Echoes That Bleed Like Memory
"Descent isn't a path. it's a... shape. i think someone said that once. maybe me. or not. i don't know anymore.
Nahr didn't activate.
He — he woke. Or. no, wait—something like that. Not waking waking, not sleep-waking either, it was like—
like trying to remember a dream before it finished unspooling and your brain just gives up halfway.
Cores don't wake. They boot, they sync, there's a hum sometimes. Flash maybe? Memory says blue. Could be wrong. Doesn't matter.
This was... not that.
His cheek was pressed against something cold. Not quite floor. Not quite anything. One arm stuck behind his back, shoulder wrong angle. Half in something. A chassis? Maybe his. Maybe not. The wall maybe. His ribs felt like—
Galieya didn't hum.
Still there. Still latched, he could feel the strap digging at his back like a guilt he forgot to drop. Quiet. Dead quiet. Like the trench was watching and didn't care.
He sat up.
Sort of. No, not really. More like tipped himself sideways until his weight agreed to stop arguing.
Click. Knee. Left side. Sharp.
Shoulder scraped against wall. Metal? Didn't sound like it. Sounded… flatter.
The walls flickered. He thought they flickered. But nothing changed. It was probably just him blinking weird. Or lag. Or maybe the trench was stuttering. Could it do that?
"Core: Nahr."
Voice. Flat like it hadn't finished learning tone.
Or maybe it just didn't care anymore. He envied that.
HUD stuttered.
Tag Initialized
Weight: [Undefined]
Command: [Null]
Cool.
No orders. No ping. No squad. No reboot song. He laughed—actually no. He exhaled sharply and then felt ashamed of calling that a laugh.
He got up. Slowly. Like the air wasn't done letting him.
Legs shook. Left worse than right. Left always worse.
Turned. Looked behind him. Nothing. Just the trench pretending to be endless again. Same too-straight corridor angles. No warmth. Just function without reason.
Stillness is the trench's favorite game, someone said once. Stillness is when it gives you your name. That's how it kills you. Or starts to.
He walked.
Not with a plan.
Just walked.
Ten steps, or eight, he lost count. HUD blinked.
[LOCATION DRIFT DETECTED]
...
Then nothing.
He muttered—he didn't remember forming the words but they left anyway. "Loop much?"
Turn up ahead. Right-angle. Crack in the ceiling. That crack again. Or just a different one pretending to be the same. Dent on left wall. Same shape?
Deja vu felt fake now. Like a rerun staged by a sadistic machine.
He didn't trust the next few turns. Didn't trust the walls either.
Then—
Another corner. And a figure.
Still.
Painted Core. No movement. Arms low. Shoulders… lined too perfectly. Balanced. Wrong kind of balance. No weapons.
It held something. Blade-ish. Light. Shorter than Galieya. A joke maybe.
His back felt tight suddenly. Not pain, just... tight.
He didn't draw. Not yet. Something about it made him hesitate.
Then he did.
Hand moved without meaning to.
Click.
Galieya detached from his back. Heavy.
The figure moved too. Same speed. Same motion.
Perfect match.
His heart—no, not heart—his core ran cold. Or maybe his skin did. Did he still have skin?
He didn't think. Just swung.
First strike met steel. Metal. Frame. Clang loud enough to make him wince.
That block. That damn block. His old block. From training. 8‑VAN always told him to fix it.
Why now?
Why that memory?
The figure shoved. Shoulder against shoulder. He staggered. Almost liked it. At least it was real.
He spun. Drop-step. Twist. Spiral.
Edge hit—
Something gave.
The figure dropped. Folded.
No scream. No flare. Just… gone. Crumpled like paper left in rain too long.
He didn't stare. Didn't catalog.
He turned and walked.
Because the worst part wasn't the fight. Or the shape.
It was how much it moved like him.
It was how some part of him recognized the hesitation in that last parry and almost—almost corrected it.
He kept walking.
Didn't think about it. Couldn't stop long enough for thought to land properly. Felt like his own pace was chasing him now.
The corridor opened, kind of. Not wide. Just enough for the air to shift temperature.
Floor changed. Texture different—smoother? Processed?
Not like stone. Not like anything real. Almost fake-familiar. Like memory of tile.
Galieya buzzed against his spine. Just a pulse. No escalation.
He touched the strap. It twitched under his fingers, like it wanted to remind him he'd forgotten something.
"Was there a sheath?" he muttered. Didn't matter. Or—no, it did. But not now.
Then a slope.
Not steep. Not dramatic. Just there.
He felt it more than saw it. The kind of tilt that makes your boots whisper secrets your brain doesn't catch till you're already off balance.
HUD blinked.
[DESCENT CONFIRMATION: MANUAL ENTRY]
"Didn't press anything," he said.
Or thought. Maybe didn't say it. Not sure anymore. Words were leaving him slower than they used to.
He stepped.
Trench accepted it like they'd agreed ahead of time.
Ten meters, maybe more. The air started to taste old. Not mold. Not dust.
Old like breath someone else forgot to exhale.
He didn't know how else to put it.
The pod chamber slid open like it had been waiting.
Vault Chair in the center.
Of course.
Always chairs. Always something waiting to catch him sitting still.
He paused.
Just long enough to question if this one might bite.
Sat anyway.
Clamps bit his arms, soft click, cold metal. No sting.
A single word blinked.
SHINE
What the hell does that mean anymore?
He almost laughed again, but the sound didn't rise. Just sank back into his throat like everything else lately.
Then—
Pressure. Back of spine. Fast.
He didn't fall asleep. Didn't black out. It wasn't that.
It was worse.
Like reality blinked before he could.
When he opened his eyes, he was moving again.
Sort of.
Walking, maybe. Didn't remember choosing to.
Floor was—flat? Not stone. Not plastic. Just clean. Too clean.
He didn't trust clean anymore.
Turned a corner. New room.
Symmetry wrong. Like someone designed it with one eye closed.
Another Vault Chair.
Occupied.
Frame slumped. Black streak down plating. No tag. No light.
One glyph glowed above it:
[You are permitted to forget what you failed to understand]
"That's bullsh*t," he said. Whispered it maybe. Didn't check.
Trench didn't answer.
Didn't argue either.
He turned away. Chair still behind him. Heavy in the back of his head. Not physically. Just—there. Waiting to come back later.
He walked.
A panel to the right peeled open. No noise.
Slope. Of course.
He stepped into it like a joke he'd already heard the punchline to.
Galieya hummed again. Not urgent. Just… aware.
Like a reminder of something that hadn't happened yet.
Darkness ahead.
He stepped into it. No hesitation this time.
Because honestly? That was gone.
The hesitation.
It had been traded out somewhere for… what? Momentum?
Memory?
He didn't know.
The trench didn't ask.
So he didn't answer.
The slope should've stopped.
He felt that—somewhere in his knees. In the way his toes kept brushing forward like gravity had changed its tone.
But it didn't stop.
Bent again. Subtle. The kind of angle you don't measure, just feel in your ankles. Enough to make your spine guess wrong.
The trench didn't warn him. It never did.
Nahr muttered, "Okay," but didn't finish the thought. Didn't know what he was agreeing to.
He kept walking.
The walls narrowed.
Not construction-narrow. Not design. Just… forgetting. Like the trench didn't remember how wide this part was supposed to be.
Every step echoed. But late.
Echoes shouldn't wait. These did.
One… pause. Then the sound. Like the trench was catching its breath in his voice.
He reached out once. Just… touched the wall. No reason. Didn't even mean to.
It was warm.
Not heat-warm. Not mechanical.
It felt like a palm. Someone else's palm. Or memory pretending to be one.
He pulled back fast, like guilt.
Half-step. Then a noise.
No, not a noise. He thought noise. But nothing happened.
The idea of a noise pressed into his thoughts.
A clang, maybe. No, not clang. Not sharp enough. Not metal. Not real.
He turned.
Nothing behind him.
Of course.
Of course there wasn't.
The trench never let you swing at the thing that touched you. Not until it wanted you to miss.
He faced forward again.
Didn't speed up. Didn't slow.
His pace had stopped being a choice somewhere back in—he didn't remember.
Eventually, space opened.
No walls. Just… pause.
Like a room that hadn't decided to finish forming.
A table.
Just that. One table.
He almost laughed. Like, out loud. But it caught. Not in his throat, just… in timing. Wrong moment.
A table…What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Three objects on it.
Always three.
Why always three?
He didn't ask. Asking made things worse.
First: a cracked memory shard. Shimmer around the edge. Still leaking something invisible.
Second: a Core's hand. Detached. Still bent, mid-grip. Wires crusted at the edge. It looked like it used to be important.
Third: Galieya hilt. Incomplete. Blank. Like it hadn't been assigned yet.
He didn't touch them. At first.
Then he did.
The shard. First.
It cracked more.
A sound escaped. Like scream mixed with static. Or screaming through static. Like—Maldrin. His voice.
Chopped.
"They weren't—just echoes—Hero knew—
I I—don't—run-_ —I ran—
Something's still—down—"
Then silence.
Like someone pulled the wire and left the rest running just in case.
Nahr flinched. Or… didn't. Hard to tell. His fingers tightened. Not from anger.
More like a cold hand grabbed his and forgot to leave.
The Galieya hilt buzzed. Once. Then again.
Recognition?
Was it reacting to the shard? To him?
To both ?
He picked it up.
It burned. Not skin-burn. Not real.
More like memory-cut. Like it bit through the shape of his grip instead of the skin.
He didn't drop it.
Of course not.
It fit.
Not because it was his.
Because it remembered him.
Earlier version. Maybe. Not upgraded. Not bonded. But it knew him.
And he knew it back.
The wall behind the table opened. Without noise. Not even displaced air.
The trench didn't always use theatrics. Sometimes it just… allowed.
He walked through.
The room bent.
Into dark. Not low light — dark. Full, no-shape dark.
He stepped in without thinking.
Platform. Circular. No edges. No top. No bottom. Just fog with weight. Like steam soaked in rules no one explained.
Hero stood at the center.
No.
Not Hero
It looked like him. At first.
But wrong. Too tall. Too lean. Galieya too long. Red spiral. Twisted. Like a forge got angry halfway through bonding.
The faceplate was cracked. Or slashed. Or melted wrong. Whatever it was, it wasn't Hero's. But it still looked at him like it knew his name in lowercase.
Behind the figure: mimics. Dozens. Rows of them. Still. Watching. Breathing the silence.
"You shouldn't have followed me," it said.
Voice off. Thin. Like whisper pretending to be bold.
Nahr's boots echoed louder than they should have.
"You're not him."
The shape tilted its head.
"Neither are you."
The ring pulsed.
Once.
No countdown. No warning. Just violence.
Hero moved first.
Too fast.
Nahr blocked. Didn't think — arms just caught the motion. They weren't ready. Nothing about him was ready. But they worked.
Mimics poured in. Not elegant. Just pressure. Too many footsteps, too many shadows with sharp edges.
He swung wide. Galieya caught one — split it. Sparks, metal, but
no scream. The mimic wasn't even pretending to feel pain.
Another one rushed low. Legs too fast. Wrong joints. Fake footwork.
He dropped a shoulder. Took the hit. Gave more back.
Then Hero again.
Their blades met. Spiral to spiral.
His screamed — literally screamed. Like a memory trying to tear free from the grip of a worse one.
They didn't talk. Couldn't.
Fought like they'd never spoken.
No plan. No rhythm. Just weight.
Hero's footwork was familiar. It was—
Nahr slipped. Not on the floor. In his own memory.
"That move —"
Didn't finish the thought.
Didn't matter.
He lasted.
Not perfectly. Not smart.
He just didn't stop.
Because that was the thing. He wasn't made for precision. Not anymore.
He was made for this.
Not the missions. Not the sequences.
Just endurance.
Hero overreached.
Or… let himself?
Nahr dove low.
Galieya dragged across ribline. Cracked plating. Caught edge.
Hero staggered.
Paused.
Smiled.
Like something had been waiting for that hit.
Then dropped.
The mimics dropped too.
One noise — all at once. Like someone cut their breath out mid-note.
The ring dimmed.
Silence pressed inward.
HUD blinked.
[TRIAL SEGMENT COMPLETE]
[BURDEN ADJUSTED]
[GALIEYA SIGNATURE: RECONCILED]
He didn't feel anything.
No relief. No win. No spike of clarity.
Just the faint weight in his arm, right where the hilt had burned before.
He looked down.
No glow now.
Just there.
Just his.
That was the thing about memory.
It never got lighter.
You just stop noticing the parts that still cut when you move.
The trench opened another slope.
He didn't sigh. Didn't pause.
He walk.
Not because he wanted to.
Because that was all that was left to do.