Chapter Sixteen: Another Present
—Chips and Chains Saga—
Somewhere outside of life.
Darkness stretched infinitely in all directions.
From that endless void, marble columns rose and fell—some coiled like corkscrews, others splintered mid-air only to reassemble themselves as if in defiance of gravity or logic. None remained still. All were in motion, shifting ceaselessly from shadow to shadow.
There was no wind.
No echo.
No sense of up or down.
Only the pillars—and the sound of footsteps in water that wasn't there.
Doran walked beside Forgotten.
He didn't know for how long. Minutes? Hours? Days? Time here had no meaning. No weight.
Each step left nothing behind. No ripple. No trace. No flame.
No Avon.
The voice that once haunted the edges of his thoughts—murmuring insults, offering guidance twisted in malice, mocking him in moments of stillness—was gone.
And in its absence, something more profound echoed through his core. Not peace. Not silence.
Emptiness.
A hollow space he hadn't even realized was filled until it vanished.
He didn't ask where Avon had gone.
There were other questions now.
Forgotten moved with no sound and no source—like a shadow that had never needed light to exist. He neither radiated warmth nor cold. His presence simply was, as if he had always been walking beside Doran, even before they had met.
They traveled in silence.
Eventually, Forgotten halted. His head turned slowly toward Doran, the movements deliberate but unforced.
"How is your flesh?"
Doran frowned. "How is my—what kind of question even is that!?"
Forgotten's skeletal half curled into a smile. Dry. Patient. Ageless. The skinless grin shimmered faintly under a voidlight that had no origin.
"The void seeps into the Lands of the Passed," he said, voice calm and almost academic. "Time has no dominion here… yet consequence still lingers. Your flesh should have peeled from your bones by now. Dissolved. Eased you into death's embrace."
He turned forward once more.
Beneath his feet, a spiral staircase of floating steps unraveled downward—smooth and pale, each one appearing only a moment before he stepped upon it.
"But it hasn't," he added, his tone unreadable. "When we first met, your body obeyed this realm's rules. Now it resists them."
Doran followed without a word.
He glanced down at his hands as they moved in rhythm with each step—scarred knuckles, pale callouses from long-forgotten blades, the faint burn lines of rune surges etched like memories into flesh. Familiar. Tangible. His.
He flexed his fingers.
No cracks. No peeling. No decay.
They still responded as they always had.
"We met before?" he muttered, eyes still on his hands. "When?"
Forgotten did not pause. "When you first perished," he replied, voice smooth and hollow as if echoing from a place deeper than this darkness. "I was the one who announced your death."
Doran blinked, gaze drifting to the endless columns that slithered through the void like silent giants.
"I don't remember that."
"There are two reasons," Forgotten said, his voice as steady as the space was not. "Because Doran died… and you are not Doran."
The words struck harder than any blade. Doran stopped walking.
The void didn't ripple. The marble pillars didn't falter.
But something inside him—something unseen—cracked.
"What the hell do you mean I'm not Doran?"
Forgotten didn't stop. His steps left no trace, his form drifting forward over the unseeable path like a ghost who'd long since lost the need for ground.
"Your Body is Doran's," he said, as if narrating an autopsy. "Your Mind is fractured—but still clings to shape. But your Soul…"
He halted beneath a jagged column, spiraling like a broken rib through the black. Its edges shimmered, bleeding sideways into the nothing.
"…your Soul is already dead. Replaced by another."
Doran said nothing. He didn't move. Just stared at the figure ahead.
The cold in this realm wasn't of temperature, but of truth—and it pressed heavy against his lungs.
Forgotten moved again, slowly now, as if the act of speaking had briefly exhausted even him.
Eventually, he stopped. He didn't turn.
"While as I said time does not reach these lands," he said, "you still do not have a moment to lose."
He raised his arm—a simple gesture, quiet but commanding—and motioned for Doran to continue walking.
Doran's fists clenched at his sides.
They still moved like his.
His breath still came rough. Bitter. Real.
"I am still me."
The words clawed their way from his throat like iron scraping stone—sharp, heavy, stubborn.
Uncertain.
Forgotten offered no answer.
Just the slow, effortless wave of a hand.
A choice.
"You must choose," he said at last, his tone thin, but final. "Stay… and pass into the next realm. Your Body will follow. Your memories will fade. There will be peace."
Then he lifted a single, bone-thin finger and pointed ahead—into the ever-moving path of pillars that churned like dying stars.
"Or follow me. And witness three stories bound to time."
Doran stared into the darkness ahead.
He wanted answers.
Needed them.
"What stories?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Forgotten turned his head—just slightly, enough to be felt more than seen.
"A Past, a Present, and a Future. Fixed points in time." Forgotten's twinned voice spoke.
And with a subtle motion of his hand, the void began to change.
From the nothingness, three arches emerged—carved from silence itself, born slow and deliberate like wounds reopening. Each was framed by pillars that bent inward at their peaks, bowing as though in reverence to time itself.
The first arch wept darkness. Thick mist flowed from within, curling across the ground in quiet waves—like smoke mourning something long gone. The air turned sharp with the scent of ash and iron. Of old blood. Old fire.
The second shimmered silver, its surface flickering like lightning caught inside a mirror. Behind it… something moved. It breathed. Slow. Deep. Watching.
The third pulsed with a dim orange glow. Subtle. Distant. Like a star far beyond reach. The air around it didn't hum with sound—but sensation. A pressure Doran felt settle between his ribs. A rhythm that made his heartbeat stutter.
"Choose one," Forgotten said, his voice quiet but firm. "I shall remain here when you return."
Doran looked from one arch to the next.
Then behind him.
Only the void. Only pillars and silence.
His jaw tightened.
"I don't have time for this," he muttered. The frustration swelled in his chest like boiling oil. "I need answers. Not riddles and doorways."
He turned sharply and began to walk back the way they had come.
But each step was heavier than the last.
As if the void itself resisted his retreat.
Then—
"Correct," came Forgotten's voice from behind.
Doran froze.
"You do not have time."
The words echoed through the silence like bells rung in reverse.
Forgotten stepped forward, now framed by all three arches. Their lights bathed him in muted color—red mist, silver lightning, orange flame.
"The flame you bear," he said slowly, "while it keeps you alive… it is erasing what you believe to be from existence."
The words struck deeper than any blade.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Doran asked, turning back.
Forgotten raised a hand.
A symbol shimmered into being—drawn with his fingertip in the air. Doran didn't recognize it. Couldn't read it. But it ached to look at.
The shape pulsed softly, like a dying star.
"Every second it lives inside you," Forgotten said, "it scorches the links that hold you together. Mind. Soul. Body. Each one, cracked."
Doran's chest tightened.
His eyes locked on the symbol. It hovered between them, whispering truths in a language he couldn't understand.
"You were not chosen by Destiny," Forgotten continued. "You were not born of Fate. And yet… you burn."
He stepped forward, slow and sure.
"A mortal outside design."
Doran's voice came low, nearly broken. "Then what am I? Do I even exist?"
Silence.
The arches pulsed behind Forgotten like sleeping gods, offering no answer.
And then—
"You exist," he said at last, "but not as life understands existence."
He stopped just before Doran. His hollow eyes glinted like distant stars behind shadow.
"You are the consequence of arrogance… and ignorance."
His voice sharpened, cutting through the dark.
"You are no longer Doran. You are neither the Soul that occupies your body. You live paradoxically. And yet…"
He gestured to the arches again.
"You carry more than any other."
Then, softly—
"You name yourself… and the story that follows. Now choose, relive and witness."
Doran's gaze drifted toward the red-tinged arch.
The mist around it thickened—as if it sensed his attention. As if it hungered for it.
It pulsed once.
Slow. Deliberate.
Like a wound remembering how to bleed.
Forgotten said nothing more. He didn't need to.
He waited, silent as a tombstone.
Doran stepped forward.
With each pace, the air grew colder—not from any drop in temperature, but from the weight of memory. It pressed against his skin, slid into his lungs, curled around his spine.
Familiar.
Unsettling.
The scent deepened.
Ash. Iron. Burnt stone.
And as Doran crossed the threshold—
And where he appeared, the world screamed.
A battlefield surged up from the mist around him, like a memory forcing its way into form.
It didn't rise gently. It tore.
Doran stood knee-deep in it—surrounded by a war that did not know him, but whose sorrow curled around his ribs like barbed wire.
The sky was bruised, streaked with thick smoke and the violent violet bursts of rune detonations. Artillery howled across the clouds like falling stars. Gunfire cracked like distant thunder. The ground itself trembled, as if the planet had taken up the beat of the war drums.
He turned slowly, absorbing the chaos unfolding around him.
To his left, the banners of Azule Sovereign snapped in the wind—vibrant blue against a sky of flame. Their soldiers moved in tight, elegant formations. Rifles shimmered with glowing rune script. Their precision was mechanical. Cold. Inhumanly fast.
To his right, Regnum Ignis forces surged forward like a firestorm.
Their armor was scorched, dented, repatched with scrap and stubborn rage. Their weapons were heavier—cruder—but the runes carved into their plates bled power. Each shot was a scream. Each swing was a prayer laced in desperation.
BOOM!!
An explosion tore through the middle line—bodies lifted and flung like dolls wrapped in fire.
BOOM!!
A second blast followed, ripping through a crumbling building. Bricks shattered, flying in all directions. Water surged from the impact, sweeping through the wreckage like a blade of liquid steel. Screams echoed—some commands, some death rattles. Most, both.
Doran stood still in the carnage, unmoved and untouched.
His voice came low, nearly drowned by the chaos.
"Where the hell am I?" he muttered. "I recognize the uniforms… Regnum Ignis and Azule Sovereign."
Runes flared midair—fire and ice clashing like dueling gods. Sonic blasts roared from gauntlets. Wind condensed into discs that sliced through stone. The battlefield roared with raw magic and crude violence, and neither side gave ground.
Screams rose. Not words—just raw sound. The sound of people dying too fast to be remembered.
Doran stepped forward.
His boot sank an inch into the dirt—thick with ash, oil, and something darker.
"Am I on planet Carew?" he whispered, unsure whether it was a memory or a guess.
There was no answer.
Only the hiss of compressed air nearby—and the snap of a teleport rune discharging.
A figure flickered into existence mid-sprint.
Azule armor.
Doran barely had time to register the soldier before they stumbled forward, crashing into the churned battlefield. Cracks split the plating on the soldier's back—lightning danced inside the fractures like trapped fury.
He was dragging another.
Both of them moved with frantic urgency. But neither even glanced at Doran.
They passed through his left shoulder like mist—no resistance, no contact.
Just a sudden chill, like memory itself had brushed bone.
Doran staggered slightly. His body still felt real, but the world didn't see him.
He turned, eyes tracking the soldiers as they collapsed behind a pile of broken stone and ruptured earth. One of them—barely alive—began to whisper an activation chant for a regeneration rune. But the words were muddled, slurred through blood and panic.
The rune sputtered.
Above, a Regnum Ignis drone cut through the smoke, trailing a crimson cone of light as it scanned the ground.
It found them.
The drone paused—just long enough for hope to flicker.
Then fired.
Two precise beams. Two lifeless forms.
The bodies didn't twitch. Didn't scream.
They just laid there discarded rags.
Their final expressions frozen—less fear, more that quiet, aching regret that comes only when there's no time left to speak.
Doran stared at them for a long breath. Then turned away.
There was nothing he could do but watch.
For war didn't pause. It never does.
He walked past the charred husk of a fallen Ignis hover-tank. Its core had been torn open, still glowing erratically—pulsing with unstable energy. The gunner was fused into the seat, steel melted around flesh. One arm reached outward, fingers curled like they were still holding onto a final command.
The world blurred at the edges.
The roar of battle faded—not silenced, but distant. A background hum to something far more focused. Far more personal.
Then—
He felt it.
A presence.
He turned, heart pacing faster than his breath.
At what seemed the center of the battlefield—where no one should still be standing—one figure moved.
Not charging. Not retreating.
Dancing.
He moved through the chaos like it bowed to him.
Dodging blades. Smiling. Laughing.
There was a grace to him. A wrongness in how smooth it looked amid blood and flame.
His sword remained sheathed. He didn't need it.
His long coat whipped behind him, untouched by ash or scorch. His boots skimmed across the mud, never sinking. As if the earth itself dared not stain him.
Doran narrowed his eyes.
"…Who is that?"
The figure sidestepped a Regnum Ignis soldier—a spear wreathed in fire lunging toward him.
He caught the shaft with his bare hand.
A twist.
The weapon flew backward into the smoke.
The soldier didn't scream.
Just collapsed. Stunned. Confused.
As if the violence had skipped a step.
Another came from behind.
The figure didn't turn.
He leaned.
Let the blade miss by inches.
Then, without even glancing, flicked a dagger over his shoulder.
It found the space between armor and throat. Precise. Lethal.
The soldier dropped without a word.
Doran took another step closer.
He could feel it now.
That presence.
That gravity.
"Their presence… it's commanding."
Another step.
Another.
Then—
He stopped cold.
His breath caught in his throat.
Eyes wide.
"Benji."
Doran's breath grew ragged.
He clenched his fists, anger beginning to eclipse confusion. His chest rose and fell in stuttering waves, his brow tight with fury.
Then he looked up at the sky—smoke-streaked, bruised with firelight—and shouted.
"What kind of sick joke is this!?"
His voice echoed across the battlefield like a challenge thrown at the gods.
He looked back toward the figure.
And they were was staring right at him.
Eyes locked.
Unblinking.
"Does he… see me?" Doran muttered, throat dry.
Benji's head tilted—not in confusion, not in curiosity.
But in recognition.
A slow, amused smirk pulled at the edge of his lips. Not mocking. Not kind.
Certain.
Doran's breath caught. He took a step back, unsure why.
Benji took a step forward.
The battlefield didn't slow.
Flashes of rune fire, screaming steel, and detonations still tore the world apart around them—but none of it touched Benji. He moved effortlessly through the carnage, side-stepping blades, disarming attackers with casual grace. Each one fell in his wake.
And his eyes never left Doran.
Doran reached behind him, instinct kicking in.
His fingers grasped at air.
No hilt.
No blade.
He jerked a glance over his shoulder.
His swords were gone.
He turned back toward Benji—and froze.
What is this feeling?
It wasn't pressure.
It wasn't pain.
It came from the earth. From the air. From Benji's eyes.
A presence.
Fear.
Not the kind that screamed.
The kind that whispered.
The kind that slithered beneath skin and memory, and reminded the soul of things long buried.
Benji stopped walking.
His long black coat billowed behind him in the battlefield wind, untouched by ash or blood. Its lining shimmered with thin gold embroidery that pulsed faintly—like breath, like rhythm, like life.
Doran couldn't breathe.
His fists tightened on instinct—but there was no flame. Not even a flicker.
"Come on… Avon," he whispered.
Nothing answered.
No heat. No echo in his thoughts. No mocking voice in the back of his skull.
He hadn't felt Avon's presence since he first arrived in the Lands of the Passed.
He was alone.
Then Benji spoke.
His voice cut through the battlefield like a blade through silk—precise, cold, and sharp enough to draw blood from silence.
"I've been looking for you," he said.
Each word carried weight. Finality.
"You are in possession of the Forbidden Flame…"
He stepped forward again, eyes gleaming like coals in the dusk.
"…and I am to return it to Death."
From Benji's shoulders, from his spine, from every fingertip—
Ash began to rise.
It drifted upward in thin, elegant coils. Like smoke from sacred incense—but in reverse.
A slow, reverent ascent.
Benji's eyes never left Doran.
"I know you are only here in spirit," he said, voice woven with certainty. "Your Soul is missing. So witness the power… that will eclipse your flame."
He raised his hand.
The tendrils of ash followed like threads tied to muscle memory. As if they'd done this before. As if this wasn't transformation—it was revelation.
They wrapped around his forearms, winding up like silk and hardening as they moved.
Sleek black bracers formed—ash forged into perfect symmetry, catching the battlefield's chaotic light in unnatural reflections.
Then his chest.
His shoulders.
Ash shifted. Became armor.
But it didn't clang.
Didn't clatter like metal.
It settled.
Silent.
Weightless.
Complete.
Benji extended his left arm outward. His sword hung in hand—humble, ordinary.
Then the ash moved again.
It swirled around the blade, growing—not chaotically, but deliberately. From a short sword, it warped into something monstrous: a giant, curved weapon serrated like a crescent moon fractured on impact.
A sword that looked like it shouldn't be wielded—like it should be survived.
And then—from his back.
Wings unfurled.
Made not of feathers.
But of ash.
Black. Angelic. Horrifying.
They stretched wide—too wide for any man. Their span was unnatural, beautiful, grotesque. They cast no shadow.
But the world around them dimmed.
As if light itself bowed before them.
Each feather drifted like snow in reverse, weightless, floating up… then folding perfectly back into shape. Every shard was serrated. Every movement divine.
From the ashes of grief and grace… an angel was born.
Benji's voice echoed across the battlefield.
It did not travel through air.
It moved through intention.
Every word carved into the moment like scripture into stone.
Still—his eyes stayed on Doran.
Never blinking. Never faltering.
The blade in his hand pulsed with his breath. A living thing. A weapon too brutal for an angel.
Too elegant for a butcher.
Doran staggered back.
He couldn't breathe.
The wings, the armor, the blade—the presence—
It was overwhelming.
Then Benji raised the sword.
Red and purple energy crackled down the edge of the blade—flashes of power that bent light in sharp angles.
And then—
He moved.
Not like a man.
Not like a soldier.
Like something unchained. A rabid force of judgment.
Benji tore through the Regnum Ignis soldiers.
Ash followed every swing, slicing through bodies like silk through air—disintegrating them, erasing them.
No fire. No blood.
Just the sudden absence of form.
Doran could barely track him.
One moment Benji was standing still.
The next—he was a blur across the battlefield, flickering from shadow to shadow. Like the space between seconds was his to command.
His blade fell like the end of prophecy.
Soldiers died screaming—not in battle—but running away. Dying not like warriors, but like prey being hunted by a nightmare made of shadows.
Benji's blade halted—just inches from a young soldier's neck.
But it wasn't mercy.
It was already too late.
The ash had reached him first.
The soldier didn't scream. Didn't fall.
He simply… unraveled.
One moment, a living soul.
The next—gone. As if he had never been there at all.
Benji turned, his eyes glowing beneath the swirling ash. A smile carved itself into his face, gleaming through the black veil that cloaked him.
"Serpent of Ash," he declared.
His voice rang out across the battlefield—deep, distant, like a forgotten church bell tolling for the first time in centuries.
The ash obeyed.
It surged forward, spreading across the battlefield like a sea of shadows—rolling, writhing, alive.
It didn't discriminate.
It swallowed everything.
Enemy. Ally. Earth. Sky.
Soldiers screamed. Orders shattered into static. Both Azule and Ignis forces scattered, confused, overwhelmed. Their war forgotten beneath the tide.
Doran staggered back as the black ocean swept toward him, only to spiral around him—encircling him.
A vortex.
A whirlpool of annihilation.
The ash began to rise.
And from the storm—
Benji's voice once again pierced the chaos.
"Angel's Hands of Hell!"
The tornado surged around Doran, a tower of writhing soot. Then—from within the ash—hands began to form.
They clawed their way into reality.
Twitching.
Jerking.
Each movement sounded like bones breaking in reverse.
The hands reached for him—each one unnatural. Wrong.
Too many fingers.
Too many joints.
Some bent backwards.
Others peeled open from the palm, blooming like ash-born flowers made of bone and grief.
Doran turned in every direction—but there was nowhere to run.
He was trapped.
Surrounded.
The first hand reached him.
Cold fingers wrapped around his ankle.
He flinched, kicking it off—but another grabbed his shoulder.
Then another.
And another.
He was being held.
Anchored.
Benji's voice rang out again—this time with cruel amusement.
"When you see Forgotten again…"
His tone twisted into mockery.
"Ask him about me."
And then, like a death sentence:
"Divine Demon Flash!"
From above the ash tornado, Benji hovered—wings spread wide like a fallen seraph.
His giant blade pointed straight down, glowing with surging red and purple energy.
The air cracked around it, alive with pressure and purpose.
Doran didn't blink.
Didn't dare.
His eyes locked on Benji.
He had to see him.
"How did he—?" Doran muttered, struggling against the hands that now wrapped around his arms, his chest, his legs—everywhere.
Then—
Benji vanished.
No sound. No warning.
Just a flash of energy—a trail of crimson and violet tearing through the air.
And he was there.
In front of Doran.
Mid-swing.
The massive blade crashed down.
The serrated edge met flesh—
And Doran's identity fractured.
A memory.
He was a child.
Laughter echoed.
Faces surrounded him—warm, smiling.
Familiar.
Yet… unrecognizable.
Names danced on the edge of thought. But they slipped.
Faded.
Smiles turned hollow.
Familiar turned forgotten.
Then Darkness.
The smiles gone.
The familiarity gone.
The storm silenced.
And Doran stood once more in the Lands of the Passed.
The battlefield was gone.
So was the ash.
So was Benji.
Only silence remained.
Doran collapsed to his knees.
His head bowed, hands trembling.
Not from pain—
But from something worse.
Absence.
His breath came shallow, barely rising above the stillness. His fingers drifted to his neck, where the blade had touched him. The skin was unbroken.
But something was missing.
Above him, a marble pillar descended through the void—Forgotten standing atop it, arms folded behind his back.
The pillar slid into the darkness like stone vanishing into water, disappearing inch by inch until Forgotten stood before Doran on even ground.
He stepped forward.
A single stride.
His skeletal foot made no sound against the nothingness.
"You almost perished," he said.
Not sadness.
Not relief.
Just fact.
Doran said nothing.
His breathing faltered.
His eyes were distant.
He gripped the memory of the blade more tightly than the moment itself.
Forgotten watched.
"The Ashen Angel," he said.
Doran blinked. Looked up, the words slow to catch.
"…What?"
"The one you called, Benji." Forgotten said, "He is an Ashen Angel."
The name echoed through Doran's mind—but it didn't settle. It felt foreign. Too large. Too distant from the boy he once knew.
"Ashen… Angel?" he whispered, the words dry in his mouth.
Forgotten gave a slow nod.
"Many centuries ago," he began, "I carved twenty-seven cards. Each one capable of altering destiny for those who dared to draw."
His voice was low, worn by time.
"I was their dealer for many years. Until I grew old, brittle, and curious. I drew from the deck and I came face to face with Death."
He paused.
"A deal was made. A silent and final vow. I became the judge of souls—those who hover between death and the next realm. And the burden of the deck… I gave to him."
He met Doran's eyes.
"The one you know as Benji is its next bearer." Forgotten continued, "He drew the three blank cards. Just as I did."
The words pressed against Doran like lead.
But none heavier than the memory of that blade.
"That sword… it doesn't leave physically damage," he whispered.
Forgotten nodded.
"I cannot claim to know what he drew, for the blank cards draw from your desires, even if you don't know of them yourself. But for the memory, that which has been erased cannot be replaced."
Doran's breath caught.
"Erased?"
"While you fight to live and preserve life and memory," Forgotten said, stepping slowly forward, "he fights to erase it and forget."
His voice was firm. Clear.
"Those memories you lost—of warmth, of childhood—they were removed from all time . Not merely forgotten. Not buried."
Doran staggered to his feet.
His body trembled—not from fear.
But from rage.
His fists clenched at his sides.
His breath came slow and jagged.
Forgotten's skeletal face betrayed no emotion—but his voice, dry and ancient, echoed with something older than sorrow.
"You have witnessed a cycle of the Present," he said, raising a hand toward the remaining arches. "To return… you must pass through the other two."
Doran followed his gesture.
Two still remained.
The silver arch.
And the glowing orange.
He narrowed his eyes.
"…What am I gonna see if I witness the past?"
Forgotten was silent.
The void seemed to listen.
Then he spoke.
"A fixed point in a cycle of the past. But understand…"
His gaze was steady.
"The past may have a set time. But its length is still vast. Don't expect to understand what you witness. That goes for the future as well."
Doran took a single step forward.
The silver arch shimmered—unstable, like lightning frozen in glass.
He stopped.
Turned slightly.
His eyes flicked to Forgotten, watching from the corner of his gaze.
"You said you gave the cards to Death, right?" he asked.
"Correct."
"When I get back…"
Doran's voice hardened.
"I want to know more about this 'Death'."
Forgotten did not answer.
He only watched.
Doran faced forward again.
No hesitation.
And stepped through the silver archway—
—into the Past.