The wind didn’t move.The trees stood still—too still. The air had that strange, sharp weight to it, like the world was holding its breath.Kael stood at the center of it all. Or… the thing that had once been Kael.His body hadn’t changed much. But it was the silence around him that told them something had. He wasn’t breathing. And yet, he stood as if everything else now lived through him. Beneath his bare feet, the ground shimmered with life—green blades of grass pushing up, blooming into brilliant white flowers that wilted within seconds, crumbling into ash and blowing away in a breeze that didn’t exist.Pamela was the first to move. She raised the scanner—slowly, cautiously—keeping her hand from shaking.“Readings are off the chart,” she whispered. “His neural activity is… it’s layered. He’s thinking in multiple dimensions at once.”Selene stepped closer, her voice barely audible. “Kael?”Nothing. Not even a glance.The figure’s eyes were open—but unfocused, glazed in golden light

Space ended here.Not with a bang, not with fire—but with silence so deep it swallowed the ship’s hum and made every breath feel borrowed.The stars were gone.The blackness stretched beyond the screen like a forgotten god’s wound—raw, infinite, pulsing. It wasn’t just dark. It was empty. There was no light. No echo. Not even time.Just one thing floated in its center:A massive construct—sprawled across the void like a fossilized titan, forged from stone and code.The Vault of the First Memory.Selene stared at it from the ship’s viewing platform. Her breath clouded the glass even though the temperature controls were stable.“That thing is… alive,” she whispered.Pamela sat at the console, eyes flicking through the readings. Her hands trembled with every update. “It has no mass. No heat signature. No definable energy structure.”“Then what’s holding it together?” Marcus asked.Pamela looked up slowly. “Memory.”Kael stood in the back, silent.He hadn’t spoken much since merging with

Kael didn’t sleep.He drifted.In a dream that wasn’t a dream.There was no color in the place where his mind wandered—only shifting silver, like water suspended in air. Shapes moved in and out of focus. Not images. Not sounds.Symbols.They weren’t made to be read.They were felt.Some throbbed with sorrow. Others pulsed with rage. One burned with a grief so heavy it made Kael cry out in his sleep.And when he opened his eyes—One of those symbols was glowing on his palm.“Kael,” Selene whispered, kneeling beside him. “You’re shaking. Are you hurt?”He blinked rapidly, struggling to breathe. “I saw it again. That place… the in-between.”She touched his hand—and froze.There it was.A rune, glowing like molten ink etched directly into his skin. Not tattooed. Not drawn. It was his skin now. And it was moving.“It’s alive,” Selene whispered. “That mark…”Kael sat up, sweat coating his back. “I don’t remember drawing it. But I know what it does.”“Do you know?” a voice asked from the cor

Silence.Not just around them, but inside her.Selene sat on the cold, shifting floor of the Memory Realm, her lips parted in panic as she pressed her hand to her throat. No sound. No whisper. No hum. Nothing.Kael knelt beside her, panic swelling in his chest like a scream that wouldn’t come out. “Selene, try again. Just… try again.”She shook her head slowly, trembling fingers forming shapes in the air before collapsing into her lap. Her breathing was fast. Shallow. She looked at him with eyes that screamed all the words she couldn’t say.Pamela stood behind them, stunned and pale. “Is it permanent?”Riva crossed her arms, glancing upward where the Memory Eaters now hovered like silent sharks, circling. “It can be. If we don’t undo it.”Elias, expression unreadable, crouched beside Selene. “They took her voice, not her thoughts.”Selene’s hand twitched at the mention. Slowly, deliberately, she reached into her coat and pulled out a worn piece of cloth—a strip of memory-soaked fabric

The first step off the ship felt like stepping into a dream someone had never finished painting.The ground pulsed under Kael’s boots. It wasn’t dirt. It wasn’t rock. It was… memory. Raw, shapeless, unfinished. Like the planet itself was waiting for someone to finish imagining it.Pamela crouched down, ran her fingers through the soft, shifting soil. “It’s like ash,” she muttered. “But it’s not cold.”Marcus walked ahead. His foot sank halfway through the ground before it lifted him back up.“Gravity’s drunk,” he said. “So is physics.”Kael stood at the front, his eyes locked on the horizon.There was no sky. No sun. No real wind. But light still existed. Air still moved. It was a planet that should’ve never been—but somehow, it was still here.“This place doesn’t exist,” Pamela said. “I scanned for it. Checked the universal records, star charts, the Tribunal vaults… It’s not on any map.”“It was never born,” Kael said. His voice was calm. Too calm.Pamela frowned. “Then how the hell