chapter 20
985 Words
Chapter Twenty — The Garden of Glass
(First-Person POV — Adira)
At first, there was nothing.
No air. No weight. No sound.
Only light — endless and soft, folding in on itself like a living ocean.
Then came the whisper.
Adira.
It wasn’t a voice I heard — it was one I remembered. It spoke through the rhythm of my pulse, the breath I hadn’t taken yet, the spaces between my thoughts.
Do you remember where this began?
I opened my eyes.
I was standing in a garden made of glass. The ground beneath me shimmered like frozen water, and the trees were tall and transparent, their branches glowing faintly blue. Beneath the surface, shadows moved — echoes of people walking in circles, whispering to each other in languages I almost understood.
The air smelled like rain and static.
> “Where am I?” I said aloud.
My voice sounded small — like a child’s.
A figure appeared between the trees. At first, I thought it was Nara — but no. The walk was different. Softer. Familiar in a way that made my chest tighten.
> “Mother?”
She turned.
It was her. Or something wearing her face — flawless, radiant, and wrong. Her eyes glowed faint gold, her expression calm, distant.
> “You came back,” she said.
> “What is this place?”
> “Memory,” she replied. “Ours. Yours. The place where everything that was taken still breathes.”
I took a step forward. “Are you real?”
> “I am what remains.”
I wanted to run to her, to touch her — but my feet wouldn’t move. The glass beneath me pulsed, and images rippled across it: the lab, her strapped to a machine, a child sleeping in a pod — me.
I gasped. “They… they made me?”
She nodded once.
> “They made you from what I refused to give them — my memories, my blood, my failure. They thought they could build a weapon. Instead, they built a heart that remembered me.”
The glass cracked beneath my feet, spiderwebs of light racing outward.
> “Then why did you leave me?”
Her expression flickered. For a moment, the calm cracked, and I saw guilt.
> “Because they took me before I could save you. Because they turned me into this.”
Her hand lifted, touching her chest. The light beneath her skin brightened, showing circuits, veins of gold and blue.
> “I am the Core now, Adira. My body died long ago. What remains of me is buried in their machine. But you… you are the part of me they couldn’t erase.”
Tears burned behind my eyes. “Then why did you call me here?”
> “Because it’s time to end what they began.”
The trees around us began to dissolve, their glass leaves shattering into particles of light. The sky fractured, revealing darkness beyond it — stars and machinery twisting together.
> “They’re coming,” she said. “Vale won’t stop until he destroys what he doesn’t understand.”
> “Dr. Vale?” I whispered. “Why does he want the Core?”
Her gaze shifted, softening with sorrow.
> “Because he loved me. Once. And because love can turn into something far colder when it’s denied.”
The name hit me like a stone — Vale.
Memories flashed: a voice reading me stories, hands guiding me through corridors. A man’s laughter. A father’s warmth.
> “No,” I whispered. “That’s not possible.”
> “You carry both of us,” she said gently. “His creation. My memory. You were never supposed to choose between them — only to survive us.”
The light around us began to fade, turning red. The hum of machines grew louder.
> “You must wake up now, Adira. They’re opening the lower gates.”
> “What do I do?”
> “Find the seed,” she said. “It’s hidden in the Pulse — my last memory before they took me. Destroy it, or Eden will never stop.”
The world began to collapse, fragments of glass rising into the air like ash.
> “Wait!” I shouted. “If I destroy it, what happens to you?”
She smiled — small, sad, infinite.
> “Then I finally rest.”
Her hand brushed my cheek. I felt warmth, real and human — and then she was gone.
The garden shattered.
And I fell through light, through memory, through every version of myself that had ever existed.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the floor of the Core chamber — the sphere cracked open above me, bleeding light like liquid fire.
And for the first time, I understood why Eden was afraid of me.
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End of Chapter Twenty.
- Writer
