Chapter 37: A World Already Watching

Outside the Council's temporal dome, time resumed its natural rhythm—but the world wasn't the same.

Yun Xi stepped onto the celestial bridge between timelines, feeling the shift in gravity, memory, and perception. Each step he took now echoed not just in the present, but rippled backward and forward, reweaving the threads of causality.

He wasn't alone anymore—not truly. The Song Fragment pulsed faintly within his chest, resonating with the echoes of those he'd once lost.

"Feels… different," Yue Lan muttered as she adjusted the bracelet interface on her wrist, scanning the skies. "You changed something."

"Not just something," Yun Xi replied. "Everything."

A soft chime came from her device. She froze.

"What is it?" he asked.

Yue Lan glanced at him, visibly tense. "You're trending."

"…What?"

She turned the device toward him, projecting a holographic feed. Thousands—no, millions—of viewers were watching scattered echoes from his recent confrontation with the Harvester. Security drones, rogue fragments, even broken surveillance satellites had picked up glimpses.

And someone had broadcast them.

"He's not one of us."

"He moved like a Keeper but wasn't wearing an interface!"

"Did you see how the Harvester retreated?"

"Who is Yun Xi?"

The message board was ablaze. And not just in the present—data archives in alternate timelines had started updating retroactively, responding to the Song Fragment's shift. His identity was bleeding into public memory.

"People aren't supposed to remember Echo interactions," Yue Lan said quietly. "Let alone you. This is beyond protocol."

"That's because I'm not hiding anymore," Yun Xi said, eyes narrowing. "And someone's making sure of that."

She tapped into the feed's metadata. "Trace route's bouncing between defunct grid-nodes in the Central Reaches. You know anyone with that kind of access?"

Yun Xi nodded once. "Only one."

—

The cityscape of Aerilon—once a mid-tier floating capital in the upper-atmosphere arcologies—had evolved into a war-hardened beacon of innovation and paranoia. It was the only city where Echo-seers operated freely, protected under sovereign neutrality.

And it was home to the Architect: Li Shen.

Yun Xi landed silently on one of the side-platforms, his cloak shifting to adjust to Aerilon's dense magnetic field. Lights traced his path automatically, and the doors to the Architect's compound opened before he could knock.

"I thought you'd come sooner," Li Shen said without looking up. He was seated in a zero-gravity rig, data floating around him like satellites orbiting a star. His face was lean, his eyes lined with artificial irises capable of scanning quantum drift.

"You leaked the footage," Yun Xi accused.

"I made sure they remembered it," Li Shen corrected. "Big difference."

"Why?"

"Because it's time," Li Shen said, rotating in his rig. "The loop was never going to break quietly. You're too important now. People needed to see you—feel something real again."

Yun Xi frowned. "And now I'm a target."

"You always were," Li Shen shrugged. "Now you're just a visible one. Which means we have leverage."

He extended a hand. "I also have something for you. Consider it a… welcome-back gift."

Yun Xi took the small cube. It pulsed with raw data.

"Is this—"

"Fragment Three," Li Shen confirmed. "Hidden in an echo-layer beneath the city. But you'll need to relive the memory to extract it."

"And the cost?"

"Only your greatest failure."

Yun Xi stared down at the cube, heart tightening.

"I'm not afraid anymore," he whispered.

Li Shen smiled. "Then get ready. The world is already watching, and now the ones above are starting to take interest."

"Who?"

"The other Composers. The ones who failed."

—

Somewhere in the silence between timelines, beneath the layered ruins of forgotten civilizations, seven figures sat around a broken sphere of songlight. Each bore the mark of a failed rewrite. Eyes hollow. Bodies stitched together by memory and regret.

And in the middle, the Conductor watched the stream.

"He's begun," one of the broken said.

"He hums the melody," another whispered, shivering. "Just like we did…"

"But his Echo is too loud," the third hissed. "The Song will collapse."

"No," the Conductor said. "He is the only one who remembers correctly."

"Shall we silence him?"

The Conductor shook their head.

"Not yet. Let him gather the fragments. Let him believe. Because when he does…"

They turned toward the shattered Song.

"…we will return."