Interlude – Fractured Echoes

Airi sat alone on the rooftop of the detective agency.

The sky was still bleeding red, as if Eden had left a scar across reality itself.

She hadn't seen Hiragi since the system collapse. The door to that world had shut—and with it, so had a part of her.

> "You felt it too, didn't you?" she whispered.

Ishigami, silent as always, leaned against the railing beside her.

> "Reality shifted," he said, voice low. "It cracked. We didn't just lose time. We lost… something else."

Airi clutched the bracelet on her wrist.

Sena's bracelet.

It had been found in the server room, right after Eden shut down.

No one remembered her. No files. No records.

Only Hiragi had whispered her name.

> Sena.

But now he wouldn't talk about her. Wouldn't even say the word. As if something had been deleted from him—forcefully, violently.

Ishigami opened a sketchbook.

Inside were symbols. Glitches. Faces with no eyes. A circle. A root. And a phrase written over and over:

> "One soul must stay."

Airi closed her eyes. "We need to pull him back."

> "The dream followed him," Ishigami said. "But maybe the dream is unfinished."