The first sensation Elaine had was pressure.
Not data, not light — real weight. The press of her body against the cold earth.
She raised her eyes to a pale, scrubbed out sky. The air was littered with the smell of iron and rain. Downwind came a faint melody of traffic, birds, life. She sat up slowly, her fingers digging into the wet ground where they swore shouldn't be any more dirt.
Her armour was gone, replaced by a thin material inscribed with weakening glyphs. The scythe was at her side, half-metal half-vine.
"Ian?"
Answer came only the wind.
She got up, the horizon wobbling with some weird familiarity. The streets ahead were hers, her city—but not. Softer angles, brighter colours, towers made of living light.
And somewhere in that city… someone else woke.
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Rhea shot up on a park bench, breathing hard.
The air about her flickered and then became placid. Children's laughter nearby, pigeons taking flight, the world normal. And yet there was no signal on her wristband—just a single icon flashing: Protocol Complete.
She stood and looked around.
The billboards advertised unfamiliar brands, faces she did not know — but then one face flickered for a moment too brief to really see and made her heart skip a beat.
Elaine.
"No," Rhea breathed. "You can't be gone."
She dashed into the street, weaving through a crowd that didn't seem to realize the world had turned upside down overnight. None of them remembered the Core. None of them remembered the sky spltiing open.
But as she came out onto the square's corner, on the old bridge she saw a figure—braids flashed in the light, eyes gazed out to sea.
Elaine turned slowly.
For a moment they were both silent. Two people who survived a war that no one else recalls.
Then Elaine smiled, small and uncertain.
"Looks like it worked."
Rhea swallowed hard. "Worked… or started over ?"
The sun rose higher, the golden light bathed a world sewn in memory and compassion.
Above them, a faint and fading glyph floated through the sky:
"Night Reaper: End Protocol // Success."