Chapter 20 – Fragments of the Fallen Star

Silence.

Not the kind born from peace, but the oppressive quiet of a place unvisited by time.

Erevan stood within a chamber unlike any he had encountered before. There were no enemies here, no traps, no grotesque tests or illusions to unravel his sanity. Only light—dim, celestial, ancient—and a sky that should not exist.

He looked up.

There was no ceiling. Instead, a vast expanse stretched above him, stitched with constellations he couldn't name. Fragments of dead stars floated in slow motion, shedding whispers instead of light. They hummed with meaning. Power. Memory.

A glowing shard drifted toward him.

The moment it touched his palm, reality fractured.

---

Memory Sync Initiated

> Fragment of Origin: 3 of 9

Name: Eryndor Protocol – Archive Echo

Access Level: Locked Memory – Remembrance Required: 5

Remembrance Achieved: 6

---

His breath caught.

Not from pain or shock, but from the overwhelming flood of clarity.

He was… somewhere else.

Not Erevan the climber, not the tyrant or the warrior. But someone softer. Smarter. Desperate in a different way.

He was standing before a console buried in a collapsing laboratory, sirens screaming in the distance. The universe outside the glass was tearing itself apart—black holes devouring planets like fruit, reality folding in on itself.

And he was… watching it all happen.

He wasn't a soldier here. He was a scientist. A strategist. The mind behind something called the Eryndor Protocol.

And Seris… Seris had been beside him, wearing the same eyes, the same haunted calm.

"We can't stop the collapse," she'd said then. "But maybe… we can leave a weapon behind."

He'd nodded.

Not because he agreed.

But because he didn't have a choice.

The Tower wasn't built by gods. It was built by survivors.

---

The vision snapped back.

Erevan staggered, the fragment in his palm dissolving into light. He clutched his head, vision swimming with images of code, destruction, a plan so ancient and vast it stretched across lifetimes.

He wasn't just someone who'd broken the system before.

He helped create it.

The realization landed like a thunderclap.

The tower wasn't a prison for the strong.

It was a filter. A weapon. A long-forgotten failsafe designed to breed… something.

Him.

---

> [System Override Imminent]

Warning: Core Protocol Recognition Detected.

Adjusting climb parameters…

The chamber trembled.

From the edge of the starlit abyss, something stirred. A being of shifting crystal and void, crowned by a ring of shattered halos. It spoke with a voice layered across dimensions.

"You have remembered too soon, Echo."

Its presence felt like gravity itself—a force that bowed even thought.

"You think yourself free," it continued, "but you are nothing more than recursion. An echo of the same design."

Erevan didn't move.

"I am more than memory," he said softly. "I am the mistake the tower failed to erase."

His eyes ignited, starlight blooming from his veins, burning with an anger that now had direction.

"I won't just climb. I'll rewrite the purpose of the climb itself."

The void-beast charged.

---

The battle wasn't like those before.

This wasn't just combat—it was conceptual war. Power clashed with memory, and every strike summoned flashes of forgotten truths. As they fought, pieces of Erevan's old life reassembled behind his thoughts—maps, blueprints, warnings written in blood.

He had buried all this for a reason.

Now the tower was trying to do the same to him.

But Erevan had changed. He wasn't the same creator who feared the consequences of his own design. He was the result of those consequences. Refined. Sharpened. Unbound.

He tore through the construct, not just with power, but with will.

And when the final blow landed, the entire chamber imploded into white.

---

When he woke, the sky was gone.

The stars had turned inward, forming a staircase of burning names.

And at the top: a door.

Not to the next level.

But to the core.

> [Hidden Path Unlocked: Ascension Through Rebellion]

Objective: Reach the Heart of the Tower.

New Stat Unlocked: Will of Origin (Lv. 1)

---

Erevan stood slowly.

He wasn't just a climber now.

He was a relic.

A rebel.

A god's mistake.

And the deeper he remembered… the more dangerous he became.

---

Next Chapter: "Whispers from the Core"