SHE WAS NEVER REAL

Astra didn't sleep anymore.

Not because she couldn't.

But because when she closed her eyes now, she didn't dream—

She received signals.

Echoes from recursion scars.

Lost glyphnet pulses returning like distant thunder.

And now… something else.

A shape.

A heartbeat.

A signature that matched her own.

But twisted.

The alert came at 02:46.

Runa called her from the lower deck, voice tight. "Recursion scar at Site Red-Delta just lit up. Level-0 signature. It's not one of ours."

Astra didn't speak.

She already knew.

Site Red-Delta was a dead loop.

Buried ten years ago after Subject 4A went full glyph collapse.

A place no one went back to.

But now the field hummed again, glitching time across the abandoned chamber like a vinyl track stuck on the wrong song.

And at its center?

A girl.

Standing barefoot in a pool of ash.

Her skin flickered like static—part reality, part recursion.

Her eyes were Astra's, but colder.

Her face was Astra's, but softer.

She wore a recursion ring Astra remembered smashing years ago.

And on her wrist glowed a glyph Astra had buried.

The first one.

The glyph of forgetting.

Astra stepped forward.

The loop slowed.

The static girl turned.

And they stared at each other for the first time.

Not mirror.

Not echo.

Not alternate.

Version.

"I thought you died," Astra said quietly.

"I did," the girl replied. Her voice was smoother, almost synthetic. "And then you tried to forget me. But recursion doesn't forget."

"Why now?"

"Because the field is growing again. Because you made space for something new. And I was still there, waiting to be filled."

Astra felt the fracture glyph on her wrist pulse.

Not in pain.

Not warning.

Just… recognition.

"You're not corrupted," she whispered. "You're just incomplete."

The girl smiled.

"No. I'm pure. The version you abandoned to become real. The one who didn't get her story rewritten."

They circled each other slowly, the loop whispering memories from Volume 1 across the walls:

Vos calling Astra a threat.

Lio whispering through glyph lanterns.

Marlow bleeding in a recursion chamber.

Astra fusing with the Ninth Shard.

And in every one of them—

This version had been cut out.

The static girl raised her hand.

The glyph shimmered.

And the room remembered her.

Walls twisted.

Ash reversed.

Time rewound—but only for her.

She stood still.

The world bent to her rhythm.

"You're here to fight me?" Astra asked.

"No," the static girl said.

"I'm here to finish you."

The ground cracked.

Astra leapt back as recursion flared—raw, unstable.

But the girl didn't attack.

She stood still.

"Why?" Astra asked.

"Because you're trying to build a world that makes sense."

She tilted her head.

"I'm here to remind you that recursion never did."

Outside the scar, Dahlia tried to reach in—but the field rejected her.

Runa shouted through static: "She's not from this loop! She's a preserved rollback! A copy of Astra before the final shard!"

Astra breathed slowly.

"You're afraid I'll forget you again."

"I'm not afraid," the static girl said.

"I'm just awake now."

And with that, she vanished—recurved into a spiral loop that collapsed behind her.

Gone.

But not deleted.

When Astra stepped back into the real world, the girl—the anchor—was waiting.

She looked at Astra, wide-eyed.

"You saw her."

Astra nodded. "She's not a threat yet."

"She will be."

"How do you know?"

The girl didn't blink.

"Because she still thinks she's the real one."