Fragments of Yugen

Ren couldn't shake the sound of that voice.

> "More are waking."

He heard it in his dreams. In the silence between footsteps. In the ripple of air as the Delta Spiral turned above Yūgen. The battle in Veridon Ash hadn't just been a strange anomaly — it had been a signal flare. A call. And someone… or something… had answered.

In the days that followed, everything began to shift.

Unmapped zones started to light up again on the Spiral map — territories once believed collapsed or unreachable now pulsing faintly with unstable energy. Aki described them as "half-alive," places that existed only when looked at directly, like thoughts flickering on the edge of memory.

The Memory Root began fluctuating. Yumi spent most of her time anchored to it, stabilizing threads and correcting pattern warps. Even she looked concerned.

"It's not just that things are waking," she murmured, sweat glistening at her temple. "It's like something else is calling the system back online — piece by piece."

Kael, who had been unusually quiet since Veridon Ash, finally said it out loud:

"This isn't Spiral Delta's doing. Someone else is restoring the network."

Rei scoffed. "Restoring? That thing we fought wasn't a restoration. That was a purge."

They all knew what that meant.

Someone out there had access to Spiral creation code. Someone with authority. Or at least… history.

---

Two days later, another flare appeared.

Sector Theta-Ran. A location marked long ago as "VOIDED BY SYSTEM." No one had dared approach it.

Until now.

The team traveled by Memory Rail — a system Ren had accidentally created while stabilizing a spiral loop in his sleep. The rail was volatile, only lasting minutes before fading, but it allowed them to skip across Yūgen's unstable sectors at high speed. Each rail was drawn midair — the ink forming as fast as they moved, dissolving behind them like vaporized history.

Theta-Ran was different from Veridon Ash.

No decay. No remnant ghosts.

Just… stillness.

An artificial city hovered in suspension. Glass towers. Curved roads that ended in nowhere. Roads shaped like letters from forgotten alphabets. The sky was a perfect matte gray — not cloudy, just blank. Every sound echoed like it didn't belong.

Yumi whispered, "This is a constructed zone. Hand-written."

Ren's pen hummed in his pocket.

They stepped onto the city platform.

Immediately, their feet clicked — not against stone or metal, but something that felt too clean. Too precise.

Kael bent down and knocked twice. It sounded like code — a low, mechanical pulse that echoed in triplets.

"This place isn't being remembered," he muttered. "It's being simulated."

That's when the voice spoke.

> "Unauthorized presence detected."

It wasn't a voice, really. More like a broadcast in their minds.

Each of them froze as a shimmer of light cascaded down from above.

From between two towers, a figure descended.

It wore a long cloak, silver and black, its face obscured by a shifting mask of fractal patterns. Where its feet should have been, there were threads of unbound Spiral code — dangling, barely tethered to the ground.

It wasn't hostile.

But it wasn't welcome.

> "This sector is under security quarantine. Return to approved realms."

Ren stepped forward.

"We came to investigate the signal. We thought the zone was dead."

The figure tilted its head.

> "Incorrect. This zone is now part of Prime Thread Reweaving. You are not registered."

Aki muttered, "Okay, this thing's definitely connected to the system root somehow."

Yumi narrowed her eyes. "Ask it who initiated the reweaving."

Ren did.

The figure hesitated — for half a breath.

> "Data restricted. Clearance insufficient."

Kael raised a brow. "So someone outranks us now?"

The figure began to glow.

Not in aggression — but as if preparing to reset the environment.

Rei drew her blade. "If this zone resets with us inside, we might be rewritten."

Before anyone could stop her, she lunged forward and slashed.

The blade passed through clean.

The figure didn't move. But the world reacted.

The entire sky blinked out. For two seconds, there was nothing — no light, no space, no color.

Then, suddenly — new architecture rose from the ground. Spiral walls. Floating glyphs. The figure remained still, but now behind it appeared a strange altar — a console of sorts, engraved with a symbol none of them had seen before.

Twenty shards… circling a single empty center.

Ren's breath caught. It was the same shape they saw in Veridon Ash.

He approached the altar, hand trembling. His pen began reacting — the ink stretching from his pocket like it wanted to touch the surface.

And when it did, the altar spoke:

> "Ministerial Channel Detected. Accessing..."

Everyone froze.

Rei: "Ministerial?"

Yumi: "That doesn't exist in Spiral Delta. It's above it."

Aki: "Or before it."

The altar flashed once more.

> "Query: Would you like to initialize briefing?"

They didn't even need to answer.

The console projected a hologram of twenty cloaked figures — each seated in a circle, surrounding one throne that stood higher.

That seat was empty.

> "Ministerial Council. Status: Unknown. Primary Directive: Unknown. Last signal: 000000014."

Kael's voice broke the silence. "Someone built a council above this system?"

Ren didn't speak. He stared at the empty throne.

The broadcast continued:

> "Each Minister governs a Spiral thread. Failure to comply results in system collapse. One has awakened."

The vision disappeared.

The cloaked figure slowly faded with it.

And then a final message blinked in the sky:

> "This was not the first awakening. Prepare for Directive Reconciliation."

The world began to dissolve — the whole zone collapsing like a cube being folded in reverse. The team scrambled back to the Memory Rail and jumped out just in time.

As they landed back in Spiral Delta, silence fell.

Yumi finally asked, "What… did we just witness?"

Ren looked up, eyes narrowed.

"We just found proof," he said. "Something bigger than us is coming."

"They aren't just memories."

"They're Ministers."

And the Spiral system had just declared itself active again.