“There are places in this world where memory grows.
Not in the brain. Not in the page.
But in space itself.
It records us. Mimics paths not taken.
But whose memory is this?
And if I saw a version of myself that never opened that letter…
…does that mean he still exists somewhere?
Or was that just another lie carved into the world by a frightened god?”
They buried Tomas at dawn.
No priest. No hymns.
Aldric had done this before.
Just dirt. Just silence. The kind of weeping that settles in the lungs like smoke.
The square was empty again.
Aldric had stopped speaking. He hadn’t written. He hadn’t eaten.
He stood by the grave until the sun began to rise, then lowered his hand into the soil and whispered something he didn’t understand himself.
And when Veylor approached, armor clinking softly, Aldric turned with eyes that had stopped being afraid.
Not empty.
Just past full.
They left that night.
No goodbyes. No packed meals. No final words from the villagers.
Veylor loaded the horse. Aldric carried only one bag: a notebook, a dead bird in a sealed pouch that never seemed to decay, and two pages of Resonance scripts with bloodstains on the corner.
They crossed through the north woods in silence.
Solaris Year 3,907 – Magnum Imperium Vires.
Bohr Forest, Eastern Stripes
No records found.
"Where are we going?" Aldric asked.
"East," Veylor replied.
"Why?"
"To meet an acquaintance of mine."
That was all the knight said.
They avoided roads. Veylor burned the maps. They navigated by memory, instinct, stars. The farther they went, the less influenced the world became.
Bohr Forest was called a "quiet zone."
But quiet was wrong.
Branches cracked. Leaves stirred. Wind moved. And if you listened too long, you’d hear it:
a low, wooden thrum.
Like the trees remembered a song they never finished.
They passed through ruins. Villages smothered in moss.
Aldric stopped once, brushing stone clean. A Dominion Eye lay beneath, split like a wounded star.
This place had once built to worship Soviras.
The back of his neck tingled.
It was here that Veylor told Aldric they would stop.
“There’s something buried here.”
He said it like stating the sky was blue.
They found it on the second day.
An overgrown tower. Short, wide, built of unfamiliar black stone, posing in the moonlight. It didn’t belong, and yet, it fit.
They didn’t knock. Veylor walked to the rusted door and pressed his hand to the metal. Something clicked. The door opened.
Inside, everything was cold.
Not freezing. Just absent.
No dust. No webs. No decay.
Like time itself forgot this place existed.
The walls were lined with bookcases, but they were empty. Not empty like ransacked. They were filled with books, but empty like no book had ever existed. Hollow spines lined the shelves. Fakes. Placeholders.
The whole place whispered “library,” but nothing was written.
Then they found it.
The tablet.
Set in the center of the room, like a tombstone or an altar. Weathered, stone, humming with a deep internal rhythm. The carvings had eroded, but Aldric could still make out the faint shape of a wheel. Nine symbols surrounded it. None repeated.
“What is this place?” he asked, stepping forward.
Veylor didn’t answer.
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Instead, he knelt beside the stone and brushed away moss with one hand.
“I thought it was lost.”
“To who?”
“To time,” Veylor said.
Aldric reached out.
Veylor blocked him with one arm.
“Don’t touch that.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not supposed to.”
That night, Aldric pretended to sleep.
But around midnight, he heard armor shift.
The scrape of boot on stone.
He cracked one eye open.
Veylor stood before the stone tablet like he’d done it a hundred times before.
He peeled off one gauntlet, touched the cold surface, and murmured under his breath.
“Let the wheel turn,
Let the names be remembered,
Let what is lost be read again.
Inanimate treasures of Sovereigns…
Open.”
Aldric had been watching from the stairwell, hidden.
But curiosity got the better of him.
He stepped forward, just a little too close.
A mistake.
Flash.
Aldric didn’t even have time to scream.
His mind ripped open like wet paper.
Then—
Nothing.
He wasn’t standing.
He wasn’t falling.
There was no floor. No light. No sound. Just—
Eryndor.
Not broken. Not burning.
A hallway. His hallway. The Academy’s north wing. Polished floors. A brass chandelier overhead. Daylight spilling through windows.
Eryndor.
Whole.
Again.
Then he saw himself.
Nineteen. Confident. Bright-eyed. Holding the sealed letter.
This time, Aldric didn’t call out.
But the boy looked up anyway.
And frowned.
“I’m not you,” he said.
Then everything split.
The world unraveled.
Aldric stumbled through the memory-space, watching time peel open like a book being shredded mid-chapter. Dozens of Aldrics. Hundreds. Thousands.
One burned the letter without reading.
One never received it at all.
One died too young.
One lived too long.
Some who were heroes.
Some who were tyrants.
Some who never meant anything to anyone.
Every version of him that could have been.
Every version that almost was.
And then the voice:
“How long will you keep running?”
It didn’t come from anywhere.
It just was.
Then another flash.
He snapped awake on the stone floor, gasping like a man drowned. His tunic was soaked with sweat.
Across the fire, Veylor sat. No helmet. No blade in hand.
"Still breathing?"
Aldric could barely speak. “What—what was that?”
“You got too close.”
“You knew—”
“No,” Veylor said. “I only accounted for me.”
Aldric stared.
Then stood.
Walked toward the tablet again.
Veylor moved fast. Grabbed his arm.
“I said no.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
Veylor was quiet.
“It’s memory,” he said.
“Whose?”
“…Yes.”
Aldric’s hand curled into a fist.
He wanted to hit something.
Wanted to scream. Cry. Tear pages from his notebook.
Instead, he sat.
“You lied,” he said.
“We’re meeting someone,” Veylor said. “Just not yet.”
Silence.
"...Why did it show me that?" Aldric asked.
Veylor took a long breath.
“I don’t know.”
Bullshit.
“You’ve been here before.”
“Yes.”
"You used it before."
A pause.
"Yes."
"Why?"
And for a long moment, he didn’t speak.
The fire popped between them.
Eventually, he said:
“You ever think about what defines a person?”
Aldric blinked. “...What?”
“I’m serious. Ever thought about what makes you you?”
Aldric nodded slowly.
“All the time.”
“Name it.”
“My choices.”
“Try again.”
“My memories.”
“Which ones?”
Aldric hesitated.
“…The ones I remember.”
“Perhaps, but...” Veylor turned. “You ever forget the face of someone you knew?”
“…Maybe.”
“Were you still you, after that?”
Aldric didn’t answer.
Veylor’s voice was softer now. Not tired. Just thin.
“Suppose there was a man. You killed him. But somehow, he got back up.”
“Alright. Immortality. What about it?”
“Useful power to have, right?”
“Definitely.”
“Now take something away. Every time he revives, he appears somewhere random. Could be in a city. Could be in the middle of nowhere.”
Aldric nodded slowly. “Annoying. But still immortal.”
“Alright. Take something else away. Each time he revives, he loses all memory. Clean slate. Wakes up a new person. Knows nothing.”
“…Then that’s not immortality anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no continuity. No self. That’s just dying. Being replaced.”
“The body’s intact,” Veylor said, quiet.
Aldric frowned. “So you think a person is their memories?”
“You tell me.”
A beat.
“If a man forgets everything he’s ever done,” Veylor asked, “everything he’s ever believed, everyone he’s ever loved... Does he stop being him?”
Aldric stared at the fire.
“I don’t know.”
Veylor’s eyes didn’t leave the flame.
“But I do,” he said.
“I’ve died.”
Aldric looked up, heart catching. “...What?”
“I’ve died,” Veylor repeated, softer.
“I used to think I was a man. A soldier. A friend. A cause. A shield.”
He looked down at his scarred hands.
“But when everything else is stripped away… what remains?”
“…I don’t know,” Aldric admitted.
He rubbed his temple.
He held up a hand, as if counting.
“The memory of my brother’s laugh. Gone.
The smell of our house when it rained. Gone.
The lullaby my mother sang when I was six. Gone.
I knew they happened.
I simply am unable to remember.
And each one took a piece of me with it.”
The fire popped.
Aldric stared.
Then:
“Does that mean you’re not… you anymore?”
Veylor shrugged.
“I still wear his armor.”
The fire burned to embers.
Aldric sat for a long while after.
He opened his journal.
And, with trembling hands, wrote:
Journal Entry #391
“What remains of us when memory dies?
Are we bodies wearing borrowed names?
Or echoes rehearsing the same performance, hoping someone’s still watching?”
“If immortality means forgetting who I was,
then I would rather be temporary.
At least fear is proof I was real.”
He lay back.
Stared at the tower ceiling.
The flame died.
But he didn’t sleep.
Not yet.
And when he did…
He dreamed.
He didn’t remember of what.
It was unremarkable.
Just like all the others.
By morning, Veylor was already packed.
“We're heading to a city called Calvain,” he said.
“Why?”
Veylor tossed him a sealed scroll.
Aldric opened it.
blueprints—no, Schematics. Scrawled diagrams of something vast. Labeled in shorthand he couldn’t read. But one phrase caught his eye:
“M-PUNCTURE INVERSION FRAME”
PROJECT SOLACE—DECOMMISSIONED
AUTHORIZATION: TYR#9982-R
Aldric’s stomach dropped.
“This is…”
“Engineer’s code,” Veylor said. “Only one man alive could draft this and survive the consequences.”
Aldric’s voice cracked.
“You said we were going to meet an acquaintance.”
Veylor turned, expression unreadable.
“I did.”
He walked away.
Aldric stared down at the scroll.
The wheels had begun to turn.
Again.