Three days east, the world changes.
Not burnt. Not destroyed.
Rewritten.
The ground is black, but not charred. Strange patterns snake across the surface—fractals glowing with faint code, as if the land itself is glitching. Even the sky above us stutters, flickering like corrupted footage.
Ashen halts beside a shattered pillar.
"This zone is unstable," he says. "Residual Cycle architecture. Memory shards... corrupted."
Translation: whatever happened here was bad.
And it never truly ended.
Still, we move forward.
The maps we salvaged from the observatory pointed to a relay tower at this zone's center—a signal point used during the early collapse. If any trace of the old world still lives, it might be there.
Or buried beneath it.
By noon, we see it.
A tower juts from the land like a fractured bone—bent, cables dangling, metal exposed. But at its peak, a light still pulses. Faint. Steady. Red.
"There's power," Kara mutters.
"And a signal," Navi adds, tapping his scanner.
Then it hits us.
Not a sound. Not light.
But presence.
A wave of pressure—like grief, static, and memory all crashing at once. Liora drops to her knees, gripping her head. Kara stumbles. Even Ashen convulses, his skin flickering blue.
I remain standing—but I feel it.
Like someone reached into my skull and whispered:
Remember me.
We climb the tower. The air grows thick. Heavy. Each step feels like dragging history behind us.
At the top, a console still runs—barely alive, sparks dancing around its base.
Then comes the voice.
Female. Glitched. Looping through a damaged holopad:
> "…Initiating fallback… encryption key active… request broadcast… please… someone respond…"
The loop resets. Again.
Then it changes.
> "…Sector Heartfall lost… Liora, if you hear this—"
Liora stares at the console like it just said her name.
Because it did.
"That voice…" Her words are barely breath.
Ashen steps closer. "Quantum resonance detected. It knows you."
"Is this a trap?" Kara asks, hand on her blade.
"Or a call for help," I reply.
The console sputters again. A name appears on the cracked display:
VIREN.
Liora's eyes widen.
"He was my partner," she whispers. "Before the Cycle took him."
Navi frowns. "That was years ago. He should be—"
"Gone," Liora finishes.
No one speaks.
Then the console blinks once more.
Coordinates appear—far beyond any charted zone.
Deep into what Ashen calls:
"The Unreconciled Sector. Forbidden. Even to us."
"Then that's where we're going," I say.
Because this world doesn't forget.
And neither do its ghosts.
[End of Chapter 18]