Aiden stood at the edge of the last human stronghold in the Veiled Sector, a massive hollowed-out asteroid called Terminus Ark. Its core had been carved into a nexus of survival and desperation, glowing dimly with ancient generators and repurposed alien tech that pulsed like the last heartbeat of a dying god. Orbiting a dying red dwarf, it cast crimson shadows across the fractured remnants of humanity's resistance fleet—hollow husks, floating debris, scattered like bones around a war altar.
Aiden closed his eyes.
Inside, the Myth Engine screamed.
Ever since merging with the Light Eater, Aiden's body was no longer wholly human. His dreams bled into waking life. Voices from the lost futures whispered through his veins, and sometimes he saw stars that no one else could. He had become something new—a hybrid of prophecy and pain, of memory and raw defiance.
The latest vision had gutted him: the Earth, reduced to cinders not by weaponry, but by forgetting itself. The Architects weren't erasing life. They were erasing stories—memories, lineages, mythlines. The past was unraveling, and without it, the future had no anchor.
"Lira," he called through the commlink, voice ragged. "Status?"
Her reply came fast, strained. "The Architects just launched a second void-pulse. We lost three refugee sectors. Entire colonies. Gone from memory. Not just dead—like they were never born. My sister was on Haven's Reach... I don't even remember her name anymore."
Aiden's breath caught. His fingers tightened around the charm Isaiah had given him—a shard of Earth's magnetic field, encoded into stone. It pulsed faintly, reacting to his pulse. Or his grief.
"They're collapsing the collective psyche," Isaiah said, joining the channel. "They want to destroy the human story. And without that... the Myth Engine fails. No myth, no resistance. No future."
Aiden turned toward the Memory Crucible, nestled deep in the Ark's core. "Then I go in. One last time."
Isaiah's voice cracked. "It nearly killed you last time."
"Nearly," Aiden said. "But if we don't fight them on this level—on the mythic layer—we've already lost."
He entered the chamber. The walls shimmered with suspended ash and quantum reflections. This was the holiest place humanity had left. It held the last fragment of the Source—a thread of the original human myth, predating even Earth.
The moment he stepped in, the Crucible spoke in dreams:
A playground, with laughter echoing from phantom children.
His mother, her arms wide, eyes terrified of something she couldn't name.
White light, surgical precision, an alien hand reaching for his forehead.
He knelt, gasping.
Then it showed him what was to come—
He saw the Earth split not by explosions, but by silence. Oceans evaporated into nothingness. Statues melted into forgetfulness. He saw people screaming in agony as they were erased, their very essence unstitched from the fabric of time.
And in the silence, he saw himself—older, alone, clutching the charm, weeping in a room full of names he no longer recognized.
"No," he whispered.
The Light Eater's voice flickered inside him. "Let go. Let them fade. There is peace in forgetting."
Aiden stood. "There is no peace without memory."
He stepped into the fire.
His mind fractured.
A wave of brilliance erupted from the Crucible. It wasn't fire—it was memory, unleashed. All across the Veiled Sector, children began to hum lullabies their dead grandmothers once sang. Forgotten languages reappeared on tombstones. Paintings once erased from archives spontaneously emerged on bulkhead walls.
The past had been restored.
But Aiden—
He lay at the heart of the Crucible, bleeding not just from his body, but his soul. Lira and Isaiah pulled him from the chamber, eyes wide with horror.
"You burned yourself!" Lira gasped. "Aiden, your mind—half of it's gone!"
"Not gone," he rasped. "Traded. Gave part of myself to the myth. So it would hold."
Isaiah's hands trembled. "You anchored all of us. You used yourself... as the spine of the human story."
"I had to," Aiden said. "Without story, we vanish. I remembered us. So we can remember how to fight."
But the klaxons sounded again.
The Source Gate—the ancient, alien wormhole from which the Architects had emerged—began to open again. And what came through was not another fleet.
It was a presence.
The Prime Architect.
Reality bent as it emerged, a shadow within light, a god wearing the skin of erased stars. It spoke not in words, but intent. The Ark itself shuddered as its will swept across space:
"You were meant to forget. That was the pact. You broke the silence."
Aiden stood, barely. The pulse of the Myth Engine now synchronized with his heartbeat. His voice echoed with a resonance no human had ever known.
"I was abducted as a child. You tried to make me forget. You erased my memories, my home, my truth. But I remember now. I remember everything. And I will not go quietly."
The Architect descended.
Aiden rose to meet it.
His body glowed—faint at first, then bright enough to cast shadows on reality itself. His memories, weaponized. His pain, alchemized into power.
Lira grabbed Isaiah's arm, tears in her eyes. "He's becoming a living myth."
"No," Isaiah said. "He is the myth."
The stars screamed.
The war for memory—the final war—had truly begun.