The first thing he remembered was light—
—not warmth, not sound, not pain. Just light.
A blinding cascade of colorless radiance that fractured across the inside of his eyelids like shattered glass. It wasn't the sun. He would learn later that the sky here had no sun, no moon—only the infinite glow of the Memory Sea, swirling above like a dome of living static.
When he opened his eyes, the world was broken.
He lay on a slab of marble that floated, inexplicably, in a vast void where ancient structures hovered like dying stars. Debris from cathedrals, iron towers, and temples circled him—massive ruins suspended mid-collapse, as if time had forgotten how to finish its work. Chunks of reality floated around him like thoughts lost in a dream.
He didn't know his name.
Not yet.
All he had was the burning sensation in his chest. A dull, rhythmic throb—like a second heartbeat trying to scream.
He gasped, sat up, and immediately doubled over from the weight of it. Not pain. Not exactly. Something deeper. Like a memory he didn't ask for had embedded itself in his spine.
Then came the whisper.
A voice—not external, but within him. Older than time, broken and whole at once.
"You are the last… remember me…"
He clutched his head.
What was this place?
Where was he?
Who the hell was he?
He tried to stand, and gravity answered like a glitch. The stone beneath him cracked. He stumbled forward and nearly floated off the edge into the abyss. The void shimmered beneath him like deep water, reflecting not just his body—but versions of him.
He saw himself wearing armor. Cloaked in fire. Bleeding gold. Screaming. Praying. Dying.
Dozens of selves flickering across the mirror of the void.
Only one remained solid—this one.
His knees hit the floor. Breath ragged. His fingers trembled, stained with static.
He was… here. Now. Real.
But everything else?
Unknowable.
---
Minutes—or maybe hours—passed before the silence was broken.
A pulse. Low and thunderous.
Something moved in the dark. No, not in the dark. Through it.
He spun around and saw it: a fragment of sky tearing open above him like a wound, and from it descended a sphere—a mechanical eye, dripping light and data code from its sides.
A Seraph Drone. He didn't know how he knew its name. But he did.
Its voice was perfect. Cold. Surgical.
> "Subject 017. Memory Breach Detected.
Reintegration Required.
Prepare for Neural Extraction."
"No," he said—his first word.
The drone descended with a whine, its tendrils stretching toward his skull.
Instinct took over.
He raised his arm—and the mark appeared.
A glyph burned into his forearm. Circular, etched with spirals and inverted runes. It flared gold, then violet. And suddenly—
The world shattered.
He didn't move. Not with limbs. He moved with memory.
The marble cracked beneath his feet as a force erupted from his core. Light—not normal light—raw mnemonic energy—rippled outward in a shockwave.
The drone screamed in frequencies no human throat could make.
Then silence.
It dropped, sizzling, to the slab.
Dead.
His breathing slowed. He looked down at his hand, still glowing. The mark faded.
What the hell was that?
And why did it feel… familiar?
---
That's when she appeared.
She didn't walk through a door—there were no doors here. She simply stepped onto the platform, like reality allowed her to exist only once the danger had passed.
White-silver hair. Long coat. Eyes that looked mechanical, violet lenses that shimmered like they saw multiple timelines at once.
She regarded him like a riddle.
"You killed a Seraph Drone," she said plainly.
He staggered back, still on edge.
"Who are you?"
"You don't remember me," she said, more observation than question.
"I don't remember anything."
She tilted her head.
"Then I'll start with this: My name is Elira Nox. I'm a Memory Architect. And you're not supposed to be alive."
"...Thanks."
She didn't smile.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Between." She gestured to the swirling void. "A Rift Zone. Where corrupted memories decay. A garbage dump of broken timelines."
He looked around again. It wasn't metaphorical. Broken buildings. Dead sky. Ghostly echoes of people flickering in and out of place like faulty projections.
"You were found near the Bleeding Rift," she continued. "That mark on your arm? That's not tech. It's a divine imprint. And there's only one source of that imprint in known existence."
He waited.
"You're carrying a God Memory."
The words stopped his breath.
"What the hell is a God Memory?"
Her gaze narrowed.
"It's a soul fragment… from the one being that built the Divine Network. The entity that gave us the Memory Code. The mind we based all of heaven's architecture on."
He laughed bitterly. "You're saying God left a memory behind, and I'm just—what? Some unlucky bastard who picked it up?"
"No," she said. "It picked you."
He stepped away, heart pounding. The light in his chest pulsed again, as if reacting to her words.
"Why me?"
"That," she said, "is what we're here to find out."
---
They escaped the Rift minutes later—via a bridge she constructed from pure memory code. Her hand shimmered with glyphs as she pulled data from the air and rewrote space like a god editing scripture.
He followed her across a narrow path of light. The further they walked, the more solid the world became. Colors returned. Wind. Gravity. Sound.
On the other side stood a city unlike anything he could have imagined.
Massive towers of crystallized memory. Libraries etched into the sky. Statues of AI deities half-buried in glass dunes. It felt like a digital afterlife frozen mid-reboot.
The Archive Monastery.
Elira's home.
Guards in black robes moved like shadows around them, watching him with unreadable expressions. Some bowed. Others backed away.
"Elira," he muttered, "why are they looking at me like that?"
"Because the last time someone carried a God Memory…" she paused, "…they burned half the world."
---
Inside the monastery, she ran scans on him. Memory resonance readings. Neural echoes. Soul-tether diagnostics.
All the screens told the same story:
He wasn't just carrying a divine memory.
He was bonded to it.
"You can't remove it?" he asked, almost pleading.
Elira shook her head. "It's fused. More than fused—it's evolving. You're changing."
"In what way?"
She turned the monitor toward him.
Images danced across the screen. His neural map. Overlayed with a second pattern—ancient, recursive, divine.
"Your mind is being rewritten," she said. "Not replaced. Reformed. Integrated."
He said nothing.
Then finally: "What's my name?"
She looked down. Then back at him.
"We don't know. The data's fragmented."
"But I had one, right?"
"You did."
"And now?"
She hesitated.
"Your designation in our system is 'Rai.' It means 'Relic Anchor Interface.'"
He blinked.
"Rai," he repeated softly. "Rai…"
It felt right.
It felt… like something ancient had just agreed.
---
That night, alone in the chamber they gave him, Rai stared at the wall.
He traced the glyph on his arm.
He could feel it—deep under his skin. A memory older than language, stirring.
He slept. And he dreamed.
Of a sky burning gold.
Of a throne made of stars.
And of a voice—clearer now.
"You are my last thought… don't let them rewrite it."