Elias was there—again.
---
The apartment.
The dim light.
The rain on the windows.
And that man, standing by the glass—unmoving. Silent. Like a shadow pretending to be human.
A ghost.
A mirror.
A warning.
And this time, Elias could feel something else beneath the dream.
A door, once locked, now slowly opening.
As if something inside him had finally…
Woken up.
---
The door creaked open.
Elias turned his head.
But no one stood there.
Only a breath of air slipped in — cool, unfamiliar, laced with the scent of old paper and ink.
The room remained unchanged.
And yet…
Something had changed.
A tremor passed through the air. The candle flickered. The book on his desk — the one bound in cracked leather and silence — now lay open.
Elias hadn't touched it.
But ink bled across the page.
> "To find them," the book whispered,
"find the villains.
If you fail… they'll bring ruin again."
---
Elias stood without realizing it. The room tilted. His fingers brushed the book's edge.
It pulsed.
Not with magic.
With memory.
This wasn't just an artifact — it was a wound. A seam in the world. A crack between truths.
It bled.
And Elias fell into it.
---
He was there.
In that old house again — the one from before everything.
Laughter echoed through the halls.
Children's laughter.
His children.
They were playing that game again.
Celestia Echoes.
Not the digital version, not the one the world saw… but the first one.
The one they had made. With cardboard pieces and scribbled maps. With rules only they understood.
> "Let's play the villains this time," Miel giggled.
"They're cooler anyway."
"They're the only ones who had a reason to fight," Lumi murmured, serious.
He remembered that moment. Their tiny voices. The way they always clung to the characters no one else cared for.
The cursed knight. The mad queen. The forgotten noble who died in the prologue.
Elias.
> "He reminds me of Papa Ilia, even their names sound familiar," Lumi said once.
"If only he knew the cure… he could've lived."
"Yeah. Then we'd see him in the story."
And that man named Ilia… had only smiled.
Smiled at the two kids engrossed in games.....
"There, There no more games for today" said Ilia carrying both of them at once.
"Wahhhh Papa....please one more game" said both of them in unison.
" No, you guys got school tomorrow.Come on stop qhining" Ilia said carrying them both to bed. He tucked them inside and kissed their forehead patting their heads till they sleep.
Kids have in quickly and went to sleep as they were already sleepy, That man or Ilias stayed there for a long time looking at them and then finally turned and left, closing the door gently.
---
The dream fractured again.
Flashes. Memories folding inward.
Blood on a pillow.
Rain on cracked pavement.
Two children. Cold. Huddled beside garbage bins.
And that man.
That quiet man.
Him — but not him.
Plain. Lonely. Kind.
The one who brought the children home.
The one who made them smile.
The one who died.
And before he did, he found the killer.
> He didn't ask why.
He didn't offer mercy.
He simply said: "They were my children."
He killed that criminal and suicide, he didn't started it but he ended it.
---
Elias woke with a gasp.
Thud!
He woke up too abruptly and fell on the floor.
He had fallen from the bed .
Blood streaked the wood where his nose had bled again.
Elias jolted awake.
Breath ragged. Shirt soaked.
His heart beat too fast, too loud—like it remembered the fall.
The pieces of memories start to fell into places like a jigsaw puzzle.
Moonlight stretched across the sheets, painting pale lines on trembling hands.
And this time… the dream did not fade.
It didn't drift away like smoke.
It stayed.
Not like a story.
Not like a nightmare.
But like truth.
A memory.
A life that had already ended.
"…Lumi," he whispered. "…Miel."
The names tasted of blood and honey.
He pressed his hand to his chest.
It was still beating.
---
These memories… those fragments of a life long buried. Those children.
Somehow… those dreams, those visions—they aren't just grief. They're messages. Maps. Clues scattered across time.
That game. The one he saw in the dream. Something called Echoes. A world wrapped in gold and shadows. It wasn't just a dream. It was a key.
He rose slowly, breath steady now, though the ache in his chest lingered.
Then a light glowed in his hand was a book, a plain black notebook—pages yellowing at the edges,worn out.
A gift?? From memories??
He turned to the first blank page.
And with trembling fingers, he began to write.
Not to remember who he was—
But to find what he lost.
Because some things must never be forgotten.
---
That was the night Elias stopped trying to survive.
And started preparing—to rewrite fate.
Elias reminisce about the past again, it has become a habit before sleep
----
The sickness began two months ago.
No fever. No coughing. Just the slow collapse of a body that once felt immortal.
The healers gave no name—only furrowed brows, shaking heads, and whispers he wasn't meant to hear.
But Elias knew. He was dying.
The man who once commanded armies, who stood blade-bare before kings, now could barely hold a teacup steady.
His body had become paper—thin, brittle, ghosted with aches that clung like old regrets.
So he left the capital in silence. Told no one.
Now, he lived here.
In a lonely garden house carved into the hills—
where wind chimes whispered like the voices of those he couldn't save.
Where flowers wilted slower than his hands.
The servants who remained didn't stay for duty.
They stayed for love—quiet, old love from another life.
From when he was strong.
Tonight, even the wind held its breath.
The garden was still.
And the dream became too real to be called one. The time has cam to unravel the mystery, and he won't back out. Not this time.
His body won't give out until he found what he lost. Not stubbornness but Pure will of someone who finally saw a sliver of hope in life.
This time he won't fail.
---
The book from the dream,lay open beside him. But the pages were different now — shifting, whispering, showing.
Diagrams. Runes. Ingredients drawn in frantic detail. Methods for stabilizing mana — no, not stabilizing. Unifying.
The disease wasn't decay.
It was rejection.
Too many cores. Too many echoes.
Too many selves.
---
He understood now.
> He didn't reincarnate into the game.
> He was always part of it.
The world wasn't split between fiction and reality.
It was layered.
Woven.
One life bleeding into another.
He was the noble who died too soon.
He was the father who held orphans through winter.
He was the echo that refused to disappear.
And this?
This book?
It remembered him.
---
The ink shimmered again.
> "What is unseen is not always lost."
"You cannot build the same thing twice.
But you can build what is meant to be."
His hands trembled as he read. But he didn't stop.
More pages flipped on their own, until one caught him.
An illustration.
A room with no windows.
A boy, bound in cloth.
Symbols spiraling like constellations.
And a phrase beneath:
> "To form the unformable:
Kill all light. Seal all sound.
Let the mana hear you."
---
Elias didn't hesitate.
He reached for the cloth, tore it into strips, and began wrapping it around his eyes.
Not in madness.
In clarity.
The world had given him too many lives.
Now he would become one.
---
As the last sliver of light vanished behind the blindfold, he whispered:
> "I will find you.
Whatever world you're in…
I will come back.