The forest south of Elderfall always felt thinner this time of year.
Normally.
Today, it barely felt there at all.
Mist clung low to the ground, turning trees into blurred shadows. Textures loaded late. Footsteps lagged half a beat behind the sound.
Reality hadn't collapsed yet.
But it was fraying.
We moved without speaking.
Lyra at my side, one hand close to her satchel. The Lexicon hovered low over my shoulder, vibrating faintly, like a compass tuned to a frequency no one else could hear.
I wasn't sure what we were looking for.
Only that something had started pulling at the Lexicon the moment we left the broken marketplace.
A tug.
A thread winding itself backward through the woods.
Calling us.
After twenty minutes of hiking, the forest floor changed.
The ground lost detail.
Not a texture bug.
A memory flaw.
Where there should have been roots and grass and cracked stone, there was just a smooth smear of color—greenish-gray, flat and depthless.
Lyra noticed it too.
She crouched, running her fingers across the earth.
Her hand twitched.
"It's… wrong," she said.
"Not corrupted," I added. "Forgotten."
Ahead, half-hidden between two leaning birch trees, stood a structure.
Or part of one.
A ruin, mostly swallowed by mist and age.
The SYSTEM had no marker for it.
No minimap ping.
No dungeon prompt.
It didn't even load properly until we were almost on top of it.
At first glance, it looked like a crumbling watchtower base—four stone blocks arranged into the rough outline of a foundation.
At second glance?
A door.
Set into nothing.
A stone frame.
A doorway with no building attached.
Just standing there.
Waiting.
The Lexicon flipped open before I could even think.
A faint pulse of text stitched itself across the bottom of the page:
[THREAD SUPPRESSION FIELD DETECTED – ENTRY UNSTABLE]
Caution: Entry may awaken deprecated memories.
Lyra stopped a few feet short.
Her breathing quickened.
"I don't like this," she said.
"You don't have to come."
She gave me a look.
Not fear.
Resignation.
"You know I will."
I stepped closer.
The air around the doorway shimmered, distorting slightly like a heat mirage.
The Lexicon's pulse grew faster.
More urgent.
A SYSTEM prompt tried to force itself over my vision—corrupt, glitching, words blinking in and out:
[UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS – EVENT ID NULL.03]
[ROLLBACK PENDING...]
I ignored it.
The Lexicon rotated slowly, pages flipping—settling on a blank spread except for a single sigil drawn in black ink.
A sigil I had never seen before.
A key, twisted and fragmented, its teeth bent into spiral glyphs.
I touched the edge of the doorway.
Not the door.
There was no door.
Just frame.
And—
A ripple.
The world flexed.
I staggered back, blinking.
Lyra grabbed my arm reflexively.
When my vision cleared, the forest had shifted.
The tower foundation wasn't crumbling anymore.
It was new.
Whole.
A fully built structure, pristine stone rising into mist.
The doorway was real now.
Closed.
Bound by glyphs burning faintly against the wood.
I stared.
Not breathing.
Because I recognized the glyphs.
Not by sight.
By feel.
The same feeling as the Lexicon.
The same feeling as the first time I picked up the Fragment of Origin.
This wasn't a dungeon.
It was a sealed thread.
Lyra tightened her grip on my sleeve.
"Aiden."
Her voice was strained.
Barely hers.
I turned.
And saw her.
No—not her.
For a fraction of a second, her face wasn't Lyra's.
It was someone older.
Tired.
Burned into memory.
Talia Vermillion.
Lyra shook herself—violently—and her features snapped back.
But the Lexicon had already recorded it.
A thin line of script appeared across the page:
[Echo Resurgence – Host Instability Rising]
I faced the door again.
No SYSTEM prompt.
No quest marker.
No reward indicator.
Just the Lexicon humming, just barely, a note I felt in my teeth.
A question wrote itself across the top margin:
Will you remember what was lost?
I reached for the Lexicon without thinking.
It pulsed once—
—and the door began to open.
Slowly.
Creaking outward into mist.
Inside?
Not a dungeon.
Not a room.
Not even a physical space.
Just—
Light.
Tangled threads of it, running through the void like veins across a heart too large to see.
In the center, suspended and turning slowly like a planet caught mid-spin, was an object.
Small.
Familiar.
A memory bottle.
Identical to the one I had found in the broken market.
But darker.
Pulsing black and deep red, like it bled gravity.
The Lexicon pushed closer.
Pages flipped frantically.
[Warning: Memory Fragment Detected – Structural Risk High]
[Rollback Response Expected]
[User Override: Pending]
I didn't hesitate.
I stepped through the doorway fully, crossing into the mist.
Lyra followed—silent now, her steps echoing weirdly against surfaces that didn't exist.
The bottle hovered in front of me, waiting.
Offering.
As I reached for it, the world shuddered.
A SYSTEM alarm sounded across the void:
[UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS BREACH – NULL ZONE EXPANSION INITIATED]
And from the shadows at the far end of the broken space,a figure detached itself from the mist.
Not a player.
Not an NPC.
Something in between.
Wrapped in SYSTEM flags and broken code.
Watching.
Waiting.
Silent.
And for the first time since the rollback,I realized we weren't alone in the ruins of memory.
Not anymore.