The silence among the Custodians was heavier than any battlefield I had known. Once they had stood united, guardians of order across realities. Now, the assembly was broken—fractured not by swords or blood, but by belief.
Some had already stepped forward, kneeling before Wind, their voices lifted in solemn devotion. Others remained in shadow, their silence a refusal to declare allegiance yet, their eyes unreadable, weighing the storm that gathered.
And I stood between them, burdened by the knowledge that no silence lasts forever.
The Betrayal of Custodians
One by one, Custodians I had once called allies bowed to Wind’s vision. Their armor gleamed under the fractured sky, their insignias dimmed as if ashamed of the vows they had abandoned.
They did not move like rebels; they moved like pilgrims. With every oath to Wind, the assembly trembled, as though the very ground recognized the breach.
I watched them fall into line, and I could not deny the conviction in their eyes. They were not seduced by power, nor blinded by ambition. They truly believed. And that belief was more dangerous than any weapon.
A Meeting With the Converted
Among them was one I knew well—once a comrade who had fought by my side at the borders of fractured worlds. His face, though aged by time, still carried the steel of memory. Yet his eyes were softer now, filled not with duty but with a radiant certainty.
He approached me quietly, as though to speak to a brother rather than an enemy.
“Do you not see?” he asked. “The loop suffocates us all. Every dawn repeats, every memory is shackled to another. We are keepers of a prison, not guardians of freedom. Wind shows us the path beyond.”
I felt the weight of his words. This was not the rhetoric of a stranger—it was the conviction of a man I had once trusted with my life.
The Question of Chains
“If the loop is real,” he pressed, “is not clinging to the past the heaviest chain of all? Why preserve scars when we could begin anew? Why hold to memories that drown us when we could breathe in light?”
His voice carried the rhythm of prophecy, and I saw others nod, their resolve growing stronger. The image of the Reboot Map lingered in my mind: threads of lives preserved or erased at will.
Could it be that memory itself was the prison? Could the liberation Wind promised truly lie in forgetting?
And yet, deep within me, resistance stirred. For memory, though heavy, was also anchor. To erase it entirely would be to unmoor existence itself. Without scars, how would we know healing? Without history, how would we know freedom?
My Doubt, Their Faith
The Custodian looked at me with compassion, not contempt. He believed he was offering salvation, not betrayal. Around us, more voices rose, swearing to Wind’s cause, echoing the cry of renewal.
But I stood in the middle ground—haunted by the pull of their faith and the shadow of my doubt.
Wind’s faction promised freedom, yet all I saw were chains being reforged in another shape. Chains of the past may bind us, but what if erasing them only forges chains of forgetting?
The choice loomed closer with every oath taken, and I feared that when the Window of Origin opened, the line between liberation and loss would vanish forever.
