"What truly disappears is not a name, but the existence the world chose to forget."— Excerpt from the Chrono-Stella Archives: The Lost Branch
The sixteenth fragment of Override was the first to drift outside the Chrono-Stella time map. It had no number, no coordinates, and no place in any known civilization or memory.
It was sealed within a dimensional rift known as Null Arbor—
A "Garden of What Was Lost", a place unbound by timeline, spatial layer, or mnemonic structure.Anyone who entered would be de-registered from the universe's logical framework.
Only those who had lost all names, identities, and desires could be recognized and allowed passage by the Garden of Zero.
After purging the seventh fragment, Sophia finally acquired the key to enter this forgotten space: a Chrono Anemone—a memory flower that blooms in reverse time.
To step into the Garden, she had to relinquish all identifiers:
Surrender her status as Override Purger;
Disconnect from Guardian;
Close the Soul Echo Channel;
Delete all memory caches from the past 72 hours.
System Warning:
[You are about to enter the Forgotten Domain. Confirm access as a "Nameless Entity"?][Memory recovery will rely solely on willpower. Proceed with caution.]
Sophia closed her eyes and whispered: "Confirm."
In an instant, the world folded in on itself like paper, leaving only the faint blue glow of the Chrono Anemone.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a colorless expanse—a garden stripped of hue and anchored in silence.
The trees bore paper-thin, curled leaves.Unfinished sentences floated midair.Stone markers were all engraved with a single word: Nothing.
Dozens of blurred human outlines wandered aimlessly. Forgotten by time, they had no faces, no voices—no shadows.
One of them turned to her and asked:
"Who are you?"
She paused, then answered gently:
"I'm here to return your names."
At the garden's heart, beneath a Time Tree that grew in reverse, stood the sixteenth fragment—manifested as a scholar of withering blooms, clad in a ritual robe worn down by centuries, white-haired and faceless.
He spoke softly:
"I didn't resist you... because I too want to be remembered."
He confessed: he had never betrayed civilization. Instead, he was abandoned—dismissed as "obsolete data" during a core system upgrade, exiled into a blind spot of history.
He was once the Gatekeeper of Override's Soul Structure in a prior version—discarded during an update and cast into the Zero Court.
What tormented him was not deletion, but being forgotten so thoroughly that even his existence could not be proven.
Sophia extended her hand.
"It's not that you were insignificant," she said. "The system simply never learned how to be kind."
She placed the Chrono Anemone into the fading core of his memory.
In that moment, the shadows within the Garden stirred. One by one, their names emerged from the fog, and tiny lights bloomed in the air like fireflies of memory.
The sixteenth fragment wept, smiling through his tears.
"Thank you... for letting me be someone again."
The fragment transformed into the Memory Reclamation Seed, soon to be integrated into the Starlight Council's future civilization repair protocol.
System Prompt:
[Override Fragment No.16: Cleared][Starlight Council: Memory Reconstruction Module Unlocked][Initiate Program: "Return of the Forgotten"]
Back in the present, Sophia stood before the Starlight Mirror, watching as the Chrono Anemone unfurled in full bloom.
It was no longer a solitary flower braving the wind—but a seed of memory, ready to root itself in the future.