Lin Ye remained kneeling for several heartbeats longer than necessary.
Not because his body wouldn't respond, but because the world around him was relearning how to exist. The air had weight. The ground no longer felt like a provisional surface. Even the child's crying—now louder, more human—seemed to drive itself into reality with an insistence it hadn't had before.
That was the price of having named the event.
The world could no longer treat it as a statistical error.
It had to live with it.
Lin Ye rose slowly. The omission in the road was still there, but it no longer grew or attempted to correct itself. It was a recognized wound, not an active fault. The merchants began to organize themselves awkwardly, tending to the injured, clearing away the remnants of carts that would never again be whole.
Some of them looked at him.
Not with open gratitude.
With something more uncomfortable.
Recognition without context.
"Was it you…?" an older man asked, his voice trembling. "Did you make it stop?"
Lin Ye held his gaze for only a moment.
"I made it not continue," he replied. "That's not the same thing."
The man nodded, though he clearly didn't understand the difference. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he would remember that someone had intervened—even if he didn't know how.
That was enough.
The fragmented clock vibrated with a slow, heavy cadence. It wasn't instability. It was accumulation. Each fixed event, each denied correction, increased his causal weight. Lin Ye was no longer merely outside consensus; he was now marked within collective memory.
That made him dangerous in a different way.
He left the caravan before local reinforcements arrived. He didn't want questions. He didn't want reports. Every human testimony was another anchor—and not all anchors were useful when the world was learning how to react against him.
He walked toward a nearby forested region, where ancient trees grew in irregular patterns—a sign that the land had been contested many times by different corrections. There, space was less strict. More forgiving of small contradictions.
Only then did he allow exhaustion to reach him.
He leaned against the trunk of a twisted tree and closed his eyes.
The fragmented clock appeared clearly.
It had changed.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Around the central gear, new marks had formed. They weren't cracks. They were incomplete names—causal labels the world had tried to assign to him and had failed to fully close.
"Fixed event: Eastern Road Collapse."
"Outcome: non-replicable."
"Cost transferred to bearer."
Lin Ye swallowed.
"How many more can I endure?" he asked silently.
There was no direct answer.
But a clear sensation seeped up from deep within the mechanism: not many… if he remained alone.
He opened his eyes.
"So that's the next problem," he murmured. "It's not enough to resist. I need… external continuity."
Not allies in the traditional sense.
Witnesses.
People, places, or structures that could share the weight of memory—preventing everything from resting solely on his existence.
"Towers of Relegation…" he thought. "Custodians. Released."
Yan Shi.
Mu Qian.
Arkhavel.
They weren't allies born of affection or shared ideals. But they were nodes—points where the world had already learned not to decide completely.
The fragmented clock vibrated faintly, as if accepting that line of thought.
Then something new happened.
Not a threat.
A response.
From deep within the forest, a presence manifested. It didn't hide. It didn't attack. It simply… was. It was different from the agents of the Correction Protocol. Less perfect. More human.
"I didn't think you'd reach this phase so soon," a female voice said.
Lin Ye stood without haste.
Between the trees appeared a woman wearing a dark blue robe, adorned with ancient symbols barely visible. Her aura was contained, but deep—like a lake that did not easily reflect the sky.
"I saw you on the plain," she continued. "Not with my eyes. With the records."
The fragmented clock vibrated with caution, but not rejection.
"Who are you?" Lin Ye asked.
The woman inclined her head.
"My name is He Lian," she said. "I am an Archivist of the Western Continent."
Lin Ye frowned.
"Archivists don't reveal themselves."
"Not when things are functioning," she replied. "But you've just created something that cannot be archived without risk."
She stepped a little closer.
"A fixed-meaning event outside consensus," she added. "That is… rare."
"I didn't intend to cause problems," Lin Ye said.
He Lian smiled faintly.
"No one who changes the world does."
She stopped before him.
"I come with a proposal," she said. "Not from the Empire. Not from the Core. Not even from a hidden faction."
The fragmented clock beat, attentive.
"Speak."
"The Western Continent is beginning to show similar symptoms," He Lian said. "Abrupt corrections. Discreet omissions. Events that vanish before they can be understood."
"And you need someone to interfere," Lin Ye said.
"No," she corrected. "We need someone who can record without being absorbed."
Silence fell between them.
"If you accept," He Lian continued, "we won't offer absolute protection. That would be a lie. But we can offer you something you currently lack."
"What?"
He Lian met his gaze.
"A place where your actions won't disappear with you."
Lin Ye felt the weight of those words settle in his chest.
The fragmented clock vibrated.
Not as a warning.
As a dangerous opportunity.
Far away, in the deep layers of the world, the Correction Core adjusted its priorities once more.
Not toward Lin Ye directly.
But toward the places where memory was beginning to organize itself.
The game was changing again.
And now, the conflict was no longer merely between correcting or tolerating.
It was between forgetting…
or building enough memory to resist being forgotten.