The explosion wasn't fire. It wasn't light. It was memory.
A wave of golden pulse flooded out in all directions. The Vault's archives unraveled, their false timelines peeling back like paper in the rain. The names of the forgotten burned themselves into street signs. Family portraits reassembled. Classmates remembered that one quiet kid who used to hum a song they hadn't heard in years.
The world didn't break.
It remembered.
The Archivists were scattered. Their robes crumbled into ash. Their masks fell off—revealing nothing behind them. Empty identities, long hollowed out by their own erasures.
In the Echo Chamber, the walls changed. No longer chaotic maps of pain, but murals. Restored stories. Faces smiling. Lovers reunited. Soldiers dancing in the rain.
And in the middle of it all, Rin stood beneath a sky that looked different than before. The stars were brighter. Or maybe just older.
Sera's name returned to every register, every student list, every mind. Her locker had flowers on it now.
The world was healing.
But Rin… was fading.
He had burned too bright, carried too many memories not his own. His form flickered like static.
Still, he smiled.
He was finally part of the record.
Not the erased.
Not the remembered.
But the Living.
He pressed the pendant to his heart, then left it on a rooftop in the sunrise. A soft wind carried his last words across the city.
"Even if the world forgets again… it won't start from nothing."