The quiet was as thick as air, as heavy as if even time dared not breathe.
Aidan blinked again. The voice was still, but the mark on his hand remained—a gentle pattern like a fractured clock, black and faintly luminous. It did not hurt, but it vibrated gently, as if it were. waiting.
He stood in the middle of the muddy clearing in the forest, staring at his hand. Something had moved—something old, maybe broken, maybe dangerous.
He didn't know.
But he'd lived through worse.
Aidan drank in his surroundings. The trees were heavy all around him, their bases twisted and blackened at the edges as though they'd been burned years earlier. The sky was a dull slate color, as though the heavens above refused to beam down upon this ground.
No clear path. Just wild undergrowth, snapped branches, and the distant sound of water running far off.
Survive first. Ask questions later.
He breathed slowly and pushed forward.
Crunch.
He had stepped on something dry. He knelt, brushing aside leaves, and a bone was there. Human. Clean. Whitened by time.
He stood again, this time cautiously.
Where he was—it was not wild. It was perverse. Distorted. And yet, something within him stirred, not in fear, but in recognition.
As if… the land remembered him once before.
Or he remembered it.
The spot on his palm pulsed once, and a gentle blue light followed the veins up his arm. No pain. Just cold stinging.
A floating screen coalesced before him, as insubstantial as fog.
[System booting…]
[Error: Corrupted Core Detected.]
[Fallback Protocol Activated.]
[Welcome back, User ID: ███████]
[Would you like to access memories? Y/N]
He didn't reach for it.
He couldn't.
The memories it gave. they were not his. Or maybe they were. Maybe from before death.
The one he barely remembered.
Instead of answering, he pushed forward again, brushing aside vines that entwined around him like clutching hands.
Behind, the screen flashed once—and vanished.
The world was still.
But the mark wasn't.
And neither were the questions.