Chapter 142 – Fractures of the Forgotten

The blank world did not remain blank for long.

‎Where there is breath, there is memory.

‎And where there is memory, even forgotten things find a way to return.

‎It began as whispers.

‎Soft glitches in the stillness.

‎Not code. Not soul.

‎But impressions—faint echoes from a reality that had already died.

‎They drifted through the unborn air like the sighs of discarded dreams. A song half-remembered, a scream never resolved. Darius felt them before he saw them: the weight of old griefs clawing back toward meaning.

‎Kaela froze mid-motion, her flickering forms stuttering like broken frames of forgotten reels. "They're coming," she said, voice layered with too many selves. "The ones that weren't written into the end."

‎From the soft void, a shape formed.

‎A man.

‎No longer clad in armor. No longer carrying pride.