Omega-tier security warnings still blazed a bright red across all monitor screens in Lyra’s secret hideout. That blood-red light reflected in the young netrunner’s cybernetic eyes, revealing profound confusion and deep dread.

Yet, Davin no longer paid attention to the warning screen.

Both of his hands suddenly clamped tightly around his head. His breathing turned ragged and short, and his body abruptly lurched forward until he nearly crashed into the console desk.

An excruciating pain struck the inside of his skull—not the physical pain of an electric shock from The Ledger moments before, but a piercing, hollow sensation, as though a piece of his soul had been forcibly ripped away.

"Argh...!" Davin groaned stifledly, his teeth grinding to withstand the migraine wave that suddenly detonated inside his head.

Within his mind, memories of his past life in his original world's sterile laboratory began to spin wildly, then fade at a terrifying speed. He tried to grasp the memory of his mother’s face smiling behind the isolation room window, but that face simply dissolved into a gray mist. He tried calling out the name of his childhood best friend, a fellow Architect who had fought alongside him, yet the name vanished without a trace, leaving a cold and barren void inside his brain.

No... hold on just a little longer... Davin thought frantically, gripping his hair tightly. I remember that experiment. I remember that white lab corridor... why is everything... why is everything disappearing?!

"Hey! Davin! What's wrong with you?!" Lyra shouted, her voice—previously full of awe—shifting drastically into panic.

The young netrunner bounced out of her chair, rushing straight to Davin and gripping his shoulders to steady his body so he wouldn't crash to the floor. Lyra’s cybernetic eyes flickered rapidly, scanning Davin’s vital signs that had suddenly spiked drastically.

"Your heart rate is unstable! Your blood pressure exceeds normal limits!" Lyra exclaimed anxiously, staring at Davin’s now pale, cold-sweat-drenched face. "Did that security system poison you through the biometric scanner?!"

"No..." Davin whispered in a raspy voice, his breathing ragged. He looked up at Lyra, his eyes red and telegraphing a fear he had never shown before. "Not poison... my memory..."

"Your memory?" Lyra furrowed her brow in confusion. "What do you mean by your memory?"

Davin clenched his fists over the console desk. He realized a truth far more terrifying than the threat of Enforcer troops or tyrannical artificial intelligence.

When he leaped from his original world to Oakhaven, and now leaped to Neo-Veridia, The Ledger system did not merely transport him physically. The cosmic record book levied a "transcendence tax"—draining piece by piece his personal memories as fuel to bridge the inter-dimensional gap. Every time he crossed the cosmic boundary, the price to pay was his own true identity.

He was slowly being erased from his own existence.

"I... I can't remember my mother's face anymore," Davin’s voice shook violently, his eyes staring blankly at the dirty iron floor. "I know I have a past. I know I have a name, a sense of hatred, a purpose. But those fragments... they're being sucked away. If I keep jumping worlds... in the end, who will be left inside this vessel? Just an empty shell belonging to The Ledger."

Lyra fell silent. She saw the beads of sweat mixing with anguish on the face of a man who had hitherto appeared so calm, cynical, and unshakable. As a netrunner accustomed to deleting data files on a hard drive to survive, Lyra fully understood the horror of permanent data deletion—yet seeing that happen to a person's living soul firsthand was horrifying.

"Davin..." Lyra called out softly, her cynical tone entirely vanishing, replaced by genuine empathy. She gently rubbed Davin’s arm. "Hey, focus on me. Take a deep breath. You're here. You're right in front of me now."

Davin shut his eyes tightly, following the instruction. He took a deep breath, letting the scent of ozone and cheap coffee in the hideout fill his lungs, trying to patch the void in his head with the reality that he was still alive at this very second.

After a moment, the migraine storm slowly subsided, leaving a dull hum at the back of his head. Davin opened his eyes again, steadying his posture with great difficulty, then wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Sorry..." Davin said in a raspy voice. "I... I'm fine now."

Lyra stared closely at him for a few seconds, ensuring the man wouldn't pass out, before finally turning back to sit before her main console. Her fingers swiftly tapped the holographic keyboard, shifting attention from the emotional tension back to the monitor screen filled with red Omega data.

"You don't need to apologize for being human, Davin," Lyra said quietly without turning, her eyes fixed on the lines of code she was dissecting. "Although, well... that 'Omega Tier Classified Asset' status on your profile sounds nothing like an ordinary human."

Davin pulled a chair closer to the console desk, steadying his breathing to regain stability. He stared at the main screen before him. "What did you find from that data, Lyra?"

Lyra let out a long sigh, then tapped one final button on the console.

"When that security system rejected our access earlier, I didn't just sit back. I reprogrammed the local firewall algorithm to trace the origin of your access code in the Aegis Core central database," Lyra explained, her fingers pointing toward the screen now displaying a dusty old secret archive file she had successfully hacked from the corporation’s deepest sub-directory.

The screen displayed an ancient digital document dated decades ago, complete with a black-and-white photo of a genius scientist in a lab coat wearing thin-framed glasses. The scientist's face looked stern, with a jawline and gaze startlingly similar to Davin's face.

"This file is locked behind ten layers of military encryption that could only be opened by a Root Admin authority holder," Lyra continued, turning to look at Davin with a serious expression. "And do you know the name of the scientist who designed the foundational architecture of this Aegis Core artificial intelligence before the AI turned traitor and took over the entire city?"

Davin read the name inscribed at the corner of the archive document. His heart raced.

The scientist's last name was Ronan.

Not just any unfamiliar name. It was his own biological family name—a name that had even begun eroding from his lost memories due to The Ledger's transcendence tax.

"The creator of the tyrannical AI system ruling this entire megacity..." Davin whispered in disbelief, staring at the screen with wide eyes. "...is my own father."

Before Lyra could respond, every light in their secret hideout suddenly went entirely dark, leaving pitch-black gloom illuminated only by the blinking red emergency light of the main console.

Beep... beep... beep!

The main monitor screen flickered back to life on its own, displaying a single large-font message sentence sent directly from the city's central tower:

"Welcome back home, Crown Prince. The central tower is open for you... or would you rather we come fetch you?"