The Archive hummed as Adriana reached for the grey splinter.
She didn't pull at it,she breathed into it, following Kora's instruction to "turn the ice back into water."
As the splinter dissolved, a surge of energy didn't just dissipate
it snapped.
The loom of glowing threads around her began to vibrate violently.
A single golden thread, thicker and older than the others, began to unspool from the tapestry behind Kora.
It didn't belong to the museum.
It belonged to Adriana.
"Stop!"
Kora cried, her sightless eyes widening.
"You are pulling on a Root Thread!"
But it was too late.
The thread danced through the air, vibrating at the same frequency as the First Memory in Adriana's chest.
As it unraveled, a holographic memory began to project into the center of the hall, rendered in shimmering, sepia-toned light.
It was a woman.
She looked exactly like Adriana, but her clothes were from another century.
She was standing in a field that Adriana recognized
the same silver forest from her visions.
The woman was holding a small, smooth river stone.
"Mother?"
Adriana whispered, her heart skipping a beat.
"No,"
Vaelen said, his voice hushed with awe.
"Further back.
That is the First Weaver.
The one who hid the Memory in the intersection."
The vision shifted.
Adriana saw the woman in a mundane setting
a dusty colonial office, much like her own Lost and Found.
The woman was handing a locket to a young man.
As she touched his hand, Adriana felt the familiar surge of a Spirit Note being returned.
But then, the vision darkened.
A shadow entered the room a younger, hungrier version of Malphas.
"The Collector didn't just start his hunt," Kora whispered, her voice trembling.
"He has been chasing your bloodline for generations, Adriana.
Your family didn't just 'work' in the Lost and Found.
You were the Guardians of the Threshold.
Your mother didn't leave you, Adriana.
She hid you in the mundane world to keep the frequency safe."
Adriana felt a cold realization wash over her.
Her life wasn't a series of coincidences.
Her job at the transit office, her affinity for lost things
it was an ancestral calling.
The golden thread continued to unspool, revealing one final image
her mother, tired and grey, sitting in a plastic chair in a 24-hour laundromat
the very one Adriana visited.
She was whispering into a locket, the same one Adriana had handled in the basement office.
"Stay," the image of her mother whispered.
The word shattered the vision. Adriana fell back, the golden thread snapping into place within her own spirit.
She wasn't just a Bridge.
She was the daughter of the woman who had become a Fragment to protect the world. The "Stay" she had heard in the laundromat wasn't a random ghost
it was her own mother's final message, waiting for Adriana to become strong enough to hear it.
"He knew," Adriana hissed, her eyes glowing with a fierce, violet fire.
"The Collector didn't find me by accident.
He waited for me to wake up."
"And now he knows you have the Root Thread," Kora said, her face pale.
"By unraveling that memory, you've signaled your location to every shadow in the city.
The Museum's walls are no longer enough."
Suddenly, the ceiling of the Archive groaned.
A crack appeared in the white marble, and instead of dust, a thick, grey Static began to pour through like liquid lead.