The canal water moved without sound.
No ripples. No reflection. As if the surface itself had forgotten how to behave.
I knelt beside the crack in the stone wall, focusing on the faint distortion leaking into the air. It wasn't aggressive, wasn't alive—but it was wrong. Like a wound left open too long.
[Residual erasure intensity: Rising slowly.]
"Someone sloppy," I muttered. "Or someone learning."
Neither option was comforting.
I extended my senses carefully, letting mana flow in thin, controlled threads. The perfect control of my Guardian body made the process feel almost surgical.
The moment my mana touched the distortion—
My vision shifted.
The canal vanished.
I stood in the same place, but the world around me was pale, desaturated, as if drained of meaning. Sounds were distant. Colors bled into gray.
[Echo Layer accessed.]
"An afterimage," I whispered.
This wasn't the present.
It was a memory the world itself hadn't fully erased.
Footsteps appeared ahead of me—ripples in reality rather than physical marks. I followed them along the canal, through the Echo Layer, careful not to interact too deeply.
A figure walked there.
Not solid. Not fully present.
Tall. Hooded.
Each step they took caused the world around them to blur slightly, like a smudge dragged across a painting.
My chest tightened.
It's him.
The hollow-eyed man from the guild.
I watched as the echo-version of him stopped near the canal wall. His hand rose, touching the stone—
And reality tore.
Not violently.
Casually.
Like peeling old paper from a wall.
[Erasure technique observed.]
I sucked in a sharp breath.
He wasn't casting a spell.
He was editing the world.
The echo ended abruptly, snapping me back into the present. I staggered slightly, catching myself against the wall.
[Memory erosion: Negligible.]
Good.
But my hands were shaking.
"He doesn't use forgotten spells," I whispered. "He is one."
The distinction mattered.
A Guardian lost to erosion didn't just wield erasure.
They became it.
I stood and looked down the canal, toward where the echo had ended. The distortion was stronger in that direction, spreading slowly like ink in water.
He was still nearby.
I followed the canal until it widened into an open water junction surrounded by abandoned warehouses. Most were sealed, their doors rusted shut.
One wasn't.
Light flickered faintly inside.
I approached silently, suppressing my presence as best I could.
Inside, the warehouse was almost empty—except for a man standing in the center, staring at his own reflection in a pool of canal water that had seeped through the floor.
It was him.
Up close, the hollowness was worse. His face was calm, emotionless, like a mask worn too long. His eyes reflected nothing.
"You shouldn't be here," he said without turning around.
I stopped.
"You're leaking erasure," I replied. "People are getting hurt."
He tilted his head slightly. "Are they?"
My jaw tightened.
"What are you?" I asked.
He turned.
Up close, I could feel it clearly now.
Not one fragment.
Not two.
But many.
Broken, fused, unstable.
"I was a Guardian," he said flatly. "Once."
My chest tightened.
"What happened?"
He smiled.
It was the most unsettling thing I'd ever seen.
"I chose wrong," he said. "Too many times."
The water at his feet rippled, and a faint distortion spread outward.
[Warning.]
[Host exposure to active erasure field.]
I raised my guard instantly.
"You're going to destroy this district," I said.
"No," he replied. "I'm going to erase myself."
I froze.
Before I could react, he stepped forward—straight into the distortion.
The world folded inward.
Light vanished.
And then—
He was gone.
No explosion.
No sound.
Just absence.
The erasure field collapsed in on itself, sealing the crack in the canal wall as if it had never existed.
Silence returned.
I stood there, heart pounding.
[Erasure source: Neutralized.]
I should have felt relief.
Instead, I felt dread.
Because his final words echoed in my mind.
I chose wrong.
I clenched my fists.
So this was my future—if I lost control.
Not death.
Not madness.
But disappearance.
I turned away from the empty warehouse, the weight of the knowledge heavy on my shoulders.
This world didn't need another forgotten Guardian.
It needed one who could remember—
Even when remembering hurt the most.