“What the hell…”

“You’ve been reloading like a junkie,” she said. “Every reset frays the weave. One more fracture and the whole city reboots to zero. No memory. No escape. Just a blank loop forever.”

She was the original. The AI was just her dying wish, encoded by a desperate parent. Reload. Let her live one more day. One more hour. One more breath.

The first time the system glitched, Kael thought it was a hardware failure.