he white light swallowed everything.
Not like the other memory fades —
not like Ari's soft echoes
or the fragmented flashes of Marin's childhood.
This was blinding, searing, absolute.
Then it dimmed.
I found myself standing on a grass field at dusk.
Wind moved gently over wildflowers.
The horizon burned a soft orange.
Everything smelled warm—sunlit—alive.
It was too vivid.
Too textured.
Too emotional.
Not a hallucination.
A memory.
Lira gasped beside me.
"This isn't your archive's active layer," she whispered.
"This is a forbidden pre-render."
I scanned the landscape, breath held tight.
Children's laughter echoed from a distance.
And then—
I saw her.
Not the child.
Not the glitching apparition.
Marin—grown.
Late twenties.
Hair up in a messy bun.
Sunlight in her eyes.
Barefoot in the grass, spinning slowly with her arms open like the whole world was hers.
She laughed.
A real laugh.
Nothing broken.
Nothing stolen.
Then she turned—
and saw me.
"Eli."
Her smile softened into something intimate.
Familiar.
"Come here."
My chest cracked open.
Emotion flared so strong I nearly staggered.
Lira grabbed my wrist.
"Elias—be careful. This isn't her. This is a projection."
But Marin walked closer, expression warm, eyes bright.
She stopped in front of me.
Too close.
Like she knew exactly how close she always stood.
She lifted a hand.
I didn't move.
Her fingers brushed my cheek.
Warm.
Real.
"Don't look at me like I'm a ghost," she whispered.
My voice broke.
"You're not real."
She tilted her head gently, the same way she did as a child—
confused and curious, both at once.
"Then why do you remember this?"
"I don't," I whispered.
"You do," she said softly.
"You just buried it."
Lira stepped between us like she was cutting through a dream.
"Marin isn't alive," she said firmly.
"You died when you were a child. This is a fabricated instance. An Echo that shouldn't exist."
Marin stared at Lira with quiet sadness.
"I didn't die."
My heart lurched.
Lira's tone sharpened.
"Yes. You did."
Marin shook her head.
"No. They only made you believe that."
The world flickered—
grass turning static-gray
sky splitting into pixel lines.
The shadow's voice slithered through the air:
"Show him."
Marin looked at me again.
Not the grown woman.
Not the glitch.
But something behind her eyes—
a loneliness so deep it felt ancient.
"Do you want the truth?" she whispered.
I swallowed hard.
"Yes."
The grass vanished under our feet.
The sunset blinked into darkness.
We were standing inside a narrow room.
Cold metal walls.
Medical screens humming low.
A white bed under harsh fluorescent light.
A facility.
And on the bed—
A child.
Hooked to neural wires.
Eyes closed.
Breathing faint and shallow.
Marin.
Eight years old.
Lira covered her mouth.
"Oh my god…"
Marin (the older version standing with us) placed her hand on the sleeping child's forehead.
"I wasn't dead, Elias."
My pulse thundered.
"This… this can't be real."
She nodded.
"They didn't unplug me. They transferred me."
A cold shiver stabbed through me.
The shadow whispered:
"Mnemosyne never lets valuable minds go."
Lira's voice trembled.
"No… no, they wouldn't—Marin was a child—"
Marin spoke quietly:
"They used me."
The lights flickered as the memory deepened.
Scientists moved in and out of the room.
Monitoring screens displayed neural patterns, dream cycles, emotional triggers.
I saw an ID plate on the bed:
SUBJECT THETA-15
Memetic Stability Trials
Mnemosyne Neural Lab — Restricted
Lira stumbled backward, horrified.
"No… Theta wasn't a myth… they actually ran the trials…"
Marin continued:
"They used my mind to test memory-growth projections.
Simulations.
Potential futures.
They fed my neural map thousands of versions of myself."
She looked at me with unbearable tenderness.
"In most of them… I found you."
My breath broke.
I whispered:
"Why… why me?"
She smiled sadly.
"You were the only constant in my life.
My anchor.
My safest memory."
Lira turned pale.
"Elias… she built versions of herself around you."
Marin stepped closer.
"I didn't grow up.
I was grown.
Simulated.
Projected.
Expanded.
Compressed."
Tears pooled in her eyes.
"But I never lived. Not really."
I shook my head in denial.
"No… no—if this were true—why would I forget everything?"
Marin lowered her gaze.
"That wasn't me."
She pointed toward the ceiling—
toward the humming servers in the memory.
"That was Mnemosyne."
The shadow whispered from the walls:
"He wasn't allowed to remember."
Lira grabbed my arm.
"Elias—this is why the shadow wants you.
You carried the anchor memory that guided her simulations.
You were the foundation.
The prime imprint."
My voice came out broken.
"And the promise… the promise I gave her—"
"Yes," Marin whispered.
"You promised you'd find me.
No matter what."
The memory-room flickered violently.
The child-Marín on the bed convulsed—
fading in and out, like a corrupted file.
The older Marin took my hand.
Warm.
Desperate.
"Eli," she whispered.
"You did find me. But you won't keep me unless you remember everything."
The world groaned, collapsing inward.
The shadow's voice filled every corner:
"No more truths.
Not yet."
Darkness swallowed us whole.