The Memory That Should Not Be
1348 Words
The flame danced low in the war chamber hearth. Everything else was still.
Aeryn stood alone, eyes fixed on the crystalline scroll that had once been sealed inside the Ether Tree’s roots—Verion’s final, unspoken memory lock. The sigils were complex, unstable, pulsing erratically.
She had to stabilize it first—phase-bind it to a bloodline anchor. She whispered a thread-binding incantation, and the scroll shuddered in her hands.
It responded to her blood.
But it opened for Nyra’s.
Aeryn turned as footsteps entered the room.
Nyra stood at the threshold, skin pale, aura trembling in ghost-light. The air around her seemed warped—frictionless, slippery, like reality didn’t know how to hold her anymore.
“I felt it activate,” Nyra said softly. “The scroll.”
“I wasn’t going to open it without you.”
Nyra stepped forward. The moment she touched it, the light exploded outward—not bright, but deep. It pulled them inward, away from the room, away from the stronghold.
The world shifted.
And they fell into Verion’s mind.
The Memory Folded
The memory wasn’t static. It moved like a theater play performed in a loop, half-real, half-symbol.
They stood on a battlefield—but not one either of them recognized.
The skies were not blue, but crimson. The grass black. Bodies of beings not quite human, not quite Etherborn, lay scattered in a ring of silence.
At the center: Verion. Younger, maybe mid-thirties, in a long coat lined with star-threads. His face was gaunt, eyes wide, voice shaking as he muttered a chant in a forgotten tongue.
Another figure stood beside him—a tall woman cloaked in glass feathers and violet flame. She didn’t speak. She watched.
“I tried,” Verion said aloud. “You said there was no cost. You lied.”
The woman blinked once. “You begged me to show you a version of the world that could survive.”
Verion clenched his fists. “Not this one. Not where Aldric dies. Not where the world forgets itself.”
The woman tilted her head. “You chose clarity. I gave it. You gave your name. I took it.”
Nyra gasped. “She’s the Fold’s original form.”
Aeryn grabbed her arm. “And this is where he broke.”
Verion fell to his knees. A shard of mirrorlight embedded in his chest, pulsing faintly.
The woman reached down. “You are now the keeper of the gate between what was and what might be. You will not remember me. You will not remember this. But you will guide the one who can.”
She touched his head—and everything fractured.
They were yanked violently back into the present.
Nyra screamed—more out of shock than pain. Her skin glowed briefly, then dimmed again. But something had changed.
Aeryn staggered back, gasping. “That was the moment Verion gave everything up. His memories. His identity. His place in time.”
Nyra sat, shaking. “He gave himself to her. And in return, she built me to finish the job.”
Aeryn froze. “What?”
Nyra looked up, eyes brimming with fear—and something darker.
“She didn’t just infect him. She planted me. A bloodline with enough power to carry the fracture seed across generations. I’m not just a key to the Fold.”
She swallowed.
“I’m its successor.”
Keal slammed open the door.
His armor was half-on, eyes wide, sword drawn—not in aggression, but in panic.
“I felt the surge from the courtyard,” he said. “I saw the sky ripple.”
He looked at Nyra. “What happened?”
Aeryn opened her mouth, but Nyra stood first.
“I saw Verion’s bargain.”
She stepped forward—and the walls behind her flickered like heat waves.
Keal’s grip tightened.
“And I saw the truth. I was designed by the Fold to finish what Verion started. But not with knowledge. With destruction.”
Aeryn whispered, “The more you remember… the more power you inherit.”
Nyra nodded slowly. “And it’s starting to bleed into reality. If I cross a certain threshold… the Fold wins. Through me.”
Keal’s voice was hoarse. “So what are you saying?”
Nyra looked at him—not as a daughter—but as something caught between prophecy and personhood.
“I need to be sealed away,” she said. “Before I remember everything.”
The council met within the hour.
Seraphina, pale and silent. Lima—furious and pacing. Ava and Aeryn stone-faced. Zaire… absent.
Keal stood at the center.
“She’s not infected,” he said. “She isn’t possessed. She’s still my daughter.”
“But she’s also the next vessel,” Seraphina said.
“She’s not an enemy,” Aeryn added, “but she’s becoming a conduit.”
“She wants to be locked up,” Lima snapped. “What does that tell you?”
“That she’s afraid of hurting us,” Keal shot back.
“And that makes her more dangerous,” Seraphina whispered.
A tense silence followed.
Then Aeryn stood. “We have options. Aether-loop isolation chambers. A stasis seal reinforced with dream-silence runes. It might hold her until we can find a way to sever the Fold’s imprint.”
Keal looked toward the door.
He didn’t speak for a long time.
Then:
“I’ll do it. She trusts me.”
Zaire found her in the garden.
She was sitting beneath the Ether Tree, as always. But this time, her shadow was long, split down the middle like a blade. The leaves around her were curling in on themselves—unburned, but aged. Time couldn’t decide what to do near her.
“You’re avoiding them,” Nyra said without turning.
Zaire sat beside her. “I couldn’t look at them while they talked about caging you.”
“They’re not wrong,” she murmured.
He looked at her, throat tight. “I would never let them hurt you.”
Her smile was faint and terribly sad. “Zaire… they don’t need to. I’m already changing.”
She held out her hand. It phased slightly—translucent at the fingertips.
“I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of forgetting who I am before it happens.”
Zaire took her hand anyway—even as it pulsed with reality static.
“You’re still here now. So I’ll hold onto that.”
Keal came at night.
He didn’t wear his armor. Only a dark cloak and the ring Seraphina had passed to him the night of his coronation.
Nyra stood in the center of the chamber they’d prepared. Aether-silencers lined the walls, glowing faintly. At the center: the old resonance circle Verion had used during the Etherworld breach. It would hold her. Barely.
She turned as her father entered.
No one else came.
“I asked the others to let me do this alone,” he said.
She nodded. “You came as my king.”
He stepped forward.
“No,” he said. “I came as your father.”
Nyra’s eyes brimmed. “I don’t know if I can survive what I’m becoming.”
“You don’t have to,” he whispered. “We just have to buy enough time for your truth to fight hers.”
She stepped into the circle.
Keal raised his hand.
The spell took shape—a dome of memory-silence and physical anchor. It would suspend her between seconds. A liminal space.
She wouldn’t dream. She wouldn’t decay.
She wouldn’t remember.
The light surged.
Nyra collapsed to her knees—then vanished inside the containment.
Keal stood alone in the silence.
And outside, the wind howled like a scream cut short.
Far away, inside the Fold’s deepest chamber, the woman of glass and violet turned a page in a mirrored tome.
The new chapter was blank.
She smiled.
“She has bought them time.
But not peace.
And time is what I eat.”
- Writer
