This is where it starts. The Echo Chamber. Everyone who fights back builds their own map. Of people. Of moments. Of truth."
He tossed Rin a marker. "Start writing."
—
Far away, inside the Archivists' Chamber—a vast, lightless hall suspended in void—dozens of memory capsules floated in silent orbit. Whispering. Glowing.
Archivist Nevra, draped in ivory robes, placed her hand over a swirling orb. A projection shimmered to life: Rin's memory stream.
"Another immune," she murmured. "And this one remembers love."
Across from her, blindfolded Archivist Sae hovered, unmoving. His voice echoed in her mind, flat and deep. "Then he must be erased faster than the others."
"No," Nevra replied. "We watch. If he finds her again… we may learn what was left behind."
In a burst of white light, they vanished.
—
Rin's room. Late night. His wall was now covered with notes—"Sera," "Umbrella," "Red String," "Hospital," "Who is Archivist 0?"—pinned in a frantic web of memory.
At the center, the pendant he found on day one—Sera's—glowed faintly.
Click.
It popped open. Inside, a fragment of memory flickered in glitchy hologram.
SERA: "If you're seeing this, I'm still part of you. Don't follow me. They're already watching. But if you do… follow the song."
A soft hum began to play. Familiar. A lullaby. She used to hum it on rooftops when they were kids.
He hummed it aloud, instinctively. The moment the sound escaped his lips, something clicked in the air. A shimmer passed across his bookshelf—then a hidden seam split open. Inside was a small, scorched book.
The cover read: "Echo Log: Version 1.7 — Property of Archivist #0."
His hands trembled.
"Who the hell is Archivist Zero?"
On the back of the book, someone else had etched a message—by hand, sharp and urgent.
"The world began with a story. If you want to rewrite it… you need to find the original author."
Rin's breath hitched.
And the pendant stopped glowing.