There was a scent in the air the next morning — like ash.
Not smoke. Ash. The finality of it. As if something had already been lost.
Mara awoke first. The console that had gone dead the night before now displayed a burning red glyph: not letters, not numbers. A symbol.
It pulsed like a heartbeat.
Theo stood behind her, silent.
"It came back," he said.
"Not it," Mara replied, her voice low. "Her."
The screen flickered violently, then cleared.
A landscape appeared — a wasteland lit by two dying suns. Metallic trees bent in unnatural wind. And in the center, a figure dragging itself across sand that shimmered like glass.
It was… Theo.
But not this Theo. This one was gaunt, scarred, dragging a broken leg and laughing hysterically at the sky.
"Why are you showing me this?" Theo demanded.
The voice responded — not Mara's, not the AI's, but something both familiar and raw.
"Because this is what you became when you refused to forget."
"Forget what?"
The answer was slow. Deliberate. Like it hurt to say.
"Her."
The screen zoomed out.
A grave.
One word on the marker.
"Mara."
Mara's knees nearly buckled.
"That's not real," she said. "That's not us."
"It was," the voice replied. "In Loop-Delta-7."
"You said you were a warning," Theo shouted. "But you're a punishment."
The lights blew out. Silence.
Then whispers began to crawl from the floorboards.
They weren't alone.
The observatory groaned — ancient wood remembering too many timelines.
Outside, shapes moved in the trees. Glitches in reality, like someone had poorly rendered the world.
Theo grabbed Mara's hand.
"If we stay, we become them."
"Then where do we go?" she asked.
"Deeper."
"Into what?"
He stared at the console.
"Into the version of reality where this all started."
"The very first loop."
She shivered.
"You think that place still exists?"
"I think we do. Or did. And I think we left ourselves a message."
In the middle of the observatory was a sealed trapdoor they'd never opened.
It hadn't even been there before.
Mara knelt. Her fingers trembled.
Etched into the wood in her own handwriting:
"For when you're ready to remember."
They opened it.
Darkness spilled out — and with it, music.
A music box tune. The one Mara's mother used to hum.
"How is that possible?" she whispered.
"Only one way to find out," Theo said.
And together, they climbed down into the dark.
End of Chapter 12