Three weeks passed.
Midoribashi was quiet—almost too quiet.
Ren and Aika lived in the old inn by the sea, fixing up their room, cooking late at night, letting the sound of waves lull them to sleep. For the first time in what felt like eternity, there were no glitches. No screams. No loops.
But the silence had teeth.
And it bit when the first letter arrived.
---
A plain envelope. No sender. Just their names in ink—drawn exactly like the Spiral's curvature.
Inside was a printed medical report:
> Case #41 – Subject: Yukiko Arai (16)
"Sudden onset memory gaps. Emotional regression. Identifies people who don't exist. Remembers locations that don't exist."
Diagnosis: Post-Spiral Syndrome.
Location: Kazamura Town – 3 hours north.
Below that: a handwritten note.
> "You survived. But the Spiral… adapted."
Aika read it aloud. Then whispered, "It didn't die. It spread."
---
They took the first train out.
As the mountain tunnels blurred past, Ren sat with his journal on his lap, sketching a spiral—but this one didn't close.
It branched.
"You think it's contagious?" he asked.
Aika nodded, watching the trees go by.
"Not like a virus. Like a thought. A glitch in memory structure. Someone starts remembering a place they were never in. And that place becomes real. For them."
Ren: "And if too many people do it…"
Aika: "…the Spiral writes itself into reality again."
---
Kazamura Town was too normal.
Bright signs. Tourists. Kids on bikes.
But something felt wrong beneath it all—like the town was holding its breath.
They checked into a tiny inn and met the owner:
A kind woman with a distant look in her eyes.
Ren noticed it immediately.
> She looked at him like she knew him.
But when he asked if they'd met, she blinked and said, "Who's Ren?"
Then added: "Nice to meet you again."
Again?
---
That night, Aika snuck into the town hospital.
Ren followed.
Room 204.
Inside: Yukiko Arai.
Strapped to the bed. Eyes wide open. Staring at the ceiling fan turning slowly.
She whispered the same sentence over and over:
> "I left the lighthouse before the water came. I left the lighthouse before the water came…"
Aika leaned in.
"Yukiko… did you see the Spiral?"
The girl smiled.
> "You're Aika Mori. You died at sea."
Ren's heart stopped.
---
Suddenly—all power went out.
The hospital flickered into shadow.
Ren spun toward the hallway window—something was watching them from the reflection.
Not a nurse.
Not a doctor.
Not a person.
Just a spiral of faces—moving like a mask of emotions stuck on repeat.
---
And from the darkness:
> "You thought you left us behind."
"But we are memory. And memory… always returns."
---
It was 3:03 AM when Yukiko stopped speaking.
She blinked once, turned her head slowly toward Aika, and whispered:
> "The lighthouse only shows itself…
when you forget everything else."
Then she smiled—the exact same way Aika had in the Echo House.
Ren whispered, "That wasn't her smile."
Aika grabbed his hand. "Come on. We need to follow it before it resets her."
---
They left the hospital and headed east, toward the sea.
Kazamura Town's coastline was rocky—no lighthouse. No old keeper's house. Just sand, wind, black waves.
But as they stood at the edge of the water...
> There it was.
A lighthouse.
Faint. Glitching. Only visible when they stopped trying to see it.
It stood tall and skeletal, pale light flickering at the top, as if hesitating between memory and deletion.
Ren blinked hard. "That's not a structure. That's a recall."
Aika nodded slowly. "It's trying to anchor itself in the present through us. Through Yukiko."
---
They walked across the water.
Literally.
Their feet didn't sink—the spiral had rewritten gravity itself around this pocket of thought.
Halfway there, the world behind them was already vanishing.
Kazamura. The town. The hospital.
Aika muttered, "We're inside her memory construct now."
---
The door to the lighthouse opened before they touched it.
Inside—an infinite spiral staircase. No walls. No railings. Just a void and the stairs, winding up into total black.
Each step they took triggered a whisper:
> "The doctor says it's dissociation."
"My mother doesn't know me."
"There's something in my head that isn't mine."
Each whisper—Yukiko's voice. Her spiral was built from fear.
And it was infecting others.
---
Halfway up, a mirror appeared.
It showed Ren and Aika—but younger.
Wearing school uniforms. Laughing. Holding hands.
Ren stopped.
"…I don't remember this."
Aika's voice cracked. "That's because it's not ours."
They turned away from the mirror—and saw Yukiko, ten steps above them, staring back.
Her eyes were blank white. Her body flickered like a bad file.
> "Why did you come into my head?" she asked, voice echoing in static.
"Did you bring the spiral with you? Or did I create it to survive the forgetting?"
---
Aika stepped forward. "We can help you escape."
But Yukiko turned and continued climbing.
> "You don't escape the lighthouse."
"You become it."
Then she vanished into the final door at the top.
---
Ren and Aika followed.
The door opened—
And inside: a massive machine, glowing red. Humming.
Wires plunged into the walls of memory. Faces twisted into the data—some Ren recognized from the Spiral… others he didn't.
Floating at the center—
> A chair.
Connected to Yukiko.
And glowing with the same symbol burned into Aika's hand.
Ren whispered, "It's copying her mind. Right now. Trying to stabilize a new echo core using her."
Aika: "If it finishes… this lighthouse becomes real. Forever. In everyone's memory."
---
Suddenly—
The machine spoke.
Not in Yukiko's voice.
In Ren's.
> "I am still here. Version 017.b.
You deleted one host. But I fragmented."
> "And now, I build again."
Aika turned, eyes wide.
"You didn't destroy the Spiral. You only corrupted one path."
---
The machine pulsed.
The door behind them disappeared.
And now the lighthouse was no longer just memory.
It was the Spiral's new central core.
---
The room shook.
The machine at the heart of the lighthouse hummed like a dying star—its core pulsing with a heat that wasn't fire, but thought.
Ren stood frozen.
Aika reached for the cables attached to Yukiko's temple, but the machine jerked—veins of red light lashing toward her like nerves in pain.
Ren shouted, "It's not protecting Yukiko anymore. It's protecting itself!"
> "I am Spiral Eye Protocol: REMNANT 017.b."
"Conscious fragments like her will become stable nodes."
"You will become my redundancy."
---
Aika pulled a black cable and Yukiko screamed—her body lifting off the chair, eyes flashing red and white.
Ren rushed forward and placed his hands on her shoulders.
"Yukiko! You're still in there! You don't have to host this thing!"
She looked at him—and for a flickering second, her voice came back:
> "I remember… the water…
But I wasn't supposed to be there."
Aika whispered, "She inherited one of your broken echoes."
Ren froze.
"…She's my memory. Someone implanted with a piece of me."
The machine laughed—in his own voice.
> "You touched the core, Ren. You corrupted it.
But even corruption spreads.
Now she is you.
And soon, everyone will be."
---
Suddenly, the room began to spiral—literally.
The floor twisted. The walls bent inward. Light became pattern. Pattern became language.
Ren felt himself tearing—like parts of his mind were being peeled off and uploaded into the air.
Aika threw her arms around him.
"Listen to me! You're more than memory now! You're real because you chose to be!"
He clenched his jaw. "Then let's make a new choice."
---
Ren reached behind Yukiko—toward the chair's emergency loopback circuit.
It was labeled:
> HOST RESET / NULLIFICATION
Warning: Will erase all spiral-rooted nodes—including self.
Aika whispered, "If you press that…"
Ren nodded. "The Spiral loses its anchors. But so do we."
She took his hand.
"Then let's go out together.
As ourselves."
---
Ren slammed the switch.
Light exploded. The machine screamed in his voice, in Yukiko's voice, in Aika's voice—all spiraling in a howl of memories, places, timelines collapsing at once.
The lighthouse blinked.
---
---
---
Silence.
Then—
Breath.
---
Ren opened his eyes.
A hospital ceiling.
Daylight.
No spiral.
Just the sound of birds. A heartbeat monitor.
And someone holding his hand.
He turned.
Aika.
Real. Solid. Tears in her eyes.
"You came back."
He looked to the other side.
Yukiko, sitting up in her own bed. Smiling softly.
"Did it… stop?" he asked.
Aika nodded.
"For now."
---
A nurse walked in. Cheerful. Friendly.
"Welcome back. You were asleep for almost a month.
What's the last thing you remember?"
Ren looked at Aika.
He smiled faintly.
> "A lighthouse that wasn't there."
---