The rain in the Archive Monastery wasn't real.
It fell in exact intervals—every eleven seconds, like obedient particles dropped by a machine that had once studied weather but forgotten the emotion behind it. Each droplet shimmered with embedded glyphs, micro-etched prayers from civilizations long extinguished. When they struck the stone tiles, they whispered—but the words dissolved before becoming language.
Rai stood in the cloister courtyard, unmoving as the encoded rain passed through him. He didn't feel wet. Only heavy. Like something buried inside him was drinking in the data, one syllable at a time.
From beneath the archway, Elira watched.
She had changed into her Architect robes: ceremonial white, patterned with memory-glyph filigree that shimmered like water under light. A flickering halo-band hovered behind her head, glitching slightly—like a crown that no longer believed in royalty.
"He's adapting," she murmured.
Another voice replied—gravel-deep, scarred by war.
"To what?"
Kareth Thorne stepped forward, boots echoing across the stone. Commandant of the Divine Reapers. His obsidian armor rippled faintly with divine deterrence runes, forged in a war against a god no one remembered by name.
His arrival made the rain change tempo, stuttering for a beat—as if even the atmosphere bristled at his presence.
Elira didn't turn. "To the imprint. To himself."
Kareth's emerald eyes stayed fixed on the figure in the courtyard. "That thing shouldn't exist."
"He's not a thing," she said.
"He's a breach in divine law."
"You believe in the law, don't you?"
"I do," he said flatly. "That's why I'm here."
---
Rai's breathing was slow, but not calm.
He watched his reflection in the shallow pool that formed at his feet. For a moment, it was his own face. Then flickers bled through: a child kneeling in fire. A soldier silhouetted against collapsing towers. A man with golden eyes, smiling while a planet tore itself apart.
His fists clenched.
"Elira," he said, not looking at her, "what do I do now?"
Her voice was gentle. "You remember."
"I don't know how."
"Then we take you to the place where memories refuse to die."
---
They descended beneath the monastery.
Few had seen the Temple of Ghost Data. Fewer returned unscathed.
The journey downward took hours. They passed through spiral staircases made of light, elevators that ascended and descended simultaneously, and long bridges suspended above data-voids—gaps in recorded time where screams could sometimes be heard if you walked too slowly.
At the temple's entrance stood a sealed gate: no handle, no lock, only a question inscribed in Godscript.
WHO REMEMBERS THE FORGOTTEN REMEMBERERS?
Elira placed her hand on it.
The gate shivered and opened.
"You don't see memory here," she warned. "You become it."
Rai nodded.
Kareth said nothing. His fingers hovered near his sword.
They stepped inside.
---
The temple was a paradox: a cathedral and a void.
Thousands of statues lined the walls, each one formed of frozen light—etched with code, flickering between opacity and translucence. Faces twisted in every human emotion. Some were serene. Others screamed. All stared with eyes that seemed to track you even when you looked away.
Whispers crawled through the air like forgotten wind.
Rai walked silently between the statues. He passed a woman with her mouth open mid-song, a child reaching toward something unseen, a soldier on his knees with hands raised in surrender.
Then he stopped.
There—near the center of the hall—stood a statue of a young man.
His age was identical. His posture familiar. A faint scar beneath the right eye.
His hand clutched his chest as if trying to hold something in—or keep something out.
Rai stepped closer.
It was him.
"Elira?"
No response.
He turned.
She was gone.
So was Kareth.
The light changed. The temple walls folded in on themselves. The whispers sharpened.
And the memory surged.
---
He was elsewhere.
A city—on fire.
The skies were ash. Buildings burned. The screams of a thousand voices echoed through collapsing metal.
Rai stood in the center of it all. His armor was obsidian-gray, glinting with fractured glyphs. In his hand, a blade of crystallized starlight. His face was stone.
He looked down.
A man knelt before him, divine glow leaking from his wounds, breathing ragged.
"Why?" the man whispered.
Rai's voice came from somewhere cold.
"Because God lied."
The blade fell.
And the world shattered like glass.
---
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the temple.
He was on the ground, shaking. Elira knelt beside him, her fingers gripping his shoulders tightly.
"Rai. Rai. Stay with me. Breathe."
His eyes burned gold. He tried to speak, but only managed one word:
"Killed…"
Then another.
"…him."
She didn't ask who.
Kareth stood a few meters away, arms crossed, face carved in stone.
"You saw it," Elira said quietly.
Kareth nodded. "Not clearly. But enough."
"Enough for what?"
"Enough to know he's dangerous."
---
Back in the upper monastery, Elira taught him breathing codes—ancient Architect rituals that involved rhythm, posture, and tonal vibration. They were meant to stabilize volatile memories before they dissolved or mutated.
Rai sat cross-legged, eyes shut, sweat beading down his forehead as he whispered fragmented syllables.
Elira's hand was steady on his chest. "Listen. Don't resist. What is the memory saying?"
"It's not saying," he gasped. "It's… screaming. And it's not in words."
"That's the God Code," she replied. "It doesn't speak in grammar. It speaks in intent."
Rai opened his eyes. "Then what does it want?"
She hesitated.
"To survive."
He stared at her.
"No," he said. "I want to survive. It wants something else."
She didn't answer.
---
That night, Rai wandered alone through the Archive's star chamber—a massive observatory dome projecting artificial constellations and simulated timelines.
He stood in the dark, watching galaxies spiral into patterns of lives that could have been.
Then, one thread shifted.
A red filament broke free from the web of probability and spun downward—shaping itself into a symbol.
The Seraphic Eye.
The same sigil found on Reaper drones.
The same mark that burned on his own memory.
It pulsed.
Once.
Then fragmented into dust.
Rai stood in silence.
Whatever had been hidden… no longer was.
---
At dawn, Kareth found him near the upper terrace.
The commander's tone was colder than the mountain wind.
"I need to know," he said. "Do you hear it?"
"Hear what?"
"The voice. Behind your heartbeat."
Rai didn't answer.
Kareth drew his blade—not in threat, but ritual.
A memory-scanning weapon.
Rai didn't flinch.
That was the answer.
Kareth lowered the blade. "Then the time has come."
"For what?"
The commander turned away.
"To face your first memory trial."