In the past, I had always struggled with remembering details from long ago. It was as if my brain selectively archived experiences, keeping only the vague concept while discarding the specifics. Like when I used to sneak out to meet friends as a kid—I remembered the act of sneaking out, but the exact whens and whats had vanished into the fog of forgotten memories.
I'd sometimes wonder what would happen if I suddenly remembered everything. "Pretty sure I'd have one massive headache in the form of a migraine that won't leave me for a very, very long time," I'd thought to myself.
And right now, that's exactly what I was experiencing.
When older me merged himself through my "form" in my mindscape, the immediate effect was me blanking out then and there. I don't even know how someone who's in the deepest part of themselves blanks out, but it happened.
My vision simply went dark, but in exchange, I felt an increase in my perception of my other senses. I suddenly began shivering as if I'd crossed paths with the most dangerously cold of all breezes or contracted some wild disease that made my entire being quake with chills. Then without warning, it turned extremely hot—so blisteringly intense that I thought I'd been thrown into a magma-filled lake inside an erupting volcano.
The switch between these two extremes went back and forth continuously. For how long? I honestly don't know, since I lost track of time the moment it began. My sense of spatial awareness had become nonexistent at this point. Speaking of space—where the fuck was I?
I tried to call out to older me and even Codex, but nothing happened. I couldn't even produce a single sound from my voice despite my desperate attempts. Despite my best efforts to remain aware, to call out for help amidst the degree of pain from the exchange of temperatures, I was going mad.
The darkness, the silence, the cold, the heat repeating endlessly—it was unbearable.
"Seriously, what was I thinking? Am I even thinking now? What am I even doing? Wait... who was I talking to again?" I tried to form coherent thoughts, but my ability to think clearly was slipping away, like sand through desperate fingers.
"Re..m..."
I heard something—or thought I did—in this dark, silent, and painful place. At this point, I wasn't sure I could function as a sane person ever again.
"Re...mem...b..."
I "heard" it again, but this time a bit more clearly. Who was that? What were they trying to say? What was I supposed to do?
"Rem...eeemm...bbeee..."
The broken sound—no, the broken word made me think. Whoever they were, they seemed to be trying to say... remember?
Remember? What was I supposed to remember?
"Everything."
The word echoed through the void, and suddenly the first of my many senses returned: sound.
A high-pitched noise suddenly rang out, so loud and at such a piercing frequency that I thought my ears might burst. It was seriously and abhorrently painful, like someone driving a thousand needles directly into my eardrums. Next came my sense of touch. The interchanging feeling of cold and heat, alongside their respective torments, suddenly disappeared.
My sense of spatial awareness returned, and I realized I was standing in... something. A pool of liquid that reached my knees, thick and viscous around my legs.
And lastly, my sight returned. And honestly…, I wish it hadn't.
"Wasn't I in my mindscape? Where the fuck is this? Was all I just experienced—my previous life, my death, and supposed reincarnation—all false? Because if so... it truly was a cruel joke to suddenly see this scene," I muttered, now finally able to form words and process thoughts normally.
The scene—no, the space before me was reminiscent of what hell would be. If the believers of God and religion back on Earth could see this, they would truly and wholly believe they were witnessing the actual underworld of eternal damnation.
The serene, beautiful mindscape I had known was gone, shattered into a vision of unspeakable horror. Before me, from my position standing knee-deep in what I now realized was blood, stretched an endless chasm—a vast pit of darkness so deep and all-consuming that it seemed to devour every scrap of light that dared approach it.
The very ground was slick with congealed blood, its surface broken by churning pools of viscous crimson that bubbled and writhed like living, malignant organisms. Stagnant, coppery rivulets traced horrid patterns over jagged rock, each drip echoing like a death knell in the oppressive silence.
In the far distance, but also quite literally just a few meters from me (the spatial distortion making it impossible to judge true distance), countless spectral forms began to stir. At first, they were shadows that I thought were figments of my imagination—amorphous, indistinct shapes drifting like smoke in a malevolent wind. Then, as if awakened by my presence, they paused in their ceaseless, gruesome labors: twisted, malformed creatures—half-beast, half-human, and half-nightmare—halted their endless grinding and writhing as every one of them turned slowly, deliberately toward me.
Their eyes, if they could be called that, burned with an eerie, otherworldly light—cold, unblinking voids that seemed to pierce straight into my soul. I felt a primal chill crawling along my spine, as if the countless eyes of these damned beings were not merely watching me but silently judging—a verdict of despair, of inevitable damnation.
Suddenly, one of the gruesome spectral forms moved forward and stopped directly in front of me, its gaze peering into my very depths as if scrutinizing, inquiring, judging.
One might ask why I didn't run. I was seeing the stuff of nightmares, and like any other being, I was completely scared shitless. But the problem was that I was rooted to the ground, or more specifically, to the pool of blood I was knee-deep in. The viscous liquid seemed to grip my legs like living hands, holding me in place.
The spectral form in front of me, with its piercing red and yellow eyes with slits for irises, suddenly grew a mouth—like, no shit, seriously grew a mouth right in front of me. The flesh (or whatever passed for it) of its face tore open, revealing a gaping maw lined with uneven, jagged teeth.
"Well... well... well... looks like our final self is here, boys!!!" it spoke in a raspy, broken voice. I had half expected it to sound like a stereotypical ghost with an echoing "wooo," but no. Its voice was harsh, grating, difficult to listen to—like broken glass being dragged across metal.
But then, something clicked in my mind. This voice, no matter how broken, hard, and difficult to understand... sounded just like...
"You're me?" I muttered, somehow overcoming my paralyzing fear.
The spectral form's mouth widened into an uncanny grin, its sharp teeth and what I assumed to be fangs dripping with yellowish liquid that sizzled as it fell into the blood pool at my feet.
"You betcha," it answered. "Well... to be specific, I'm one of many you can see behind me."
As it spoke, the other spectral forms moved, and one by one, countless figures surrounded me. I turned in a slow circle, and all I could see were spectral beings that looked exactly like the first one—some with more than a pair of eyes and mouths—everywhere, covering the dreary, hellscape as far as the jagged, mountain-like rocks in the distance.
To make it worse, some of these forms were enormous—larger than the titans from mythologies and anime I used to watch back on Earth. They towered over the landscape, their massive forms blotting out whatever passed for a sky in this nightmare realm.
It was seriously the stuff of nightmares, and it's honestly a miracle I hadn't fainted.
"Rayak, stop intimidating the child. He just woke from the integration, and now you want to scar his psyche?" a familiar voice sounded nearby as another spectral form approached. Even though it looked just as terrifying as the others, I could distinctly recognize this voice.
"Wait, older me? Is that you?" I asked, stupefied.
"Haha…, the one and only..." he chuckled as he came closer and stood next to the first spectral being who had spoken. Despite the horrific appearance—a shifting mass of darkness with those same piercing eyes—there was something unmistakably familiar in the way it carried itself.
"Welcome, Ryan, to our last and final recollection," he continued. "Before you, and around you, are all the variants of US. Every single one in front of you existed in their own timeline but naturally as a mirror version of you, the original. We all existed in our own variant timelines and eventually found each other, understood the mission, and made the one and only sacrifice in our lives—since we, and even you, are very, very selfish beings." He paused, with what I could only interpret as a smirk and a chuckle.
"Baaah, stop wearing down the kid with nonsense..." a spectral form behind me came up and placed an arm on my shoulder—or rather, grew an arm and placed it on my shoulder.
The fact that I could see behind me without turning and also feel the weight of the arm both spooked and confused me to no end. It was as if my perception had expanded beyond normal human limitations.
"In front of you are the very last pieces of our mirrored soul, containing knowledge, data, information, and experience spanning an almost infinite amount, considering how numerous the variant timelines were back then," the spectral being behind me said. "And at this very moment, though you cannot see from here, at the very end of this space, it's fracturing as you're now assimilating what we're offering."
That raised a question—how? I mean, all of them were here in front of me, but I didn't feel any different. I wasn't getting smarter or suddenly comprehending some complex cosmic technique.
"A penny for your thoughts, little US," one of the larger and definitely more grotesque titanous spectral forms spoke with its many mouths, its countless eyes trained on me. "That's because we pulled you in here for a while, to at least see ourself, our origin, and finally have our closure... as pointless as it sounds, think of it as one last hurrah from all of us, cheering you on from a time that will now never cease to be."
And then it suddenly hit me—these guys, these "me's" born from the mistake, greed, and foolishness of some cosmic "fucktards," had to die. I might be scared now with their appearance and implications, but a sense of shame washed over me. These were versions of me, and they were about to be erased from existence so that I could live.
"We don't like it either, y'know..." another titanic being suddenly spoke with the same uncanny precision as if reading my mind. I turned my head from the first titanic being to this one but then noticed something... it was getting paler and paler. Wait, it was...
"Disappearing... looks like our original self was a tad bit stronger in soul and essence," the now-disappearing titanic spectral being remarked. These guys, they truly were me—reading my thoughts, finishing my sentences, understanding my emotions without explanation.
"Do not feel bad, kiddo. Despite our differences in personality, we're all the same soul. Think of it as us simply going back to our roots, and that's you—plus with an added... bonus," it spoke, and with a whoosh, as if being blown by a gentle wind, it disappeared in a puff of smoke.
It was then that everything hit me hard. So many of them were quite literally ceasing to exist, all for some greater purpose that even now, I thought was complete bullshit. The unfairness of it all struck me like a physical blow—these weren't just copies or clones; they were thinking, feeling versions of me who had lived entire lives, had experiences, formed connections.
"Hahahahahaa... Seriously, now I'm starting to regret leaving like this..." the first spectral being to speak, Rayak, suddenly laughed with melancholy. "We sure would have been best buds if that's how things had played out..." he said with his grim and uncanny smirk, and in the next moment, disappeared as well.
Now, the only one remaining was the first and older me whom I had met in the golden mindscape.
"You do understand that this is not a parting, right?" he asked as his form started to fade, becoming translucent at the edges.
"I know... but seriously... I'm not used to feeling this shitty, you know," I said in a slightly broken voice, trying to bottle this sudden feeling of loss.
"Well, that's why, even though you've not experienced it, it makes us such good partners and friends," he said as he placed one of his arms—the other having already vanished—on my shoulder. "It's the reason why I and the other variants had no qualms in doing this, in doing what needed to be done. Because we knew..."
The blood pool around my legs had begun to recede, and the hellish landscape was dissolving at the edges, golden light beginning to filter through the cracks in reality.
"We knew that ourselves, and our original self would be the exact same... We knew that all of us are the only people we can truly trust, and truly rely on to continue with our lives..." he said with a smile, despite how unsettling it looked on his spectral face.
"So don't beat yourself up over it. What's done is done; we only need to move on and make sure it doesn't happen again. Considering what we've left you, I kinda feel bad for anyone who dares to cross you, to cross us in the future," he said, and with that final warning—or perhaps promise—he too disappeared.
The hellscape shattered like glass, fragments of the nightmare realm falling away to reveal... nothing. Absolute void. And then, pain—blinding, all-consuming pain as if every cell in my body was being rewritten, every neuron rewired, every memory recontextualized.
Information flooded into me—not in an orderly fashion like reading a book, but all at once, overwhelming and chaotic. Lives lived, battles fought, loves won and lost, discoveries made, powers mastered—all of it crashed into my consciousness like a tsunami breaking against a shore.
I saw worlds I'd never visited, spoke languages I'd never learned, wielded powers I couldn't comprehend. I felt the agony of countless deaths and the exhilaration of innumerable victories. I remembered friendships forged across dimensions and enemies vanquished across timelines.
I was drowning in memories that were mine but not mine—experiencing the accumulated knowledge of all my variant selves in a single, devastating instant.
And just when I thought my mind would shatter under the weight of it all, everything stopped.
I awoke with a terrible case of vertigo, gasping for air as if I'd been submerged, finding myself back in the dilapidated shack where I'd first awakened in this dreary, dark world. My body—still emaciated but somehow feeling stronger—shook with aftershocks as my mind struggled to process what had just happened.
My hands trembled as I raised them before my face, half-expecting to see them changed somehow—marked by the experience I'd just endured. They looked the same, skeletal and weak, but I could feel something different flowing through them. Through me.
Power. Knowledge. Purpose.
And something else—a deep, aching sense of responsibility. All those variants of myself, all those lives, sacrificed for this moment, for me to continue where they could not.
"I won't waste it," I whispered to the empty shack, a promise to those who were now part of me. "I won't let it be for nothing."
"My lord…how do you feel?" Codex's voice asked in my head.
I took a deep breath, cataloging the changes within me. The hunger that had been gnawing at my stomach was still there, but it felt distant now, less urgent. My mind felt clearer, sharper, more fulfilled.
"I feel..." I paused, searching for the right words. "I feel like I'm finally whole…"