Kai kept the handheld—its screen forever etched with a line of code Mara said was a signature. When asked why he chose LEGACY over the simpler export, he would say only, "Some things live better when you have to give them away." He never saw the temple again, not the physical ruins—but in the flicker of screens around the city, in the laughter of someone discovering the original jump timing, in the way a younger player learned the first trick, the temple lived on.

Mara’s voice crackled in his ear through a commlink. "Security sweep’s closing in. Upload the image and—Kai? Are you seeing flux?"

Kai ran.

He reached a fork: a glittering corridor to the left dotted with glyphs of coin-like artifacts, and a darker pass to the right leading to a sealed door marked with a sigil he recognized from old developer notes—the "save node." In the old endless runner, left meant greed—collectables, risk; right meant continuity—checkpoint and survival.

Light tore the chamber as the handheld hummed, streaming the temple’s architecture into the comms network. Mara swore softly—relief and fear tangled together. Data packets began to bloom across the city's mesh as distant archivists opened ports. Somewhere overhead a drone’s klaxon began to spin; at the edge of vision, uniformed figures moved like debug agents.