Threadbound:System

> [Anchor Zone Confirmed – Tier II: Vault of Restoration]

Thread Integrity: 9%

System Signal: Fragmented

Warden Class: UNKNOWN / Dormant

Anomaly Risk: EXTREME

Civilian Presence: NULL

Access Level: Partial / Restricted

The first thing Riven noticed was the stillness.

Not silence—this zone breathed with ambient system noise, static pulses weaving through the half-lit halls—but a deeper stillness, like a breath held for far too long. The Vault of Restoration hadn't simply been abandoned.

It had been waiting.

Faint threadlight pulsed from embedded veins in the walls—once-golden lines now dimmed to a tarnished bronze. The air reeked faintly of sterilized decay. Medical pods lined the corridor, most shattered. One still glowed softly, but the figure inside was dust.

Kaia pressed close to his side. Her fur shimmered between golden and pale silver, her paws lighting faintly with each step. Her eyes had changed again. Not fully Aya's, not fully hers—somewhere in between.

"Do you feel it?" she whispered, voice barely audible.

Riven nodded. "It's not just a vault. It remembers failure."

Brenn stepped ahead, tower shield lowered but ready. Kalix ghosted behind them, posture taut. Nilo trailed, fingers twitching at invisible threads.

Orien said nothing. He simply walked.

---

They passed doorways leading to warped recovery chambers—some half-melded into the walls, others inverted like reality had hiccupped mid-repair. Thread constructs flickered briefly, attempting to render missing medical staff, then failed and dissolved.

> [SYSTEM LOG – 173d:19h:04m]

:: Restoration Protocol Unstable ::

:: Civilian Preservation Priority Unmet ::

:: Reclassification: COLLATERAL LOSS ACCEPTED ::

Riven's breath caught. The words hung in the air like a noose.

"They gave up," Kalix said flatly, reading over his shoulder. "Whoever ran this vault… they let the system purge them."

"No," Nilo whispered. "It let itself forget."

---

They stopped in what must've once been the main recovery bay.

Transparent stasis tanks lined the chamber's center, most shattered. Thread rot clung to their bases like rust made from memory. One tank still stood upright, its inner light flickering.

Inside floated a figure.

Not alive.

Not dead.

A civilian, or what remained of one—a woman frozen in a moment of confusion, her body twisted slightly, one hand raised toward the glass.

> [Subject Status: Threadlock – Irretrievable]

Identity Tag: NULL

Emotional Imprint: TERROR / BEWILDERMENT / LOSS

Riven stared too long. The imprint bled across the threads.

Kaia touched his wrist. "Don't let her take root."

---

They set up camp near the vault's edge that night. The air pulsed slower here, as though time obeyed no consistent rule.

Brenn sat apart from the others, polishing his shield by habit. But his eyes kept flicking toward the broken tanks.

"You know," he muttered finally, "I always thought we'd find someone. A survivor. Just one."

Riven said nothing.

Brenn looked at him, jaw clenched. "I needed that hope, Riven."

"I know."

"No, you don't. You… you lost everything at the start. But I kept thinking—my brother, my unit, the scouts—someone made it through. Someone had to."

He stood suddenly, shield slamming against his back. "And this place… it was supposed to be for healing. All it gave me was a grave."

He walked off, threadlight crackling faintly in his wake.

---

Kalix didn't speak until much later, when the others had slept—or pretended to.

She sat beside one of the failed tanks, fingers tracing the glass like she was remembering something.

"Once," she said softly, "before all this, I think I was in a place like this."

Riven turned. "A vault?"

"A bed. White walls. Machines humming. I don't know if it was a dream or memory."

She pressed her palm to the glass. "I remember screaming. Not from pain. From being forgotten."

Then, quieter: "Maybe the system never saved us. Maybe it just shelved us."

---

Nilo's breakdown came at dawn.

He'd wandered ahead, deeper into the vault's backend systems, muttering about thread resonance and anchor pulses. By the time Riven found him, Nilo was crouched on the floor, hands shaking.

Dozens of ghostlike civilian forms floated around him—flickering projections from corrupted echo logs. They looped endlessly: a woman weeping, a child calling for help, a man reaching through a collapsing door.

> [Echo Simulation Playback – Integrity: 3%]

Warning: Emotional Contamination Risk – HIGH

"I can't make them stop," Nilo whispered. "I thought if I traced their echoes, I could… fix it. Pull one through. But they're just fragments. Just residue."

Riven knelt beside him, careful not to touch the projections. "You did what you could."

"I didn't do enough. I never do enough."

The Smiling One's face flashed behind Riven's eyes—too fast to hold, too sharp to forget.

"Nilo." Riven's voice was firm. "They're gone. But you're not."

Nilo didn't move. But the flickering ghosts slowly dimmed.

---

That afternoon, they reached the vault's core.

A circular chamber pulsed with unstable threadlight. Medical tables circled a raised dais. In the center stood a massive Warden shell—Class unknown. Deactivated. Cracked open like a sarcophagus.

> [Warden Unit: Dormant]

Classification: UNSPECIFIED

Imprint Tag: "Stared Until We Forgot"

Kaia stopped short.

"That's not a name," she murmured. "It's a warning."

The chamber vibrated as the Warden shell stirred slightly. Just a twitch. Then—

> [SYSTEM RECORD – Restricted Archive Accessed]

Begin Audio Playback…

Static.

Then: laughter. Slow. Too steady. Wrong.

> "You asked us to preserve the minds. We did. But they were too loud. Too fractured. So we… simplified them. Quieted them. Smoothed the jaggedness."

> "And when that wasn't enough—when they kept screaming in dreams—we rewrote them."

> "It was mercy. You would have smiled too, if you saw what they became."

> Transmission Ends.

No one spoke.

Then Kaia growled—a low, guttural sound not entirely hers. Her fur shimmered erratically, eyes flickering between gold and violet.

"I know that voice."

"You shouldn't," Riven whispered.

"I do. And it's part of me."

---

That night, Riven dreamed.

Or maybe the thread anomaly inside him did.

He stood alone in a city that wasn't real—towers made of half-memories, people with no faces. At the center, a woman stood watching him.

Aya.

But her eyes weren't hers.

They were Kaia's.

"You keep trying to save me," she said. "But maybe I'm the one breaking you."

He reached out—and the world fractured.

---

He woke to Kaia's face inches from his. Her gaze sharp, alert.

"You glitched," she said.

"I… what?"

"You flickered. For a moment, your thread split. Two Riven. One still sleeping. One standing."

He sat up slowly. "And which one am I now?"

Kaia didn't answer.

---

As they prepared to move again, Orien finally spoke.

"You're chasing ghosts," he said. "Aya's gone. Whatever echoes you think you're chasing, they'll only eat you alive."

Riven turned, cold. "She matters."

"She mattered," Orien corrected. "But what's left of her… isn't hers. It's the system's approximation. The Smiling One understands that. Maybe that's why it laughs."

Kaia stepped between them, gaze fierce. "She's not just data."

Orien looked at her for a long time. Then nodded once.

"Then make sure you're not either."

---

They left the Vault of Restoration as it began to collapse behind them. The Warden shell never fully activated. The logs faded. The ghosts remained.

Riven didn't look back.

Kaia did.

---

> [Zone Exit Confirmed – Collapse Clock: 22 / 30]

Thread Signal: Flickering

Echo Residue: Active

Anchor Core: Degraded

Group Status: Stable / Fractured