For the first time since I arrived in this broken world stitched together by whispers and war, I didn't want answers.
I wanted to hide.
After returning from the Rift, everything felt louder. The wind, the whispers, the way Elira's footsteps echoed down the corridor beside mine—it all felt like the world had shifted one click to the left. Like I was walking in a version of reality that looked the same but wasn't.
The air tasted different. The floor pulsed faintly beneath my boots. And the worst part?
I remembered her face.
That girl.
The one who said she was me. Or that I had been her.
What does that even mean?
I sat alone in the recovery wing, body shivering despite the heat-stone beneath the cot. My fingers pressed into the skin just below my ribs, tracing the outer edge of the Voidbrand as it throbbed—not painfully, but… longingly. Like it was trying to pull something out of me that wasn't supposed to exist.
Rhys had left a few hours ago after checking my vitals and muttering something about "dimensional trauma" and "soul-layer scars." I barely heard him.
Elira, though—she stayed.
She didn't talk. Didn't offer comfort or reassurance.
She just sat in the far corner of the room, sharpening her spear with the kind of quiet focus that looked like she was trying to keep her thoughts from leaking out.
"I saw her," I finally said, voice cracked and thin.
She looked up.
"In the Rift. The girl from my memory. She called me Kaito."
Elira narrowed her eyes. "That's your name, isn't it?"
I shook my head. "Not to her. To her, that name... belonged to the version of me that made a mistake."
A silence fell between us. Not cold, but heavy. A stillness that made the truth echo louder.
"She said I chose to be rewritten."
At that, Elira stopped sharpening.
Her hands lowered the blade. Her eyes, however, didn't meet mine.
"You understand what that means, right?" I asked.
"It means," she said slowly, "you wanted to forget something so badly that you tore yourself out of your own timeline."
I swallowed.
The weight of that hit me like a punch.
I hadn't been taken from my world. I had fled it.
But why?
What could I have possibly done that made me choose to become this broken, fragmented version of myself?
I didn't have answers.
But I had more memories now. Like puzzle pieces warping back into place.
A room full of gold threads.
A voice asking me questions with no words.
A trial.
A mistake.
A door.
"Have you ever wanted to vanish?" I asked Elira suddenly.
She looked surprised.
"No," she replied simply. "But I've wanted to be someone else."
That answer hit harder than I expected.
"I think that's what I did," I said, more to myself than to her. "I tried to stop being me. I tried to erase the guilt… or the weight… or whatever it was I couldn't carry anymore."
Elira stood and walked over to the window. The outpost's outer field shimmered beyond, dotted with distant flickers—warding flames, magic sigils, and sentinels watching for Rift activity.
"You still don't remember what you ran from?"
"No."
She turned, and for a moment, I saw the cracks behind her usual calm.
"Good," she said.
I blinked. "Good?"
She nodded. "Because when people run from something that strong, it usually has teeth. And it never forgets."
Her words chilled me more than the wind outside ever could.
That night, sleep came like falling into ink.
No dreams.
Just darkness.
Until I opened my eyes and found myself standing beneath a sky that was neither night nor day—just a swirling canvas of colorless movement.
I was dreaming, but it felt more real than anything I'd seen in this world.
And standing ahead of me… was me.
Or rather—
A version of me.
Same height. Same eyes. But where my Voidbrand glowed faint purple, his burned with blue fire. He wore armor shaped like memory, a cloak of written language, and eyes that had seen too much.
"I remember now," he said.
My throat tightened. "Are you… who I used to be?"
He stepped closer. "I'm who you could still become."
Then, slowly, he raised a hand—and my surroundings shifted.
Suddenly, I was watching it happen.
I stood beside a world burning.
Cities crumbling under a collapsing sky.
A girl—her again—reaching out to me with half her face gone.
"You promised," she said. "You said we'd fix it."
And I… turned away.
I didn't try to save her.
I chose to leave.
The Rift opened beneath my feet in that memory, and I threw myself into it like a coward escaping the weight of an oath.
Back in the dreamspace, the armored version of me watched with disappointment.
"You weren't a villain," he said. "You were just afraid."
Tears welled in my eyes.
"Why did I forget?" I asked.
"Because remembering would mean facing what you let die."
His hand extended toward me. "But it's not too late."
"For what?"
"To become the version of yourself that doesn't run."
I woke gasping, sweat pouring down my back.
The Voidbrand screamed against my skin, brighter than ever before. My breath came in ragged bursts. My hands were shaking.
I remembered.
Not all of it. But enough.
I hadn't just fled.
I had betrayed someone.
Elira burst into the room, weapon drawn. "What happened?!"
I looked up at her, hollow.
"I remembered why the world rejected me," I whispered.
Her eyes locked onto mine.
"And?"
"And I deserved it."
But deep in the pit of my soul, beneath all the shame and regret, something else had woken up:
Resolve.
If I broke reality once…I would put it back together.