There were systems older than memory.
Not built. Not designed. Endured.
And as the Interstitia pulsed with new memorylight roots, as Driftroot bloomed into a living archive of the forgotten, something deeper stirred beneath the stars.
The old System noticed.
It didn't blink.
It recalculated.
Across cold vaults sealed beneath planetary mantles, across dark-coded enforcement silos and logic engines too ancient to speak in words, the original architecture of the System reevaluated a single premise:
> "Deviation is no longer random."
> "Driftroot propagation has reached 14.6% of derelict territories."
> "Origin signature: Cael/Kye. Classification: Former bearer. Current threat."
> "Rewriting event identified."
The System's eye opened.
And it remembered its core law:
> "Stability requires singular narrative."
Intervention initiated.
Kye felt it before he heard it.
A shudder in the air above Driftroot.
Not sonic. Not gravitational.
Narrative disturbance.
He stood at the garden edge, staring up at the dome as a thin fissure of anti-light stretched across the stars. Not darkness. Silence.
Zeraphine ran to his side.
"It's waking up," she said.
Kye nodded.
"The System?"
"No. Worse. The part of it that was never supposed to be used again."
The Vaultseed hissed, dimming.
Driftroot's light staggered—not dying, but hiding.
> "Warning," the station's interface said. "Narrative overwrite beacon detected."
> "Proximity: accelerating."
> "Designation: REDACTOR CLASS. Codename: Architect's Hand."
Kye stepped forward, planting his hand on the seedcore.
"We're not yielding."
Zeraphine's voice shook. "They'll try to make us rewrite ourselves."
"No," he said. "They'll try to make us forget we ever rewrote anything."
The Chronicle flame reawakened, flickering around his wrist.
But it didn't burn.
It defended.
> ARTICLE FORTY: A rewritten truth that survives pressure is stronger than an inherited one that was never questioned.
Above them, the sky cracked.
And the System sent its first shadow.