The journey east began at dawn, though the sun barely cut through the high clouds over Outpost Thirion. A veil of mist covered the earth as our team of five marched past the final perimeter gate, watched by sentries and runed turrets alike.
Elira walked ahead, her steps crisp, spear strapped diagonally across her back.
Rhys stayed behind me, muttering softly as he adjusted his scanner.
Beside us, two additional Riftwatch soldiers—silent, disciplined—joined the escort. Their presence wasn't for protection. It was surveillance. Insurance. If I lost control, they were expected to end me before I caused another Hollow Glade.
I didn't blame them.
Part of me agreed.
The Forgotten Spires weren't forgotten because of time.
They were erased.
According to old Riftwatch logs, the region had once been home to a major Arcanet relay tower—one that transmitted across realms, not just distances. But during the first Riftfall, the entire communication grid there had blinked out and never returned. No scouts came back. No images survived. The region was labeled "Void-Touched" and abandoned.
Now we were heading into it.
I expected ruin.
What I found was... beautiful.
In a way only the broken can be.
The first tower emerged from the horizon like a stone fang, half-swallowed by earth and vines. Its surface shimmered, not with light, but with the absence of it—a shifting distortion, like heat haze on black glass.
Rhys scanned it silently.
"No corruption signature," he murmured. "But it's not stable either. Rift energy levels are surging and collapsing—like something's breathing."
Elira turned to me. "Feel anything?"
I did.
Not pain.
Not darkness.
But familiarity.
Like the air remembered me.
I stepped forward without answering.
The base of the tower was covered in glyphs. Not any modern script, nor anything recorded in the Arcanet codex. But I recognized them.
Not from reading.
From memory.
I raised my hand, and the Voidbrand lit up, lines of blue threading like rivers across my palm.
The glyphs responded.
They glowed—dim at first, then brighter, until the entire base of the tower pulsed with rhythm, a heartbeat syncing to mine.
Elira drew her spear. "Kaito…"
"I'm not doing this," I said. "It's... responding to me."
Then the tower opened.
Not with doors.
With sound.
It was like a melody made of thunder and whispers.
A low, resonant tone that moved through bone and breath and thought. My vision wavered, not from dizziness—but from shifting.
For a second—I wasn't standing in front of a broken spire.
I was within it.
Whole.
Golden.
Alive.
And I was someone else.
A man in a long white coat. Surrounded by others. Engineers, mages, beings I couldn't name.
"We built this to protect them," a voice whispered.
"You built it to trap them," another spat.
Then—
Collapse.
I stumbled back, gasping.
The vision ended.
The tower returned to its ruined state.
Elira caught me. "What happened?"
"I think…" I breathed. "This place used to be a sanctuary. Before the Fall."
Rhys knelt beside one of the glyph panels. "There's still power in the network. Dormant, but not dead. Kaito, if you can interface with this—"
"You want me to risk merging with a collapsed Arcanet node just to get a readout?"
He shrugged. "You've done worse."
He wasn't wrong.
I placed my palm against the glyphs again.
This time, I invited the link.
The Voidbrand shimmered, and for a moment—my thoughts weren't mine alone.
:: Connection Requested ::User: [REDACTED]Status: Voidbonded – Tier 2 Access Restored
:: SYSTEM MESSAGE ::— WARNING: You are interfacing with a degraded echo of the Pre-Rift Network.— Archive integrity compromised.— Would you like to access memory cache YN-0947?
[Y/N]
I chose Y.
And the world bent.
Flashes.
Not memories—recordings.
A girl. Aya. Younger.
Smiling, carrying scrolls.
"Kaito, you promised we'd visit the Spires together!"
A man's voice. My voice. Laughing.
"I'm already breaking curfew just bringing you here, Aya."
A warm moment. Simple. Before everything shattered.
Another image.
The sky cracking.
A Rift appearing above the central tower.
Screams.
Fleeing mages.
Aya, pulling on my coat.
"Kaito, it's too late—go!"
"No."
But then—darkness.
A cut.
I pulled out of the vision.
I was shaking.
Rhys steadied me, but his eyes were wide.
"You saw before the Riftfall," he whispered. "This tower has an echo of the original collapse."
"I saw Aya," I said. "Alive. Whole. Before I abandoned her."
Elira's voice was tight. "This confirms what we feared."
I looked at her.
"The Fall wasn't an accident," she said. "It was engineered."
That night, we camped in silence beneath the tower's long shadow.
The two Riftwatch guards kept their distance.
Elira sat beside me at the edge of the clearing, sharpening her spear, her movements slow, precise.
"You remember more every time you touch those ruins," she said.
"Yeah."
"Do you remember why you were important?"
I stared at the fire.
"I think I was a builder," I said. "Not just of towers or tech. Of the system."
She met my eyes. "Then someone erased you for a reason."
I didn't disagree.
I just wondered what the price would be to remember the rest.
The next morning, Rhys found a deeper anomaly in the tower base—an entry to an underground facility sealed behind a biometric lock.
"Guess who it responds to?" he said, handing me the scanner.
I rolled my eyes. "Great. More secrets."
He tapped the console. "It'll open, but you have to want it to."
I frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It's keyed to intent. Not just touch. You need to remember who you were."
I hesitated.
Then closed my eyes.
Aya's smile. Her laughter.
The sky breaking.
My failure.
My promise.
"I'm not that person anymore," I whispered.
"But I will be again."
I placed my hand on the console.
The door opened.
We descended into darkness.
Lights flickered on as we passed—faint blue glowstones, old and dust-choked but still functional. The air was thin, sterile, and far too cold. A massive chamber lay ahead, filled with empty pods, shattered canisters, rusted armor suits, and one massive machine in the center.
Rhys whistled low. "Voidgate engine. A working one."
Elira's eyes narrowed. "That's pre-Rift tech. Dangerous pre-Rift tech."
"I think it's more than that," I murmured.
Because I remembered it.
I built this.
Or helped to.
And I knew what it was for.
"It was meant to rewrite reality," I said.
Elira spun to me. "What?"
"Not just open Rifts. Not just travel. It was built to reshape. To fix what was broken. Or to erase what couldn't be saved."
Rhys's voice was hushed. "So you're telling me the first Riftfall…"
"Was a failed overwrite," I said. "Someone used this. Or broke it trying to."
We stared at the machine.
Then Elira whispered the thought we were all thinking.
"If we restore this… we could undo everything."
I stared at my reflection in the glass casing.
And saw not a savior.
Not a soldier.
Just a man chasing the shadow of who he used to be.