"You'll break."
The Archivist technician didn't whisper it. He said it like a fact as he strapped Rael into the NeuroCore Harness — a spiked seat made from silver wires and live memory circuits. It looked like a throne built for ghosts. Rael didn't respond. He was busy staring at the swirling orb above his head — a compressed Echo Core, pulled from a collapsed realm and repurposed for simulation.
This wasn't a test.
It was a trap.
"Upload starting in 5... 4... 3…"
[ System Alert: Entering Simulated Memory Field – Level 0-BETA: 'Fractured Origin'
Warning: Subject's fragment is unstable. Probability of collapse: 71%]
When Rael opened his eyes, the world was broken. He stood in the middle of an ancient battlefield — sky fractured like shattered glass, ground floating in broken platforms. Ruins of cities drifted in the distance. Some on fire. Some frozen mid-destruction. And above it all… a second sun. Not bright.
But bleeding.
"Where… am I?"
His voice echoed. The moment he spoke, glyphs in the sky rearranged themselves — spelling words he couldn't read but somehow understood:
"この記憶は存在してはならない."
(Kono kioku wa sonzai shite wa naranai.)
"This memory should not exist."
Rael felt it before he heard it. The pressure. Someone else was here.
Or… something. From the smoke walked a child. Hair like fire. Eyes like shattered stars. And a blade so large, it scraped the ground behind her.
But her voice wasn't a child's.
"You shouldn't be here, Godkiller."
Rael stepped back. "Who are you?" She tilted her head. "I'm the memory of a war that never ended.
I'm what happens when too many truths collide."
She raised her blade. The world screamed. And Rael realized: This wasn't a training simulation.
This was a memory that had been sealed away — and the system had pulled it forward. The girl rushed forward — impossibly fast. Her blade swung wide, tearing through platforms like paper. Rael barely ducked. Sparks flew as stone and memory split apart.
He summoned his own sword — the violet-bladed Godkiller Shard — but it felt heavy. Sluggish.
[ "System Restriction: 60% Fragment Power Suppression Active."]
"You call that a weapon?" she growled, eyes glowing. "You don't even understand it yet!"
They clashed again. Her strength wasn't human. Every swing echoed with the grief of a forgotten age. Rael blocked once — twice — then was thrown backward, landing hard on a spiraling staircase made of glowing letters. Blood trickled from his lip.
"Why are you fighting me?" he coughed. "Because you carry the curse," she said, walking forward.
Her expression cracked — not with rage, but sorrow. "Do you even know what the Godkiller did? What he destroyed?"
Rael stared. "He erased our world. He didn't just kill gods — he erased everything that remembered them."
Suddenly, Rael understood. This wasn't an enemy. This was a casualty.
A memory echo of someone whose entire reality had been erased by the very fragment now fused to his soul.
"I'm sorry," Rael whispered. "But I didn't choose this." "No," she said. "But now you have to choose what comes next."
She raised her hand. The world stopped.
System Choice Prompt
🧠 [SELECT: Absorb vs. Isolate Memory]
Absorb: Inherit her skill — and her trauma. Isolate: Seal her memory — but leave her to fade.
Rael stared at the prompt. His fingers trembled. The girl knelt beside him.
"Please. If I fade… no one will remember we existed."
Rael looked into her flickering eyes. And chose.
[CHOICE MADE: ABSORB MEMORY]
"Confirming integration..."
"Warning: Memory source highly unstable. Side effects unpredictable."
"Proceeding anyway."
Rael closed his eyes. He expected pain. But what hit him was something worse — grief. A tidal wave of emotion swallowed his thoughts. Rage. Regret. Desperation. Not his own.
He wasn't absorbing a skill.
He was inviting a dying world to scream through him.
[MEMORY SYNC: 23%...]
He was no longer in the maze. He was standing on a balcony of a golden palace, fire raining from the sky.
Screams echoed in languages he couldn't name — yet he understood every one of them. Soldiers with burning spears fought gods made of glass. Towers collapsed in the distance. Rivers turned black. And above it all, the girl from before — younger, laughing — stood in sunlight that no longer existed.
Then...
BOOM.
A violet blade tore through the sky. The same blade Rael now carried. He saw it cleave through cities like books torn in half. He saw her fall — trying to protect a dying king.
And he felt it — that exact second when her world ceased to exist, because the Godkiller didn't just destroy gods… he erased everything that remembered them.
[MEMORY SYNC: COMPLETE]
Rael gasped and collapsed to his knees. His skin burned. Glyphs flared like they were being carved all over again. The floor of the simulation cracked — unable to hold the energy he now carried.
Skill Acquired: "Ashstep Style – Flame Memory Blade"
🔥 Type: Reality-Imprinted Combat Form
🔁 Passive: Each strike recalls a memory of destruction.
🧠 Side Effect: May trigger echo-emotion events (flashbacks, identity bleed)
Rael's hands trembled. He looked down at them — but they weren't his hands anymore. For a brief, terrifying second… he felt like her.
Her rage.
Her loss.
Her fire.
"Who… who am I now?" he whispered.
The system didn't answer. "You chose to carry it."
The voice came again — not external, but inside his skull. It wasn't the girl.
And it wasn't the Godkiller. It was the System. "Every memory you absorb leaves a mark. Skills are not spells. They are scars." "And you — Rael Veyar — you are now a scar bearer."
A new sigil etched itself into his palm. It shimmered for a second, then sunk beneath the skin. Then silence. The battlefield faded. The memory shattered.
When Rael opened his eyes, he was back in the Nexus chamber. Still strapped to the NeuroCore Harness. Sweat drenched his back. His pulse was racing. And someone was watching. The Archivist woman — the same one who'd nearly died in the van — stood in the shadows. She'd been monitoring the whole test. "Still alive," she said quietly.
Rael nodded. Her gaze lowered. "You chose to absorb it." "I had to." "No," she said. "You didn't."
A pause. She turned, but before leaving, she muttered something under her breath — half pity, half fear:
"They'll erase you before you break the system."
Somewhere else — deep beneath the Archive in a level sealed to all but one — the masked figure watched a new file load onto his private screen. Subject 313. Memory: Absorbed. Skill: Gained.
"He's accelerating," he whispered. "Good…"
He turned toward a cracked mirror. In it, his reflection flickered — not of a man, but of a memory still trying to remember what it once was. "But will you still be you… when I meet you again, Rael?"
Two days later. Rael stood before a ruined metro tunnel at the outskirts of Zeralith District. The night was eerily quiet. The air buzzed with static.
And in the sky above, a swirling black rift floated — like a bruise in the clouds. It was small, unstable. But undeniably an Echo Fracture.
His first mission.
Objective: Cleanse and collapse localized Echo Zone.
Reward: Rank evaluation upgrade + cognitive memory stabilizers.
Risk Level: C-Class.
But something felt wrong. This didn't feel like a C-class anomaly. Rael stepped forward, boots crunching over broken tiles and moss-covered rail lines. The system buzzed in his mind.
🧠 [Fragment Sync: Stable]
⚠️ [Memory Corruption: 3%]
🗡️ [Flame Memory Blade: Dormant]
"Just in and out," he muttered.
Inside, the world changed. The tunnel stretched too far — like space itself was folding. Old posters flickered with images that shouldn't exist. Soldiers in golden armor. Planets with triple moons. A child drawing the name Rael on the wall... in blood. "What the hell is this...?"
Suddenly, whispers crawled into his ears.
"Rael..."
"He's back..."
"The boy who killed time..."
Rael spun, sword summoned. But no one was there. Just broken shadows. Then — he saw it.
At the end of the corridor, behind a glass wall, stood a mirror. Old. Cracked. But glowing faintly. And inside that mirror…He saw himself. But it wasn't his reflection. It was Rael in a white cloak, smiling gently. Eyes soft. Younger. Innocent. The version of him before the Godkiller. "You're not supposed to be here," the reflection said.
Rael stepped back. "Who... what is this place?" "A prison," the mirror-Rael replied. "Built for a memory too dangerous to remember."
"What memory?"
The mirror cracked. And his own voice — deeper, older, colder — replied "Me."
The glass exploded, and something leapt out. It looked like Rael — same face, same voice — but darker. Shadow glyphs twisted across his skin. His smile was empty. Eyes pitch black. "You left me here," it said.
Rael raised his blade. "I don't know you." "Not yet," it whispered. "But you will. I'm what you become when you absorb too many memories and forget which ones were yours."
Then it moved. Faster than Rael expected. A punch — not to the body, but the mind. Rael screamed as images flooded in: Killing a king in a world made of sand. Burning a forest of children who couldn't forget. Standing over Kaen Myra's body… but she was laughing.
Rael fell to his knees. His sword flickered.
System Alert:[ Identity Interference Detected.
Host Neural Sync: 42%
Emergency Countermeasure: [Ashstep Blade – Override] ACTIVATED]
Suddenly, fire erupted around him — not normal fire, but memory flame, burning away fake memories. He slashed upward — blade cutting through reality. The shadow version of him recoiled, sizzling into smoke.
"You can't escape me," it snarled. "You are me."
Rael's eyes blazed silver. "Maybe." "But I decide what to remember."
He drove the blade forward — straight through his mirror self's chest. The echo screamed and burst into shards of glass, each whispering forgotten names.
The Echo Realm collapsed around him.
System Alert
✅ Mission Complete: Zone Cleansed
🧠 Memory Core Acquired: "Self Reflection (Sealed)"
🔒 Note: Memory Locked. Access Denied Until System Evolution Tier 2
Rael stepped out of the tunnel at dawn. Exhausted. Burned. Changed. The air was clean now. But in the sky, another small rift shimmered into existence — just for a second — then disappeared.
Rael looked at his palm. The new glyph pulsed faintly. He whispered: "How many versions of me will I have to kill… before I remember who I really am?"