The photograph remained on the tablet screen in complete silence; Seraphina stared at it without blinking. The hospital room looked exactly the way she remembered it from the first timeline: dim overhead lighting, rain against the windows, white sheets stained faintly near the edges, the shape of the medical equipment beside the bed, and someone standing partially obscured in the shadows near her bedside, someone who looked exactly like Lucien.
Elias stepped closer first. "What the hell is that?"
Lucien took the tablet slowly from Seraphina's hands; his expression hardened immediately. "Metadata."
Elias moved beside him and opened the image properties quickly. "No embedded timestamp," he said after several seconds. "Routing source masked again."
Seraphina finally spoke, though her voice sounded distant even to herself. "That room never existed in this timeline."
Lucien looked toward her immediately. "What exactly are we seeing?"
She swallowed once. "A memory."
