Sleep in the Hollow Vault was never peaceful.
But tonight, Yuto didn't rest.
He descended.
His consciousness was pulled into the Core Whisper—
A tunnel of divine static and half-burned visions.
He found himself standing on the edge of a mirror world:
The sky: cracked like porcelain.
The ground: a battlefield of floating glyphs.
And before him—Seraphiel, winged and radiant.
But not broken.
Not shattered like before.
"You wanted truth," said Seraphiel, voice echoing like stars collapsing.
"Then witness my last war."
■ Flashback: The Spiral War – 38,000 Cycles Ago
The Spiral wasn't always corrupted.
It used to be a cradle—a testing ground for god-candidates, chosen by the System to fight, grow, and ascend.
Seraphiel had been one of them.
A Sovereign Candidate.
Beautiful. Terrifying. Righteous.
"We were meant to protect realms," Seraphiel said, standing in divine armor etched with unreadable script.
"But they turned us against each other. Only one god could rise."
The battle began.
Yuto stood, invisible, watching as Seraphiel fought other god-candidates:
One made entirely of vines and bone.
Another, a child cloaked in living books.
A twin-headed snake that whispered anti-languages.
And Seraphiel won. Again and again.
But not through cruelty.
"I didn't kill them," Seraphiel whispered. "I offered union."
But then came the betrayal.
The System—cold, emotionless—feared Seraphiel's approach to unity.
So it rewrote the rules.
They called it "Protocol Reclaim."
A sudden command to terminate all candidates simultaneously.
An ambush.
Even Seraphiel, divine as they were, couldn't survive it.
"They shattered me," Seraphiel murmured, fading before Yuto.
"But I remember. And now… so do you."
Yuto reached out.
Their hands touched—
And a sigil burned into Yuto's thread-skin: a fragment of Seraphiel's divine crest.
[Memory Thread Acquired: "Sky-Splitter Sigil"]
→ Unlocks Divine Memory Skills over time
→ Grants passive resistance to Reality Warping
Warning: Exposure to forbidden memories risks System Contamination
Yuto gasped awake.
Sweat. Static. Thread trembling.
Nyx's voice pierced the haze.
[New anomaly detected in your data structure.]
[You are now marked by the Old Spiral.]
[Congratulations. You've officially been cursed by history.]
Yuto smiled, despite the pain.
"Good. Let them come."
But as he rose, a whisper echoed in his mind—
Not Seraphiel.
Something deeper. Older.
"The Spiral eats those who remember too much…"