Cael stared at his distorting reflection, looking at the azure rings which revolved around the pupils.
The brown surface of the pupil glowed with white hue at its edges. It radiated ethereal light similar to that of the glow of liquid darkness and the mirror-like glow of the black figure.
The way his reflection was blanked out, staring at him with those abnormal eyes, while black-green lines of glitches flashed over it made for an unsettling scene, making him flinch.
'Is it me? What is this?'
For a moment Cael thought that he saw what he was not supposed to in his reflection; the weave of timelines woven together by the Archive and its simulations.
The various versions of himself across the parallel worlds.
He snapped.
What does it mean? Did my consciousness be taken over by other me's? Or I was the one who overtook this one?
Sparks of electricity went wild, even the glitches on the shattered rooftop went crazy.
The black veil waved in the air revealing the raven black hair of the mysterious figure, falling like silk from their head to their upper back.
Their face was not visible but Cael had much more pressing issues to consider.
'The seed, the voices, visions, glitches. What did it all mean?'
At that moment Cael felt his body reacting differently. The flow of something, like a foreign essence circulating and enhancing his core, making the weird feeling he felt before more stabilized alongside his whole body.
The feeling cooled his mind, helping him to reason with the events. He saw his reflection in those distortions again this time the glow in his eyes emanated a mystical surge, it was as if that mystical surge of glow or energy was influencing the very world itself and in turn himself too.
The thought made him shudder.
'No… I am forgetting something. Before those visions raided my consciousness what exactly happened.'
I remembered the Record Break and stumbled upon a part of the original script. Then, that person/figure whatever they are assaulted me.
'Back then I thought that they came to erase me from the timeline but…
Gulping, Cael looked at the kneeling abomination who was drowning in the rain of sparks, struggling to keep its weight and stand up. The black figure was also staring it down as the sword finally undone itself and dissolved into nothingness.
The distortions and glitches obscured the black figure in them, slowly growing intense with each passing second.
…that can be the case.'
[KikikKirkkikoqu]
At that moment the monster started walking towards them while producing some noise. Its steps were frail and slow now, its left side slowly repairing itself from broken shards of mirror-like jewels. With a hunched back it was now on the level of height similar to the black figure.
"You see it now, don't you?" The figure's voice was a rasping echo, their silhouette flickering against the crimson sky.
Cael couldn't answer. His vision was bifurcated. One eye saw the ruins of the rooftop, the other saw a cascading waterfall of binary.
He looked at the monster and he didn't see a beast. Its grotesque limbs or faces, or the white dust bleeding like blood from it, all he saw was berserk code leaking and corrupting endlessly.
It really was a chilling experience to view the world from a unique angle. The flickering code also looked like the heat map of something for some moments, something which was neither alive nor really dead too.
The monster was truly an amalgamation.
He chuckled.
"What now? Don't tell me I have to fight that thing."
The figure did not respond for a long time. Following the silence, not really silence, the glitches were still rampant, the monster continued its march. With every step it took the surrounding felt heavy as if bending to the presence of monstrous wraith.
Meanwhile the black figure almost dissolved in the glitches and white sparks, their body becoming translucent for fleeting seconds.
'I will be…damned.' His face turned deathly pale and horrified. The shock made him pause, making his mind wander.
All of this is just a bad dream. Right, a dream no way all of this is real. Maybe I am already dead, the Record Break may have scattered me across space-time. But no, all of this was real as real it can be.
Because—
The monster lunged forward dashing in a long arc, its movements were slow and not so flawless like before but still superhuman, waterfalls of white dust also flowed more smoothly from its sides.
It ignored the black figure and twisted its broken body towards Cael, its blade-arm stretched unnaturally wide, threatening to split him in half.
There was almost no time to react. However in spite of that Cael bent backwards trying to save his torso from the attack but it resulted in his neck becoming a perfect target for the slash.
The world slowed down, as the mirror blade closed the distance between its sharp edge and his vulnerable neck.
The glitches, the sounds, the whimsical presence of the distorted portals, everything slowed down as if they were frozen in time, only the oppressive feeling in his body remained as usual.
Then, it happened again. Something in his core and very being changed. His mind shattered like glass only to reform whole again in an instant. Countless visions, the dreams of unknowns, the forgotten memories everything spurned in front of his eyes.
He saw variations of himself, the people he knows, the people he doesn't know all somehow connected to his different versions across the timelines. It felt like a fever dream. Then—
The single familiar ringing buzzed in his ears. It was like a soft chime and after a few moments which felt like eternity it hit again.
Rejected memories spun before his eyes, filling his inner vision with flickering fragments. The world was still slowed down, Cael didn't know if it was just him perspecting the world differently or something beyond his comprehension nor did he care currently.
He scanned the fragments with weary eyes feeling the joy, the sorrow, the sadness and other various emotions at the same time, it all felt pretty natural to him. Then, he stopped.
He locked in one of such forgotten scripts of his other lives, feeling the very essence of the forgotten memory.
The life of a younger him in a distant war between rulers of the world and the revolutionaries at the end of the world. He was a skilled survivalist who knew how to survive and thrive in an apocalypse.
A true combatant, someone with varying levels of skill and power and people just like him to rely on. A kid who was forced to become an adult before his time and executed for his defiance against the world.
Cael was lost in that memory, its distant echo calling out to him to accept it, to embrace the reality left behind by the other him, to fill it once again and free it from the curse of being forgotten.
He stumbled a little but regained his composure immediately but it was enough to make the world flow a little faster.
The fragment flowed in the air, like the flickering code ready to disappear at any moment just like the part of the original script he found after Record Break.
Cael carcasses it on his fingertips feeling the imaginary warmth within it and the much deeper coldness emanating from it.
At that moment, the mirror blade finally moved half an inch, the distortions moved slightly almost negligible and the time was coming to the terms with what it was like before.
The vague space separated from the distorting reality of the rooftop was slowly being undone and he knew what he had to do.
Before the time had the time to return to its normal state Cael gripped the fragment tightly in his wrist, dispersing it into white dust. The dust glowed whitish-blue illuminating his wrist and disappeared, just as it did the world returned to normal.
The blade arm brushed off against his cheek leaving a slight sharp scar across it, missing his neck by a hair's breath. He dove down and twisted his body with the reflexes he should not know but still did.
Driving his elbow into the monster's core with all the strength possible to muster, his body carried the movements which felt borrowed, like someone else had left them in his muscles.
The feeling was vague and alien but still carried a faint familiarity after all he remembered how these movements felt.
The monster shrieked, its voice splitting into a chorus of corrupted commands. The monster and Cael carried the momentum and passed through the distorting portals and glitches.
The electrical sparks went berserk and assaulted them both but Cael didn't stagger this time, instead…
…His consciousness blurred between his current state and that of the young warrior of the apocalypse.
For a moment he felt a chill run down his spine, he felt heavy! Heavy to move, heavy to think and carry forward as if someone was tying him down.
'W-What-?'
A disturbing thought crossed his mind. He felt the cold weight of something pressing on his back leaning on him to drag him down.
Cael's breathing paled a little and his neck got heavy as if someone was strangling it with their hands.
The feeling of being in that vague space came back again, this time however someone else was moving normally in it.
Cael opened his mouth and closed it then opened it again and closed it again, unable to say anything.
"...It's too cruel.", the voice came cold, full of sadness, loneliness and maybe even jealousy, whispering in his ear. It was his own voice.
"Why did I have to go through all that? While you lived your way to adulthood peacefully…"
Cael felt cold, oppressively cold as hairs on his hand stood up. Goosebumps were not enough to explain what he was experiencing.
A failed version of himself - its memory was strangling him to death. He knew how this 'Cael' lived his life, what trials he faced and how bitter the end of his script was.
Afterall, his life unfolded before him like a random chapter of a novel, not too important in the grand schemes of things, a fable ending up getting forgotten despite being read.
"Hhhey…tell me. Why?" The memory whispered in his ears again, the dread feeling of cold in that voice was oppressive but Cael resisted it desperately.
He felt his consciousness dim a little, as if drowning in the sea of emotions.
'Auh!'
It's useless. It's all useless. I can't escape this, the weight of the memory, the guilt it's too heavy.
Why was my life so merry to go around, while this child suffered throughout his life.
Cael drowned in these thoughts, his mind nearly on blink of exhaustion. However at that moment he remembered.
'No…'
Cael slowly swimmed out of the sea of despair.The vague sense of separated space dimmed and the time slowly started to return to its normal state.
I had my own trials too, I had my own hardships too. What does he know about my life? Nothing! Even if he is me he doesn't have the right to judge me.
Criticism without introspection is just projection in disguise. Those words were not mine but truer words have never been spoken.
Cael pulled himself out of the sea of despair and resisted his mind against those foreign emotions.
The feeling of the imaginary grip around his neck disappeared and he regained his senses. The vague space crumbled into fine powder, Cael felt the cold presence and its weight vanish with it too.
"Selfish bastard…"
Cael grinned, "I am!".
Then, everything returned to normal as it was n-no not normal, his elbow was dunked deep into the center of the monster most probably its core as they were dragged through the electrical sparks and glitches in the air.
The situation was still tense both physically and mentally, still he felt at a little ease.
'At least my mind is not split between visions now.'
Cael pursed his lips and growled as high as he could like a beast. Then he staggered, almost falling on his face. The impact of his fall was absorbed by his knees though they were brutally bruised.
Kneeling some distance away from the edge of the rooftop, he forced his battered body to move.
Then, he heard the voice of a mirror cracking. He looked behind and saw the monster kneeling on its knees too, the difference being its knees contained faces carved from silver crystal instead of joints.
The monster's core was destroyed leaving a wide hole in its place, white dust dripping endlessly from the grievous wound. Sparks of electricity assaulted its abominable figure.
[ Excessive Memory leakage ]
[ o-O-overloooad…kikirkki…over… ]
Boom!
The world shuddered when the abominable mirror fiend exploded into fragmented shards. Dust formed with numbers and letters sprawled where it had been. The monster was gone just like that.
The glitches and distortions started diminishing slowly and Cael felt an emotion of esteem, joy and satisfaction albeit not knowing why those emotions felt so strong.
He breathed heavily looking at the remains of mirror feind.
"You remembered the memory of a True Reflection."
"An echo stirs in your depth."
***
Cael turned around and faced the direction from where the voices came. There the black figure was standing some distance away from him, their face still hidden behind black veiled hood.
They were still obscured by the glitches albeit with more of them making their silhouette see through.
" That sounded oddly familiar." Cael replied, blood dripping from his nose and mouth.
"..."
"Not going to say anything, are you?"
His lips curled up and he spoke in an amused tone.
"Let me guess. This all happened already a few times, maybe with some minor changes but happened and i didnt have any recollection of those memories, only feeling a sense of deja vu since you planted some kind of seed in my…
Uhh… in my-? My… myyy what exactly?"
"You are somewhat correct." The figure said almost immediately.
"Somewhat-?"
They sighed and when they spoke their voice for sounded feminine.
"Listen debugger the so called reality, the simulation you know is not as what you aspect it to be. Indeed it all happened a few times with some changes in events, the timelines, the space-time continuum and other things but it is not the same."
They paused and continued as they spoke, weak sparks of electricity danced around their figure.
"I don't have much time left so I will cut to the chase. This Record break was not natural, instead it was caused by an anomaly, the anomaly known as Cael Adryn and that monster was a True Reflection of Archivists intended to eliminate the cause and restore order to the simulation. This has happened 89 times already making this revelation or timeline 90th one at least the ones in which I interrupted. In any case your perfor-"
"Wait—wait, wait! What did you just say?"
He raised his hand and spoke hurriedly:
"An anomaly, I guessed that much but an unnatural Record Break what did it even mean? and those numbers; no w-wait don't have much time left? You expect me to believe it?"
They replied:
"You are just wasting time here. I am not omnipotent nor omniscient nor do I have that much power to resist Archivists will now."
The rooftop became normal again, only the sky retained some of the changes it had after the Record Break. The black figure was now the only source of those strange glitches and flashes. They continued:
"That reflection was no mere memory, it was an echo and a complete one at that filled with its own will. Facing it and jumping timelines ended up costing me too much essence."
'That sounded reasonable, I guess?'
Caelstraightened himself and looked into the eyes of black figure, only the eyes were indifferent to the weird phenomenon happening to their master, carrying their mystical glow and presence.
It was time to end this arduously long day.