Arcod was never exceptional. He wasn't the fastest, the smartest, or the most charismatic. He grew up in a modest neighborhood where dreams were often outgrown rather than pursued. His parents were loving but tired people—his father a machinist, his mother a nurse. They raised Arcod with discipline and a quiet kind of hope, the kind that sits on bookshelves in the form of self-help titles and worn notebooks.
By the time he entered high school, Arcod had settled into being average. He studied, not out of ambition, but out of obligation. He didn't hate school, but he didn't particularly enjoy it either. That changed during his final year, in the middle of a quiet night of studying, when the first sensation came.
He had been reviewing history notes—dry, repetitive paragraphs he had read three times already—when a sharp prick of awareness bloomed in the center of his mind. Not pain, exactly, but a brittle tension, like his thoughts were being filtered through cracked glass. He paused, blinking. The sensation intensified, and suddenly, he remembered every word on the page. Not perfectly, but clearer than usual—like a photograph coming into focus just enough to make out the shapes.
Arcod didn't think much of it at first. Maybe it was just a moment of clarity, the kind students occasionally get in the haze of late-night cramming. But it kept happening. Whenever he focused deeply—genuinely tried—he would feel that same crackling awareness. Over time, he started calling it "the shard."
It wasn't visible. He couldn't touch it. But it was always there when he reached deep into his mind, like a sliver of glass embedded in the folds of his consciousness. It didn't give him the answers, but it helped him recall things he shouldn't have remembered—phrases from textbooks, teachers' off-hand comments, even the way a problem was solved on the board two months ago. It wasn't photographic memory. It was like... guided intuition, nudging him toward recall.
Arcod rode that subtle edge through college, where he studied business and economics. His grades shot up. His confidence followed, slowly but surely. He didn't tell anyone about the shard. How could he? Who would believe him? He barely believed it himself. But he respected it, used it like a scalpel—precise, infrequent, but always sharp when he needed it.
At first, the shard only activated when he really concentrated—those long, intense moments of silence where the world narrowed to a pinpoint. But with time, it became easier. Less focus was needed. He began using it during internships, during meetings, interviews, and negotiations. His superiors noticed. They always praised him for his quick thinking, his grasp of complex material, his near-instant recall of data and strategy.
By the time he was thirty, Arcod was managing teams in a respected firm. By forty, he had founded his own startup and sold it for more than he'd ever dreamed he'd earn in a lifetime. At forty-five, he was a name in the tech world. Quiet, perhaps, but respected—an unassuming mind with a golden touch.
The shard was still with him, though he noticed its change.
It was smaller.
That was the only way he could describe it. The sensation was fainter now. Sometimes he had to strain to feel it at all. It was like a light dimming behind a thickening fog.
He shrugged it off. He was successful now. Wealthy, stable, with a calm life and a well-structured routine. He had long since learned to live without relying on the shard. It was more of a helper now, not a necessity. Like an old mentor who still sat in the audience during his lectures.
By the age of fifty, Arcod had become the CEO of a major conglomerate. He lived in a glass tower above the city, ate at places where the menu didn't show prices, and answered to no one. Interviews called him "the quiet mind of industry," a man of insight and uncanny memory. He didn't correct them. How could he explain?
Even still, in his private moments—before sleep, or during long flights—he would feel for the shard, as though checking on an old scar. He measured its size by instinct, and each year, it diminished more. By the time he turned sixty-five, he could barely feel it. A flicker. A whisper.
At seventy, Arcod still walked tall, though a cane accompanied him now. His office had changed—sleek, minimalist, adorned with awards he barely looked at. On the morning everything changed, he sat in that office with a lukewarm cup of coffee and stared at his digital calendar. There was a task he was sure he had assigned to his assistant. But the details... were gone.
He frowned and concentrated.
That was when it happened.
The shard, once a glint of clarity in his mind, flared. For a heartbeat, it returned to full brilliance, and then—it shattered.
Not in the way glass shatters. It didn't explode or stab him with pain. It collapsed inward, shrinking so fast it left a vacuum, a stillness, and then... a point of absolute blackness.
A hole.
In his mind.
It didn't feel like dying. It felt like being unmade.
Reality rippled around him as that tiny hole expanded. Not outward, but inward, like it was eating away at his existence, memory by memory, breath by breath.
He tried to cry out. Tried to stand. But before his body could respond, before thought could even take shape, everything turned to void.
Not silence.
Not darkness.
Nothing.
And then, without transition or warning, Arcod ceased to exist in the world he had known.
He was gone.