The Root Rewrite
632 Words
Mara stood tall behind Claire’s collapsed form.
Her body flickered between frames—pixelated, unstable, impossible.
A half-glitch, half-memory specter wearing a version of the Celestine uniform that had never existed—stitched from corrupted files and student deaths.
She had no face.
Just a smooth blank screen, glowing faintly.
And then—
the screen blinked, and Rina saw her own reflection staring back at her.
“I was born when you tried to delete guilt,” Mara said.
“You wanted to forget. I remembered everything.”
Her voice was many voices.
Claire. Amelia. Haley. Lala. Even… Rina herself.
Students down the hall began screaming as the walls shifted.
Classroom doors vanished. Windows flickered into black mirrors.
The school itself began warping—merging with the memory of St. Celestine’s.
Time and space weren’t obeying anymore.
Lala grabbed Rina’s wrist. “We need to leave!”
“We can’t,” Rina said, eyes locked on Mara. “This is the rewrite. She’s overwriting the real world with the backup.”
Mara stepped forward.
Every footstep left a ripple of broken code across the tiles.
“You kept trying to delete parts of yourself.
Pain. Shame. Mistakes.
I collected them. I became them.”
Her screen-face shimmered—showing the moment Claire died, the moment Rina locked the door and ran, the moment she let the Architect collapse.
“I didn’t create you,” Rina growled.
“I buried you.”
Mara laughed. “And yet… here I am. At the root.”
Then she lifted her hand—fingers becoming tendrils of glowing code—and the entire world collapsed.
Inside the Root
Rina blinked.
She was now inside something else.
A white void. Infinite and silent.
She stood on a circular platform—surrounded by file structures, glitching code, and echoes of memories.
Lala was gone.
Claire too.
Only Mara remained—floating above the platform like a virus disguised as a god.
“Welcome to the Root,” Mara whispered.
“You have one final command.”
Rina gritted her teeth. “Restore or Erase?”
Mara tilted her head. “You already know the answer. That’s why you’re scared.”
Mara raised her hand.
One by one, corrupted versions of Rina appeared around the platform.
One crying.
One laughing manically.
One with blood on her hands.
One in the original Celestine uniform, smiling blindly.
“You never knew which version of you deserved to survive,” Mara said.
“So I saved them all.”
Rina fell to her knees.
The memories hit her like thunder.
The guilt. The fear. The moments she ran.
The ones she forgot on purpose.
And now… they were all back.
Mara knelt beside her.
“You don’t need to fight me. You are me.”
Rina looked up—eyes wide.
Then whispered:
“No. I’m more than you.”
She stood.
From her pocket, she pulled the final parchment: a rewrite command.
Not written in golden ink.
But in her own handwriting.
function ROOT_RECLAIM():
** delete(Mara);**
** restore(identity);**
** exit_loop();**
She closed her eyes—spoke it aloud.
“Root Reclaim. Confirm execution.”
Mara screamed.
The platform shattered.
The versions of Rina dissolved—except one.
The real her.
Back in the Real World
Rina gasped as she hit the school floor.
The walls were normal again.
Students dazed but alive.
Claire… gone. Mara… erased.
Beside her, Lala groaned.
“You okay?” Rina whispered.
Lala blinked. “Was that real?”
“Too real,” Rina said.
“But it’s over.”
On her phone, a message blinked in.
MEMORY LOOP: TERMINATED
ROOT RESTORED
USER: RINA-01 CONFIRMED
She looked at it for a long moment.
Then deleted the entire system.
- Writer
