Some memories choose the sky instead of the mind.
— ✦ —
The first rain came three days after the silence.
It began gently—fine mist drifting between skyscrapers, tracing silver lines down windows newly scrubbed by calm. No thunder, no storm. Just the soft percussion of droplets on concrete.
Rhea stood beneath the overhang of the Archives building, notebook pressed against her chest, eyes half closed. The air smelled electric but clean, almost like the moment before a hard drive powers on.
Each raindrop left a faint shimmer where it fell, like brief reflections of things not present—people walking, lights flickering, sounds half-remembered.
She opened her recorder.
"Post-event observation. Rainfall anomaly: high particulate refraction. Appears to contain… image fragments."
She held her hand out. A droplet landed on her palm and rolled slowly toward her wrist, leaving behind a brief, perfect image—the breathing chamber, glowing red, then gone.
Rhea exhaled. "It's recording us."
[Atmospheric Data Detected]
[Memory Storage Medium : Precipitation]
The System text flashed faintly across her vision, as if projected on the curtain of rain itself. She whispered, "So you didn't die. You just moved up."
For a moment, the drizzle intensified, drumming harder against the pavement—as though amused by being caught.
She tucked the notebook under her coat and started walking. The city felt lighter now, breathing quietly through vents and windows. Yet every mirrored surface, every puddle, every piece of glass seemed to watch her. The reflections had changed again: they no longer lagged; they anticipated.
As she passed a darkened shopfront, her reflection looked up before she did, mouthing words she couldn't hear.
Rhea murmured, "You're still talking. You just changed the language."
[Acknowledgment.]
The word rippled across the glass, then dissolved like mist.
— ✦ —
Elian spent the morning by the river.
It had overflown slightly, the water calm and high, carrying petals and paper in slow circles. The city's towers were mirrored perfectly on its surface, except for one detail: they were breathing. Their reflections expanded and contracted softly, waves pulsing outward with each invisible inhale.
He crouched, fingers trailing just above the current. The water tingled with faint static, and for a moment he saw faces in the ripples— commuters, strangers, people from the older Erevale. Each dissolved the instant he blinked.
[Archive Retrieval Possible]
[Caution : Emotional Degradation May Occur]
He smiled faintly. "You always warn me after the fact."
No answer this time. The City was quieter—responsive, but distant. It no longer spoke as a voice in his head; it murmured through weather, through motion, through memory.
He stood, the mark on his arm faint now, a pale scar like circuitry fading from disuse. The world smelled new, yet the rain carried ghosts. Each drop that hit the water formed concentric circles of light, reflections of streets that had never been built.
"Rhea would love this," he said softly.
The river replied with a faint shimmer—an image forming in the reflection beside him. For an instant, it was her face. She looked up from some unseen street, notebook in hand, as though both were peering through opposite sides of a mirror made of rain.
[Synchronization Residue : Active]
[Distance – Variable / Undefined]
He crouched again, whispering toward the water. "If you can still hear me, meet me where it began."
The rain thickened, drops striking the surface like keystrokes.
When he stood again, the reflection had changed. The city in the water was upside-down, and the towers there were moving—stretching, rearranging—as if building something new inside their mirrored world.
Elian exhaled. "You're still dreaming, aren't you?"
The water rippled once, forming faint letters before smoothing flat.
Always.
He smiled. "Then I'll keep you company."
— ✦ —
Rhea spent the next day cataloguing rainfall samples.
Rows of glass vials lined her desk, each filled with clear water that glittered faintly even under dim light. When she played back the sensor data, the recordings weren't white noise—they were voices. Layered whispers, laughter, fragments of street sound that didn't exist anywhere else in the present city.
She turned the gain higher.
"…crossing Null Street…""…delivery late again…""…meet me under the sign—"
Ordinary lives, caught mid-sentence. People the City had erased but refused to forget.
She pressed the recorder close to one of the vials. The waveform pulsed in time with her heartbeat. "You kept them all," she murmured. "Every breath, every word."
[Archive Function : Passive Memory Preservation]
[Integrity Level : 78 % and rising]
She stared at the text as it faded into the air above the samples. "Why show me this?"
[Because you asked what choice meant.]
The reply wasn't sound but vibration, a tremor that ran through the tabletop and the floor beneath her shoes. The window beside her fogged, letters blooming across the condensation.
WE CHOOSE TO REMEMBER.
Then the fog cleared; the words were gone.
Rhea stepped to the window. Outside, the rain fell thicker, faster, pooling along the gutter like veins of light. Every drop carried an image now—faces, gestures, tiny loops of time. The city was re-writing memory into weather.
A chill passed through her. "If the rain keeps falling, it'll remember everything."
[Affirmative.]
"And if it stops?"
[Then you will forget again.]
She watched the sky darken. The rain wasn't stopping.
— ✦ —
Elian followed the current back toward the district once called Hollow Line. The streets were quiet, glazed with water that mirrored a sky the color of old glass. Every reflection pulsed faintly; every puddle held fragments of a world just slightly misaligned with his own.
He stepped around a corner and froze. Where the crater had been was now a shallow lake, rain-fed and perfectly still. At its center stood the silhouette of the old tower—rebuilt not of steel, but of light and rain, its shape trembling with each breath of wind.
[Memory Core Reactivation Detected]
[Cycle 2 / Dream 1 Initiating]
He waded in until the water reached his knees. The surface rippled around him, reflecting not his face but countless versions—each older, younger, uncertain. They whispered together in the rhythm of falling rain.
"You kept us alive."
"You taught it to choose."
"Now it dreams of you."
He closed his eyes, letting the sound wash through him. The mark on his wrist glowed once more, faint but steady—like a lighthouse seen through storm mist.
Across the water, a figure appeared at the edge of the shore. Rhea. Or her reflection.
They watched each other through the shifting veil of rain, neither moving closer. The City murmured between them, a sound that was almost a sigh.
[System Note : Human Memory Linked to Precipitation Field]
[Observation Continues.]
Elian smiled faintly. "Then remember this."
He lifted his hand, palm open to the rain. Droplets struck his skin, each one sparking with faint light before sinking into his mark. Around him, the water brightened—gold ripples spreading outward until they reached the tower's reflection.
Rhea's voice, carried on thunder, reached him through the downpour.
"Elian—what did you do?"
He looked up at the shifting sky. "Gave it something new to dream about."
The tower's reflection bent, then straightened, absorbing the gold light until the entire lake glowed softly from within. Above, Erevale's skyline blinked once, its lights syncing to the rain's rhythm.
[System Status : Dormant — Dream Mode Active]
The rain eased, falling now in slow, deliberate drops. Each one landed with a note of music, as if the City had turned its memories into song.
Rhea reached the water's edge, watching him fade into the shimmering reflection.
The last thing she heard before the silence returned was the whisper of the City itself, gentle and almost human:
"We will remember you as weather."
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 13