The room had not stopped shaking since the night before, though Nero knew, rationally, that the tremor existed only inside his head.
He had tried to sleep. He had lain on the bed for hours, eyes closed, body still, listening to his own breathing. Every inhale felt shallow, every exhale delayed, as though the hum of the Archive had followed him home and was seeping through the vents, threading itself into his thoughts.
Eventually, he gave up.
He sat on the floor instead, back against the bed, both hands wrapped around a glass of water that had long since lost its chill. His fingers trembled just enough for the surface to ripple.
Across the room, his personal console glowed faintly atop the desk, its dim blue light casting weak shadows against the walls.
The word Unlived would not leave him.
No matter how many times he tried to think past it, the letters resurfaced, sharp and vivid, followed immediately by the boy's face and that calm, impossible voice. The memory did not fade like a dream; it lingered with the weight of something experienced while fully awake.
He set the glass down carefully and stood, drawing in a slow breath he did not entirely trust. The mirror beside the bed caught his reflection—a man with dark circles under his eyes, shoulders slightly hunched, posture already carrying the tension of someone who had learned too much too quickly.
"You're fine," he said aloud, testing the sound of his own voice."It's gone."
The mirror disagreed.
For a fraction of a second, as he blinked, a shape appeared behind him—smaller, motionless, its eyes hollow and pale. Nero spun around at once, heart leaping into his throat.
The room was empty.
He exhaled shakily and let out a short, humorless laugh. "Great. Hallucinations now."
The console beeped.
Nero froze, then turned slowly toward the desk. He crossed the room and rested his palm against the console's surface. The screen brightened instantly, lines of system code racing upward faster than he could follow, before resolving into a single prompt.
[ HELIA KRUSATE // ACCESS REQUEST PENDING ]
Relief came sharp and unexpected. He accepted the request without hesitation.
Helia's face flickered into view, static dancing across the feed. She looked tense, her expression sharper than usual, dark hair pulled back messily as though she hadn't bothered fixing it.
"Nero, what the hell are you doing?" she demanded. "You shut your comms off for six hours."
"I needed time," he said quietly. "To think."
"Think less," she snapped. "Sector Zero-Nine readings just spiked again—same signature as last night."
"That's not possible," Nero said automatically.
Helia leaned closer to the camera, eyes narrowing. "You're broadcasting without a console. The entire building is picking up your pulse. Do you have any idea what that means?"
He didn't answer.
The hum in the walls grew louder, subtle but unmistakable, vibrating through the floor beneath his feet.
Helia's voice dropped. "Listen to me. Whatever Veyra is, you're resonating with it. If you keep triggering it—"
The feed fractured, her words cutting in and out as static overtook the image.
"—can you hear me—leave the—Nero—"
The screen went black.
"Helia?" he said sharply.
No response.
Only the mechanical heartbeat of the room, steady and wrong.
The overhead light flickered, shifting from white to red for a brief, alarming second before stabilizing. The floor trembled beneath him, not violently, but with a low, unsettling consistency.
Every device in the room activated at once.
The vents, the console, the lights, even the communication band on his wrist—all of them hummed in perfect synchronization, emitting a single, impossible frequency that resonated inside his chest.
Text crawled across the console screen.
YOU KEEP CALLING THE WORD.
The letters distorted, rearranging themselves as if resisting their own shape.
STOP USING IT.
Nero swallowed hard. "What are you?" he whispered.
The response appeared immediately.
THE ONE YOU ERASED.
The air thickened until breathing became painful. Nero staggered backward, clutching his chest as pressure built inside his skull, sharper and heavier with each passing second. The whisper returned—soft, omnipresent, layered over the hum.
Veyra.
He hadn't said it.
The world had.
Light fractured. Dust froze midair. Sound vanished entirely.
And then the boy stepped out of the mirror.
He looked exactly as before—young, composed, disturbingly calm. His feet touched the floor without sound, as though gravity itself hesitated around him.
"You shouldn't keep saying it," the boy said, his voice echoing without vibration. "Every time you do, the walls remember."
Nero's throat constricted. "What are you?"
"I'm what you deleted to exist," the boy replied, tilting his head slightly. "But deletion isn't death. It's waiting."
Cold spread outward from the mirror, frost crawling across the metal floor in branching patterns. The hum deepened, sinking beneath sound and into sensation, vibrating through Nero's bones.
He backed away slowly. "Stay away from me."
The boy smiled faintly. "I can't. We share gravity."
The mirror cracked.
"VEYRA!" Nero shouted, the word tearing itself free before he could stop it.
Time stopped.
The frost hung motionless. Shards of glass suspended themselves in midair. The boy froze mid-smile, expression locked between curiosity and something sharper.
Nero staggered, fighting the sudden distortion as the world bent inward. He forced his eyes open, staring at the frozen fragments glittering like distant stars.
Then motion returned.
The shards crashed to the floor in a sharp cascade.
The boy was gone.
The hum softened to its usual rhythm. The temperature normalized. Only the shattered mirror remained, silent proof that the moment had been real.
Nero leaned heavily against the desk, gasping. His hands would not stop shaking.
Every time I use it, something breaks.
The console chimed again.
A new message appeared.
SHE'S COMING.
The door hissed open.
Helia stood in the doorway, hair damp with sweat, datapad clutched tightly in one hand. Her eyes widened when she saw him.
"Thank god," she breathed. "You're alive."
"I'm starting to doubt that," Nero replied weakly.
She crossed the room quickly, scanning the damage with sharp efficiency. "The energy spike went off the charts. Half the Archive rebooted." Her gaze dropped to the frost lining the floor. "And this?"
"I didn't—" He stopped. "He did."
She looked up. "Who?"
Nero nodded toward the broken mirror. "Me. The other me."
Helia exhaled sharply, disbelief flashing across her face. "You saw him physically?"
"Yes."
She activated her scanner and swept the room. The datapad beeped. "Same frequency as Sector Zero-Nine," she muttered. "It's bleeding through dimensions."
"English," Nero said hoarsely.
"It means he's not just data anymore," she replied. "He's becoming real. And every time you use Veyra, you widen the bridge."
Nero swallowed. "Then what do I do?"
"Stop using it," Helia said flatly. "Or there won't be enough reality left to separate you from that anomaly."
He let out a broken laugh. "That's difficult when it reacts on its own."
She turned toward the console. "Then we contain it before it reacts again."
The lights flickered.
Both of them froze.
Across the room, the remaining shards of mirror began to tremble, producing a faint metallic chime that grew louder by the second. Cracks in the largest fragment shifted, rearranging themselves into jagged letters.
NOT DONE.
Helia's datapad screamed with a high-pitched alarm. She grabbed Nero's wrist. "We're leaving."
They ran into the corridor. Behind them, the door sealed shut, muffling the hum as it began to rise once more.
Helia didn't stop until they reached the elevator shaft. She slammed her hand against the override panel. "Security will be here in two minutes. Stay away from reflective surfaces—anything that can hold a signal echo."
Nero stared at her. "You knew this could happen."
She met his gaze, calm carefully masking something deeper. "I suspected."
"You suspected?"
"I told you there's something in the Archive that remembers us," she said quietly. "Now it remembers you clearly."
The elevator doors slid open, and they stepped inside as it began its descent. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Finally, Nero whispered, "What happens when the walls remember too much?"
Helia's reflection in the steel doors lagged a half-second behind her movement.
Then she said, "They start rewriting."
The elevator shuddered.
And somewhere far below, the hum of the Archive rose again—steady, alive, and waiting.