The reunion came six months later.Lyra organized it through the network, using the connections that still bound the three hundred twenty-two survivors. They came from everywhere—different cities, different countries, different lives they'd returned to after years or decades of absence. Some had families waiting, loved ones who'd never stopped hoping. Others had no one—their parents dead, their children grown, their friends long since moved on.They gathered in a park on a warm summer day, the kind of day that made you believe anything was possible. Children played on swings while adults watched with wonder, remembering what it felt like to be free, to be present, to be alive in the real world.Lyra moved through the crowd, greeting each person by name, marveling at how different they looked in sunlight. In the game, they'd been nodes, data points, voices in the darkness. Here they were human—flawed, beautiful, real.Jinhai, gray-haired now but smiling, his daughter beside him—a woman
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