Chapter 263
Erased
IAM's thoughts delved into his memories, drifting back to the dream—or perhaps the nightmare—he had seen.
As he sat there, lost in thought, a realization began to take shape. He had sensed it before, that faint emptiness between recollections, but now he could confirm it without doubt.
His memories were missing.
Not all of them—just some.
He remembered waking up in that suffocating void, the place where nothing existed but flesh and black liquid. Then came Bryan—or rather, what had once been Bryan. The devil puppet. Now that his memories had returned, he finally understood what it truly was.
He could recall the fight vividly. He had fought a desperate battle. He fought with everything he had, driven by instinct and the need to survive, until he had won.
Yet, even in victory, the memory didn't bring peace. In those final moments before the puppet's form faded, he remembered catching sight of Mia. Her face, faint and ghostly, appearing like a ripple across the darkness. Before the image vanished completely—just as the creature had, dissolving into nothingness as though neither had ever been there at all.
IAM entered another room, the air thick and damp. A hole gaped open in the ceiling above him, and from it spilled black liquid. It would fall before twisting until it began to form an arm. Then another. And another.
The sight was grotesque and mesmerizing, the dark mass shifting and reshaping until a mountain of arms had taken form.
He stood before it for a long while, watching in silence, before beginning to investigate. It didn't take him long to realize that the only way out of the room was through that hole above. His eyes traced the uneven heap, and though unease gripped him, he began to climb, using the interlocked limbs as makeshift holds.
But just as his hand reached higher, the arms quivered all at once. The mountain trembled beneath him, an unnatural shudder rippling through the mass. Then, without warning, emerged a Deadline creature—only this time, it wasn't the same as before. This one was a massive spawnling.
No he was awake, IAM understood. This was no ordinary dream or illusion. It was a twisted reflection of his past, a distorted fragment of what he had once lived through. Deep down, he knew what everything around him represented. Yet in the dream, with his memories fragmented and uncertain, that understanding had been lost to him in that moment.
The creature lunged, and the chase began. It was relentless, closing in with every passing second. IAM ran, fought, and struggled until, in a violent motion, it seized him. Its grip forced his head into one of the many gaping holes that covered its body. A pale gas burst out, surrounding him instantly, seeping into his lungs and mind.
The world twisted. Shapes and sounds warped into things that shouldn't exist. He hallucinated... Things... Things he couldn't describe, things his mind refused to hold onto for long.
He remembered it all now. Every moment. Every horror. The desperate acts he had committed just to survive in that distorted world. The years that had passed there for him, though only moments had passed outside.
And now, awake and whole, he wished he didn't remember any of it. The memories were like shards of glass buried in his thoughts. That place had been a pot of boiling madness and insanity, a chaos that left nothing untouched. He couldn't bear to look too deeply into it again.
So, with quiet resolve, he called upon that strange attribute within him. Slowly, he willed those memories to fade. To dissolve into nothing. And one by one, the horrors slipped away and was erased completely.
But even then, to his shock, IAM discovered that some of the more horrific experiences—the ones that clawed deepest into his mind—were still there. Faded, yes, but undeniably still present. They refused to be banished, drifting faintly in the back of his thoughts no matter how much he tried to erase them.
He tried again, reaching inward, forcing that strange attribute to work harder, to dig deeper, but it made no difference. The memories trembled, flickered—and stopped. They would not fade any further. No matter how much he willed it, how much focus he poured into it, those fragments clung stubbornly to him, as if they were etched into the very fabric of his being.
IAM wondered why. Was the ability weaker than he had believed? Or was it him—his lack of understanding, his incomplete control over its true potential? The question gnawed at him, though he found no answer waiting in the silence.
In the end, he exhaled slowly and let the thought drift away. Whether it was weakness or limitation, it didn't matter for now. All he could do was bury what remained. He pushed the fragments into the deepest corners of his mind, into that same forbidden cave where his experience of death rested—a place sealed off from everything else.
Then he remembered waiting as the mountain of arms slowly rebuilt itself once more. The process was slow and unnerving as they gathered together again, stacking upon each other until the grotesque mound stood tall beneath the gaping hole above.
When it was finally stable enough, IAM began his ascent, climbing carefully, until his hand reached the edge. With effort, he pushed himself upward, forcing through the thick black liquid that spilled from the opening before finally breaking through to the other side.
What came after felt entirely different. That world—the one of darkness and horror—had been like him abandoning his past, a symbolic shedding of everything that had once clung to him. But what awaited beyond was something else altogether, something IAM had never experienced before.
He found himself in a world without a sun, yet it was bathed in a soft, warm light. Endless fields of flowers stretched in every direction, their petals swaying gently under a sky painted a deep, serene blue. The air carried a calm fragrance, and for a while, he simply walked.
He hadn't noticed when it happened, but at some point, he had been drawn in. The flowers seemed to hum softly, their rhythm steady and soothing, lulling his mind into a trance-like state. Without realizing it, he was hypnotized, losing all sense of himself, all awareness of what lay around him. Even the Sacrificium Sanctum, which had appeared not too far away, failed to stir his attention.
Eventually, he had lain down upon a bed of flowers, the petals cool beneath him, and his eyes had drifted shut. He fell into the deep blue beneath him, sinking slowly, endlessly. Time lost its meaning there—he couldn't tell how long he remained submerged—but after what felt like an eternity, he had managed to swim out, breaking through the surface of that infinite blue.
There, suspended between the fading dream and something greater, he had merged midair with himself. In that moment came a revelation of what that place truly was. The understanding struck him silently, settling deep within, and then, almost as if his realization had unraveled the illusion, the world around him began to deteriorate.
The flowers withered, the sky dimmed, and the warmth that had filled the air started to fade, before everything dissolved into nothingness.
IAM's last memory from that strange world was of himself running toward the Sacrificium Sanctum that stood in the distance. The sky around him had begun to dim, the once serene blue folding in on itself, and yet he kept moving, pushing forward through the collapsing field of flowers. He had been so close, almost within reach of it, when everything suddenly gave way beneath him.
He fell—into nothing.
And that was where it all ended. His memories cut off cleanly there, as if someone had drawn a line and erased everything beyond it. The next thing he could remember was waking up, abruptly, as though no time had passed at all.
But as IAM sat with the fragments of what he could recall, a quiet unease crept over him. A suspicion—small but persistent—took root in his mind. The only time he had ever felt something missing like this was after coming into this world. He could still remember Earth—the places, the people, the general things of life—but when it came to himself, there was nothing.
It left him with only one possibility. Somewhere between that moment of falling into nothingness and waking up here, he must have encountered the being responsible for bringing him to this world. And for reasons he could only guess at, it had erased his memories.