The obsidian sphere pulsed again—slow, steady. Like a second heartbeat in the chest of something buried.
Juno's breath was ragged. The memory still echoed inside her skull like broken glass tumbling down stairs. A child's scream. Her own hands. And that face—her face—older, ruthless, terrifying.
Milo backed away from the sphere, his scanner glitching so violently it sparked. "This thing isn't just a memory core. It's sentient… or at least reactive. And it knows Juno."
Idris stood watch, blade unsheathed. "That vision. Was it a future?"
"No," Juno said quietly. "It was a past. My past."
Above them, the ceiling groaned. Dust rained down.
Then—
"Juno."
The voice wasn't spoken.
It was felt—like a whisper inside their bones.
Everyone turned.
The sphere had changed. Its red veins now formed letters—ancient, unknowable, yet somehow… readable.
JUNO KERR.
ACCESS CODE RECOGNIZED.
RE-INITIATING ARCHIVE 12: "THE LOST ERROR."
The floor shuddered. Walls parted.
A passage opened behind the sphere, lightless and beckoning.
Seth's voice rang out from above. "Don't follow it!"
He leapt into the vault, landing with a roll beside them. "This vault doesn't show you truths. It reshapes them. It will bury what you are beneath layers of what you were."
Juno looked at the corridor. Then at Seth.
"Did you go through it?"
"I did," Seth said. "And I came back… different."
He held up his mechanical arm.
Juno stepped forward anyway.
"Maybe I need to remember what I was… before it's too late to change what I'll become."
Idris grabbed her wrist. "We do this together."
Milo sighed. "We always do."
Seth hesitated.
Then followed.
They entered the corridor—one by one—as the sphere dimmed behind them.
As if sealing away a secret.
And deeper within Vault Ten, the archive began to open.