The world pulled me inward.
One moment, I was stumbling through the wreckage of the Dying Reality; the next, the ground beneath me split open, releasing a spiral of light that swallowed everything—stone, wind, even the echoes of my own breath. I fell without falling, weightless, as though gravity itself had forgotten its purpose.
The Memory Core rose before me like a cathedral carved from starlight. Its walls shimmered with rivers of liquid memories—faces drifting across the surface, wars raging and ending in the span of heartbeats, children laughing beside cities burning. It was unbearable to look at, yet impossible to turn away.
I stepped forward. The ground was not ground at all, but layers of recollection stitched together: my father’s warning, my son’s first cry, the Gates tearing open under Kael’s possessed hand. Each memory glimmered beneath my feet, a fragile bridge leading toward the pulsing heart of this place.
Whispers surged around me, thousands of voices speaking as one.
You were not supposed to return.
The words came not through my ears but through the marrow of my bones. I saw glimpses of myself—standing among the Custodians, the secret wardens of reality, long before I knew my own name. I saw the first war between the Realms, the treaties forged in shadows, the betrayal that shattered them.
And then I saw him.
My father.
Not as the man who raised me, but as someone else—someone who had carried the same mark now burned into my own skin. A protector. A traitor. A survivor of a war no one remembered.
The Memory Core pulsed faster, threads of light reaching toward me like roots seeking soil. Images poured into my mind: hidden factions moving across worlds, plans seeded through generations, a coming conflict that would decide not just the fate of Realms but of memory itself.
I understood then: I had been here before.
And this was only the beginning.
