Her mother's voice sometimes echoed on the wind. Not like a supernatural echo, but like a habit of the soul. Elia walked with her gaze downcast, lost in thoughts she wasn't sure were memories or invented fragments to avoid feeling alone. The sky, if it could be called that, was an endless dark sheet, crisscrossed by golden lines like broken veins holding up a world on the verge of decomposition.
Dréaventh, the Ninth Universe.
Here, nothing was solid. Nothing was constant. Humanity had been reduced to a narrative necessity, a flicker sustained by stories that couldn't stop. People only existed if there was a narrative to justify their place. To die was not to disappear from the body, but to unravel from the story.
The golden threads were just that: stories sustained by emotions, memories, sacrifices. Each one represented a living person. If a thread broke, no one remembered. No one knew. No one felt. It was as if they had never been there.
Elia had witnessed it once. A child, sitting alone under a fragmented tower, crying because he had forgotten his sister. He knew he'd had one, he felt it, but he couldn't remember her face, her voice, or even her name. Minutes later, his thread began to weaken, and he was absorbed by the darkness of the sky.
She didn't want to end up like that.
"Live, Elia."
Those were her mother's last words to her.
It wasn't a cry of farewell or a desperate plea. It was an order charged with love and resignation. Her mother had understood something Elia was just beginning to glimpse: that in Dréaventh, staying alive was resisting oblivion.
And to resist, she had to have a story.
She clutched the pendant around her neck. A broken, fragmented piece, made of an illegible word that sometimes glowed with blue light. It was the only thing she had brought from her home, or what was left of it. She didn't know its meaning, but her mother had forced her never to lose it.
"How can I live if I don't know who I am?" she murmured.
No one answered. Only the crunch of broken pages beneath her feet. Elia walked along a suspended bridge made of paper, each sheet written with faded ink. Some pages were blank. Others had letters she didn't understand. But she felt they all formed part of something larger: an unfinished story.
Hers.
She remembered a scene that returned to her with less and less clarity each time. A house. Laughter. A light rain hitting the windows. Her mother cooking and humming an ancient melody. Elia running with a book in her hand, telling her something about a goddess who forged stars. And suddenly... silence.
Then, fire.
And then, emptiness.
Since that day, Elia had learned not to trust memory. Some things changed shape without warning. Names were rewritten. Faces were erased. Only the feeling persisted: sadness, loss, promise.
Now, before her, a gigantic structure rose, cutting through the darkness like an infinite spear. The Tower. It had no defined shape. It was all possible shapes. An amalgamation of human stories transformed into levels. Each floor represented a story lived, dreamed, or feared by humanity.
A mechanical voice, like that of an emotionless narrator, activated.
[Tower identified: Memory Core 1 – New Bearers' Entrance]
Participant without complete narrative detected. Dissolution risk: 89%.
Elia swallowed. She knew what that meant. If she failed to form her story by crossing that entrance... she would be forgotten. Even by herself.
"Mom..." she whispered, "you said to live. You didn't say how."
She took a step forward. The ground trembled slightly. The air changed. It was no longer a physical world, but a contained idea. She entered the Tower.
Everything was silent. The walls were broken mirrors. Each fragment showed a different scene. A woman screaming in the midst of war. A child stealing bread. A couple saying goodbye on the brink of disaster. All unknown, yet real.
Elia didn't know if she was welcome. She didn't even know if she should be there. But her thread was still intact. And that was enough.
Memory Fragment: "When everything falls apart, the only thing you can do is narrate it so you don't forget."
Elia moved forward. Each step was a decision. Each glance, a question. Who was she? Why did she deserve to exist? Did her story matter?
Voices began to reach her.
"You don't exist without context."
"The world forgets quickly."
"What if your life is just a drafting error?"
She ignored them. Or tried to.
Then, she saw something that stopped her.
A figure sitting in the middle of the hallway. It was an old woman, weaving golden threads with her fingers. But they weren't new threads. They were broken fragments. Dead stories.
"Hello," Elia said, softly.
The old woman looked at her. She had ink eyes.
"You don't have a story yet," she said. "But you have a crack. And that's a beginning."
"A crack?"
"Yes. Where something hurts, something begins to be written."
Elia sat across from her.
"Do you remember who you were?"
"It doesn't matter. I became a weaver so I wouldn't disappear. And you... Do you want to live?"
"I don't know."
"Then you won't survive. Here, living isn't an impulse. It's a constant writing."
The old woman offered her a thread fragment. It was faint, almost invisible.
"Weave your story, child. Or oblivion will come."
Elia reached out. The thread stuck to her skin. She felt a slight burning sensation. As if an emotion too ancient wanted to awaken.
[Initial narrative link activated: Existence fragment detected]
The tower accepted her presence. For now.
The old woman disappeared. As if she had never been there.
Elia stood up, more confused than before. But she no longer felt the same inertia in her steps. She had started something. She didn't know what. Only that she had to continue.
She crossed the first threshold. A shapeless door. And behind it, the first story.
[Assigned file: Echoes of the Last Flame]
Before entering, she heard her mother's voice again:
"When the world forgets you, remember that you were mine. That's enough to start anew."
And she took the first step, not like someone fleeing, but like someone accepting that living hurts... but it makes it real.