Chapter 161 – "The Mirror of Forgotten Souls"
The wind did not howl in the Abyssal Vault. It wept.
Each gust carried an emotion not its own — the sadness of a mother who lost her child in a reality that no longer existed, the triumph of a hero whose name had been devoured by time, the laughter of a child who never was. This place, hidden beyond the folds of the last multiverse and deeper than the Planes of Concept, was where forgotten souls lingered — echoes of beings who once mattered, now unmoored from memory, history, and meaning.
And in its core stood a mirror.
It wasn't made of glass. Nor silver. Nor the atoms of any known world. It was made of silence — compressed into a polished surface that reflected not form, but essence. It was called many things throughout infinite timelines: The Mirror of Forgotten Souls, The Eidolon Gate, That Which Remembers What All Else Forgets.
And today, someone stood before it.
Athan stepped through the gateway between uncreated stars, having torn his way across the Veil of Deathless Thought. His boots left no imprint, for the ground here did not obey the laws of reality. Even the concepts of gravity, up, or linear time bent around this realm. Here, everything was soul.
As he neared the mirror, the Void began to shift. The air shimmered not with heat, but with unfulfilled destinies — each moment like the moment before a word is spoken, the tension of a choice never made.
He was not alone.
Behind him floated Myelion, the Dreamsmith of the Ninth Creation, whose body was woven from endless dreams and unspoken prayers. Her presence was delicate, but her Authority was absolute.
To Athan's left hovered Xorion, the Last Whisperer of Extinction, a being who spoke only in truths so devastating they unraveled the threads of causality.
Even these exalted beings stood in silence, reverence, perhaps even fear.
Because the Mirror did not judge — it remembered.
And in that memory, even the Supreme Beings saw themselves not as what they had become, but as what they could never be again.
Athan stepped forward and gazed into the mirror.
What he saw was not his face — but a child, alone in a burning village, crying out to a sky that did not answer. He saw a boy choosing not to kill a monster, only for the monster to kill again. He saw a young man who loved a girl he would never meet in this lifetime, not because fate was cruel, but because she had ceased to exist before his timeline was born.
He saw every version of himself — weak, terrified, hopeful, broken.
And then he saw none of them.
Because what the mirror ultimately showed... was the void at the heart of identity.
"You must be emptied to be filled," said a voice beside him.
It was The Librarian of Null, an ageless keeper of the fragments stored within the Mirror. She was blindfolded with threads of pasts untold, her fingers always hovering an inch from the mirror's edge, never touching, yet always knowing.
"You have come far, Thronebearer," she whispered, her voice like brittle paper in the wind. "But until you know who you are without memory, without name, without form, you are not ready for the final ascent."
Athan said nothing.
Instead, he walked forward.
The Mirror pulsed. Not light. Not color. A pulse of being — a thrum that made the Supreme Beings flinch.
Then, the surface rippled, not as water but as narrative. And it opened.
Athan stepped inside.
—
Inside the Mirror:
There was no up or down. No inside or outside. Athan fell not through space but through perspective, each moment shifting the lens through which he understood himself. Here, the forgotten souls were not ghosts — they were fragments of reality once discarded. Concepts that were deemed unworthy by their creators. Syllables that never became names. Heroes who died before their story began.
And they all saw him.
They whispered as he passed, not in malice, but in longing.
You are the one who walks without being.
You are the one we almost were.
Finish what we could not.
Their whispers clung to him, not as curses, but as memories begging to live again.
Then, a figure emerged from the shimmer — tall, impossible, faceless yet familiar.
It was Athan.
But not him.
This version wore no crown, no Authority, no divinity. He was... mortal. Bleeding. Ash-covered. And his eyes held the sorrow of having remembered everything.
They stood before one another.
One, a Supreme Being whose steps redefined existence.
The other, a forgotten fragment of self — perhaps the last remnant of who he had been before the Throne had chosen him.
And in that moment, they merged.
Not in body.
Not in soul.
But in truth.
Athan remembered.
He remembered the pain that made him powerful. The choices that shattered him into possibility. The fear that forged his will. And for the first time, he embraced the brokenness as a strength rather than a wound.
When he emerged from the Mirror, he did not glow.
He did not need to.
The cosmos trembled.
The Supreme Beings turned their gaze toward him.
The stars dimmed, not in dread, but in awe.
And the Librarian of Null spoke once more, this time with a voice of thunder:
"The one who remembers what even the gods forgot… walks again."
—
Far beyond…
In the Hidden Realms of Origin, where the Creators of Creators slumbered, an eye blinked open.
In the Archive of Endings, a page began to write itself.
And in the core of the Thrones Beyond Reality, a throne long shattered began to reassemble — not of gold, nor light, but of memory.
Athan did not claim it.
Not yet.
First, he would find the others.
The Forgotten.
The Fragmented.
The Never-Was.
And he would remind them:
"You were always real — even if no one remembered."
Coming Next: Chapter 162 – "The Throne of Broken Names"