My name is Alden.
The personal attendant of Master Kendra Arata.
The one who have stood by his side for more than twenty years.
I remember our fateful encounter as if it was yesterday, I was only eight when he chose me.
One skinny, silent child among a hundred just like me, growing up in one of the forgotten state orphanage blocks where even hope was rationed.
I was raised in one of the many state-run orphanage blocks, facilities disguised as shelters for the unwanted. When in truth, they were nothing more than factories for disposable labor.
A famous motto of our orphanage being "At eighteen, every orphan is given their independence."
What that really meant was we'd be tagged and assigned to menial jobs. Street cleaners, waste sorters, factory drones.
People without faces, doing work without meaning. That was the age we'd be turned loose into a world that never wanted us, with nothing to our names but chipped bones and calloused hands.
That was my fate, my file wasn't special. No talent, no genius-level IQ, no unique skills.
But when he walked in, everything changed.
Kendra Arata.
He wasn't what we expected.
Most of us had heard the rumors that he was a relic enthusiast, eccentric, even unstable.
The world call him by many things like The Eternal Curator, Last Witness of the Forgotten World, or Warden of the Bygone Age.
Some even said he had lived over a century.
All I knew was that he entered the orphanage dressed in vintage designer clothing, with an aura that silenced the entire facility.
When he asked to inspect us, I kept my eyes down. That was what we were taught.
Don't stand out, don't even speak unless spoken to.
But then I felt his presence stop before me.
He asked my name.
No one had ever asked my name during inspection.
I tried to answer as best as I could but I still ended up stuttering.
"I'm Alden"
After hearing my answer he smiled, and then without any reason he chose me.
Even though there were others more experienced, more well behaved, and better trained than me.
He simply said, "You'll do."
That simple genuine word somehow moved me beyond words that day.
Serving him wasn't easy at first. he often muttered to himself.
Spoke of things I can't even begin to comprehend, stories about the times long forgotten.
A time where every piece of land was able to grow grass, a time where the sky is filled with giant lights called stars.
But over time, I realized he was more lucid than most.
He was brilliant. Even if broken.
He read more than anyone I knew, whether it be digital or nondigital.
He even read books, yes physical books, the sacred thing that contains knowledge long gone.
A walking relic in a world that had long since burned away its history.
That would be the perfect description to describe him.
A man whose memory once held civilizations, timelines, languages, and artifacts that the modern world had tried to bury beneath steel and screens.
Before he lost his past, he was the past. A preserver of what had been not just in name, but in purpose.
The Kendra Arata I served in my youth was a man of poise and grace, a sharp-eyed, slow-speaking figure who could silence a room with a single raised brow.
He spoke fifteen languages fluently, he held the world's only private library of pre-collapse literature.
And he lectured at universities that only existed on encrypted campuses exclusive to the nobility.
But somewhere along the way, something went wrong.
It was supposed to be just like any other night, another night where he stares out the window. Reminiscing about his past, savouring the taste of wine all the while.
Nobody would have known that, that would be the last day we ever saw of his old self.
The next morning he had forgotten everything, his mind had regressed back to his 21 year old self.
With it came the nightmares, the muttering.
He started wandering through his old archives, like a ghost searching for a funeral it missed.
I've been warned by my predecessors about this, from the one who've served Master Arata before me.
He told me there are times when Master Arata seems different, as if a picture that is not whole yet yearning for its completion.
That he'll sometimes forget about himself, about the world.
But he also told me, that it all will came back in due time. So I should help him as best as I could, to be his support every step in the way.
But as seasons passed, and he hasn't recovered his memories. Eventually, I decided to do everything for him.
I did task from the most complicated to the most menial, with time I finally accepted that he had truly forgotten it all.
But even broken, he was still the man who saved me.
For a long time, I never understood why he chose me.
Now I know I never will.
But even broken, he was still the man who saved me.
So I will stay no matter what happens.
--2 Year Later--
Before I knew it, 2 years had passed after Master Kendra had forgotten his memories.
The world had changed again by then more sterile, more synthetic. The cities grew higher and colder.
The technologies ever advancing with each year, always managing to made the previous ones obsolete.
Now the simulation pod usually reserved for the rich, had finally become so common that the lower class is now able to use it.
The majority of humanity finally stopped dreaming and started simulating.
But luckily Master Kendra even with his amnesia, is still able to live his daily day to day life.
At first he shifted his daily activities to playing relics, real relics.
Not the crude imitations made by the people, he played true antiques from his old world.
Video games whose age dwarfs mine by decades, centuries even.
Artifacts he'd once preserved for history, now became his sole reason of survival.
All the while, I watched over him.
Even now, I wear the neural sync band one of the few remaining techs he still trusts. Constantly tuned to his vitals, tracking the man I've followed since I was eight.
I've long became accustomed to the flutter in his pulse when he stares at vintage game boxes.
I recognize the subtle shift in his breath, when his mind grazes a memory it doesn't quite remember, but his body can't forget.
He smiles more often now, but it's always distant like he's still waiting to wake up from a dream that started decades ago.
But that all changed ever since he heard that word.
YGGDRASIL
When he heard it He went completely still, then leaned forward like something ancient had just whispered in his ear.
I don't know what that word means to him, only that the moment he heard it. Something inside of him ignited, like a match struck in a long-dead forest.
I didn't understand what it meant at first, but I knew that look in his face.
Purpose.
It was the same expression he wore, when discovering a relic no one else could identify.
When he told me his dreams and ambitions, back when he was younger.
After that day he started researching obsessively, acquired stocks in the game's parent company.
Pulling strings I hadn't seen him use in years.
When I asked what he was doing, he only said.
"If this world is what I think it is, then there is still time."
Time for what?
He never explained.
But I didn't need him to.
Because when the man who raised me, who pulled me from anonymity. And made me believe I could be more, sets his eyes on something, I'll follow.
Even though I'm nearing thirty now.
I still see myself as that boy who was pulled from the dust by a man who saw value in the forgotten.
And even if he never remembers why he chose me, I will remember every second of why I stayed.
I am Alden the shadow who serves.
Not just because I was saved.
But because I believe that somewhere inside the man who lost the world, is the man who preserved it.
And whatever comes next whether it's a game, a digital world, or something far greater I will follow.
Until the very end.
Even if he forgets me again.
Even if he never finds what he's looking for.
I will serve.
Because he is the only man in this world who ever saw me.
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Alden will serve Kendra, but you the readers shall serve me muahahaha.
You are all slaves to my work (JK)
But fr tho don't forget to leave some comments and power stone, and vote!