Chapter 29 — The Memory That Wasn't Hers
Aira dreamed of a place she had never seen — yet somehow remembered.
The air shimmered, heavy with static. The ground below her was made of glass, reflecting a sky filled with cracks of light. Each crack pulsed like a heartbeat, the rhythm matching her own.
She took a step forward, and the sound echoed endlessly — like walking inside a memory that refused to fade.
> "You shouldn't be here,"
a voice whispered.
It wasn't Rimuru's.
It wasn't Ren's.
It was her own — but distant, broken, as if played from an old recording.
She turned.
A figure stood at the edge of the mirrored horizon — white hair drifting in the wind, eyes glowing faintly blue and red. Rimuru.
But she wasn't smiling this time.
Her voice was calm, almost too calm.
> "You keep touching places you shouldn't. The distortion remembers you now."
Aira frowned. "Remembers me? What does that mean?"
> "It means you've started to bleed through again," Rimuru said. "You're seeing the layers — what came before and what's trying to come back."
The air trembled. The reflections around them began to move on their own, showing flashes of scenes — a young girl in a hospital bed, glowing cables attached to her arms. A scientist arguing with someone unseen. A storm of light swallowing everything.
Aira's knees weakened. "That's… me."
Rimuru stepped closer, but the moment her hand reached out, her body flickered — as if she were being pulled away.
> "Don't listen too closely," she warned. "Dreams like this feed on what you want to know."
"But I need to know—"
The ground cracked. The reflections shattered, and light poured in through the cracks like water. Voices whispered from below, dozens overlapping — calling her name, pleading, laughing.
Rimuru's voice cut through them all.
> "Aira! Wake up!"
---
Aira gasped, sitting upright in bed. Her room was dark, the faint glow of her phone the only light. Her heart raced, her palms damp with sweat.
She looked at her reflection in the phone screen — her own face staring back, pale and shaken.
But for just a second… her reflection smiled before she did.
The air in the room buzzed faintly, like a dying radio signal.
And through the static came a soft, familiar laugh.
> "You really can't stay out of trouble, can you?"
Rimuru's voice.
But it sounded farther away than usual.