Her name was Saya Lin.
She wasn’t a legend. Not yet.
Not like Maya, Tenchi, or Riku.
She wasn’t even an official S-rank.
But she had something the cursed games couldn’t calculate: a refusal to watch kids suffer.
She was a new recruit, freshly promoted from the Recovery Division—a low-tier sector that usually handled post-game clean-up, trauma care, and anchor disposal. She hadn’t been meant for the front lines.
But sometimes, the front lines didn’t wait.
LOCATION: Sunnybridge Elementary – Abandoned West YardTime of Incident: 4:11 PM
The kids had gone missing during recess.
Four students.
All vanished mid-game. The teacher turned to grab a juice box. When she turned back—the playground was empty, save for two things:
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A single red line, stretching from fence to fence.
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A message burned into the grass beneath it:
“Send someone strong.”
– G.M.
Saya arrived first.
Not by assignment.
By accident.
She’d been visiting a nearby anchor site with her mentor when the call came through. The mentor had hesitated—protocol, risk assessment, tier restrictions.
But Saya didn’t wait.
She ran toward the signal.
Alone.
The playground was already changing.
The sky had no sun—only a bruised orb of red light.
The jungle gym had rotted into twisted metal.
And the line… pulsed like a vein.
Saya drew her baton, a compact telescopic rod with charm lines etched along its shaft.
She whispered the incantation.
“Chainlight—Level 1: Static Burst.”
The baton lit up, humming faintly.
Her heart pounded.
She wasn’t like the others.
She didn’t have void-proof instincts or a multi-tool of cursed detection gadgets.
She just had speed, a spark ability, and a belief she could do good.
She stepped over the line.
The world changed.
Suddenly the yard stretched infinitely—a corridor of chain-linked fences and crushed red grass. On either side of her stood faceless silhouettes of children—flickering, twitching, frozen mid-motion.
At the far end of the red path… the children.
The real ones.
Terrified.
And between them and freedom stood a tall figure, cloaked in red ribbon and shadows, arms outstretched.
Its voice boomed, deep and hollow.
“RED ROVER, RED ROVER. SEND THE BRAVE GIRL OVER.”
Saya didn’t hesitate.
She ran.
Part II – The Sacrifice
Her boots pounded across the red line, kicking up dust that shimmered like ash.
The world bent as she crossed it—time slowed, and the whispers began.
“Too slow.”
“Not enough.”
“She’ll break.”
“She’s not one of them.”
The Red Rover stood in her way.
At first, it looked like a man—a coach, maybe.
Whistle around its neck. Broad shoulders. A tattered jersey.
But its arms were far too long, its jaw hung open at the sides, and its torso was stretched like taffy, rib bones pressing through skin wrapped in red streamers.
Eyes? There were none.
Just empty, red-glowing sockets that tracked her every move.
“Get out of my way!” Saya shouted, baton crackling with stored charge.
“RED ROVER, RED ROVER…”
“SEND YOUR HOPE RIGHT OVER.”
The creature lunged.
She dodged low, rolled, and struck upward. Her baton cracked against the thing’s ribs, sending a wave of blue static across its body.
It hissed—but didn’t stop.
It reached for her with two ribbon-wrapped arms and whipped her across the ground, slamming her into the chain-link fence.
Pain shot through her back. She coughed. Blood.
But she stood.
“Chainlight – Level 2: Lightning Lock!”
She threw the baton like a boomerang. It split mid-air into four connected coils that wrapped around the entity’s limbs and anchored into the ground.
Electricity surged—frying the grass, lighting up the creature’s bones.
It screamed.
She didn’t wait.
Saya sprinted to the children.
They were trapped inside a loop—like a skipping video. Every second, they jerked backward, unable to move forward.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a glowing charm disc, and shoved it into the air in front of them.
“Signal Beacon… Activate!”
The disk flared and spun, sending a sharp pulse of light straight upward—into the Layer.
Far above, past the fractured sky, it broke through into the real world.
Back in Sanctuary Control, red alarms blinked.
“FIELD TRIGGERED – UNKNOWN SIGNAL.”
“POSSIBLE GAME ENDER DOWN.”
Back in the Layer—
The Red Rover broke free.
It shattered the electric bonds and twisted its arms into long, barbed spears of red silk.
It didn’t run.
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It slid—across the grass, across the walls, across the air.
Right toward her.
The kids screamed.
Saya turned.
No fear.
Just resolve.
She whispered, “Level 3.”
Her body lit up.
For one moment—just one—her entire body became a bolt of crackling lightning.
She tackled the Red Rover head-on.
It screamed.
She screamed.
The world shook.
Then silence.
When the children opened their eyes, they were outside the red zone.
Safe.
The line had vanished.
But Saya was gone.
Nothing left but her broken baton…
…and the beacon still flashing weakly in the grass.
Part III – The Pull Between Worlds
The signal reached Sanctuary Control within seconds of transmission.
Red emergency glyphs blinked on every monitor.
A dispatch agent shouted across the comms room. “We have a Level-3 beacon flare! Confirmed pulse from Sunnybridge—Tag Zone overlap!”
Advisors moved quickly. Techs scrambled. But the message had already arrived somewhere far deeper—into the war room, where Maya and Tenchi were reviewing Layer recovery data from the Twister case.
Riku kicked his chair away from the console.
“That signal… it’s Saya.”
Tenchi looked up, eyes narrowing.
“She went alone?”
Maya clenched her jaw. “She’s barely cleared field rank.”
“She still went,” Tenchi said. “And she bought time.”
They moved without waiting for clearance.
Within four minutes, all three were standing at the outskirts of Sunnybridge Elementary.
The red line was still there—stretching from fence to fence across the cracked blacktop.
But no kids.
No creature.
Just the line.
And the baton—split in two.
Maya picked it up gently, fingers trembling. “She saved them. But the game…”
Tenchi finished her sentence: “It didn’t end.”
Riku scanned the area with a handheld spiral detector. “No anchor fragments. No residual collapse. This isn’t a finished game.”
He knelt beside the red line.
His goggles clicked twice as he zoomed in.
There—faint burn marks in the shape of handprints.
Small ones.
Leading back toward the line.
“They're still here,” Riku said. “Just… pulled under.”
Tenchi stepped forward and stared at the line.
The air shimmered above it.
Faint whispers rippled out.
“Red Rover, Red Rover…
Send Tenchi over.”
He didn’t flinch.
“Time to break the rules,” Tenchi muttered.
And he stepped across the line.
The world changed instantly.
Part IV – The Other Side
The moment Tenchi crossed the line, the world didn’t just change—
—it split.
One step and the sky fractured.
One blink and the playground faded into an endless field of red thread, drawn taut between crooked trees and flickering lamp posts. The line stretched in every direction, weaving a network that pulsed like a living thing.
Each time the wind blew, the threads hummed—like violin strings pulled too tight.
And in the distance, he saw him.
Hiroshi.
Tenchi froze.
The figure stood at the far end of the field, backlit by a sickly sun that refused to rise. Hiroshi’s outline hadn’t changed—tall, confident, silver streak in his dark hair, the signature scarf still tied loosely around his arm.
Tenchi’s voice cracked. “Hiroshi?”
No answer.
Only the threads pulled tighter between them.
A whisper danced on the wind.
“Red Rover, Red Rover…
Send the brother over.”
Meanwhile—outside the Layer, Maya and Riku prepared their entry.
But the line refused them.
Every time they stepped forward, it looped them back to where they started.
“We’re being blocked,” Maya hissed.
Riku frowned, scanning the space. “There’s a dual-layer pocket here. He’s in… but we’re stuck between the folds.”
Maya looked down at the baton Saya left behind.
It began to glow faintly.
“Of course,” she whispered. “It’s a key.”
She pressed the broken halves together—light erupted from the center.
A fissure opened in the air. Not a doorway.
A tear.
“Let’s go,” Maya said.
They jumped through.
On the other side, the landscape was even more distorted.
The red threads were tighter here—slicing through tree trunks, floating through the sky, binding shadows that moved wrong.
In the center of it all stood the anchor.
A child’s backpack.
Torn open, stuffed with red cloth, and stitched shut with human hair.
Around it: dolls made of rope and fingernails.
Beside it: a whistle. Rusted. Blood-streaked.
Maya gagged. “This anchor… it’s feeding on memories.”
Riku knelt down, pulling out a scanning spike.
“It’s not just feeding,” he muttered. “It’s storing.”
Tenchi moved slowly through the field.
Hiroshi’s form shimmered with every step.
He looked real.
Too real.
The threads reached for Tenchi’s limbs as he walked, tugging gently—as if asking him to let go.
But he kept moving forward.
Until Hiroshi finally turned.
And smiled.
Part V – The Brother Over the Line
Hiroshi’s smile hadn’t changed.
Confident.
Easygoing.
The kind of grin that used to calm Tenchi down after a failed mission. That made dying kids laugh even when they were scared out of their minds.
But this wasn’t him.
It couldn’t be.
Because Hiroshi’s eyes glowed red now.
And threads of silk spilled from his fingertips.
Tenchi didn’t draw his blade.
Not yet.
“Is it really you?” he asked.
It tilted its head.
“You never came for me.”
Tenchi took a slow step forward, fists clenched.
“I tried.”
“You were supposed to cross the line.”
Tenchi flinched.
Because that was true.
In Hiroshi’s final mission—Red Rover’s first known appearance—he’d gone in solo.
And Tenchi had stayed behind to manage overwatch.
By the time they realized the Layer was recursive…
It was too late.
Back near the anchor, Maya slammed her foot against a tangled vine of red silk as Riku worked on disabling the thread-detection glyphs binding the anchor’s base.
“This anchor is layered in sacrificial logic, Maya. It’s designed to continue until it takes more than it gives.”
Maya’s eyes widened. “That’s why it didn’t end when Saya died.”
“She saved the kids—but not herself. That wasn’t enough.”
Maya exhaled slowly. “Then this game... it’s looking for balance.”
Riku nodded grimly.
“And Tenchi’s about to tip the scale.”
Inside the Layer, the Hiroshi Echo extended both arms.
From his chest, a red thread unraveled—slithering through the grass, curling like a leash toward Tenchi’s foot.
“Red Rover, Red Rover,” the echo whispered,
“Bring your regret over.”
Tenchi didn’t hesitate this time.
He drew his blade and they clashed.
Echo Hiroshi, known as the Remnant of Regret, is a cursed manifestation born from Tenchi’s unresolved guilt and memory. At first glance, he mirrors the real Hiroshi in form—same stance, same voice—but his movements are too smooth, too hollow, like a memory stuck on loop. His eyes, once bright, now reflect a silvery emptiness, and a thin red thread of regret trails endlessly from his wrist, unattached to anything. His combat style mimics Hiroshi’s original techniques but twists them into cursed distortions, meant to overwhelm not through strength, but emotional torment.
A burst of inverted red light trailed its palm, leaving behind fractured space, like cracked glass mid-air.
The strike shattered the ground behind Tenchi, exploding in a spiraling wave of ghostly chains.
Tenchi blocked the first blow, skidding back—but not before one chain clipped his shoulder.
He hissed and Hiroshi swings were faster.
The Echo appeared behind him instantly.
A double-strike slash aimed to break Tenchi’s guard from both sides.
Tenchi twisted mid-air, flipped through the attack and retaliated.
“You’re mimicking his moves…but you don't know the one I taught him." Tenchi yelled.
Tenchi vanished, then reappeared with an explosive ripple——behind the Echo.
The Echo turned too late.
"Hiroshi learned this at dawn.”
“You’re just a bad memory pretending to be my brother.”
Tenchi slashed upward—
The arc of void energy cleaved the Echo in half, turning it into a swirl of black petals.
But it didn’t vanish. Not yet.
The petals reformed.
The Echo screamed And unleashed a final move on tenchi.
The battlefield folded.
Suddenly, Tenchi was standing in a memory.
A younger version of himself.
Hiroshi alive. Laughing. Sparring.
Then dying.
Over and over again.
A curse loop—designed to trap Tenchi in the moment he failed.
But Tenchi planted his blade into the ground.
"That regret isn’t yours to twist.”
His blade pulsed.
And all at once—
the illusion shattered.
Back at the anchor, Riku shouted, “NOW!”
Maya stabbed her charm into the backpack and channeled raw spirit energy.
The dolls screamed.
The whistle shattered.
The red threads pulled tight—then snapped.
Tenchi stood above the weakened Echo and a thread coming from his chest, his sword glowing with restraint.
“If you were really him… you would’ve told me to keep going.”
He ended it with a final, clean strike—
Activated Skill: Echo Sever – End of Line
The cursed copy crumbled into mist.
The fog faded. The boundary snapped.
Tenchi looked up at the broken sky.
“I’m still walking forward, Hiroshi.”
Part VI – Epilogue: Red Line Severed
Back in the real world, the red line across the Sunnybridge playground vanished.
Not slowly.
Not gradually.
Just gone—like it had never existed.
The sky brightened.
The world snapped back.
In the aftermath, Tenchi sat on the edge of the slide—head down, blade still humming in his lap.
Riku stood nearby, tinkering with a small recording orb, trying to retrieve any last traces of the Layer’s inner echoes.
Maya approached, quietly.
“He felt so real...,” Tenchi murmured.
Maya placed a hand gently on his shoulder.
“That was Hiroshi, wasn’t it?”
Tenchi didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
She already knew.
Later, in the Sanctuary’s quiet records chamber, Maya placed two items into the official archive folder:
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Saya Lin’s broken baton, sealed in crystal.
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A recording shard recovered by Riku—an audio echo of Hiroshi whispering a name.
"Red Rover… wasn’t the first.”
Maya blinked. “Then what was?”
Tenchi closed the file.
And said only one word:
“Hopscotch.”
? Game: Red Rover
? Entity: The Red Coach (Rover-class Layer Phantom)
? Anchor: Child’s backpack (thread-wrapped, memory-stabilized)
? Survivors: 3 (Children rescued by Saya), 3 Game Enders (Tenchi, Maya, Riku)
? Casualties: 1 (Saya Lin – Deceased in action)
? Status: Game Terminated – Layer collapsed
? Notes:
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Saya Lin showed exceptional courage in isolating the entity and protecting non-combatants.
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The Layer’s echo used a constructed projection of Hiroshi, but message transmission at anchor destruction implies partial consciousness.
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Red Rover confirmed to be part of an interconnected sequence of “Thread Games.”
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Next known connection: Hopscotch Grid – previously marked as low threat. Now upgraded to Priority Class A.
Maya’s Note: “She wasn’t one of the legends. But she died like one.”
Tenchi’s Note: “We were never supposed to cross the line. We were supposed to cut it.”