The beeping was steady.
Too steady.
Too perfect.
That's how I knew it wasn't real.
I stood in the center of a hospital room that felt… wrong. The walls were too white. The air too clean. Every detail was sterile to the point of soulless. This wasn't a memory—it was a performance. A puppet show, staged for pain.
And she was the centerpiece.
My mother.
Sitting beside a hospital bed, tears running silently down her cheeks. Her hands clutched a plastic bracelet—the kind they put on patients who don't wake up.
I stepped forward. "Mom?"
She didn't look up.
The boy in the bed—I couldn't see his face. But I knew what the system wanted me to believe.
That it was me.
That I had failed her.
> "Reconstruction Engaged: Core Memory Trial."
Sin Type: Abandonment
Memory Authenticity: UNCONFIRMED
Warning: Emotional Anchor Detected. High Risk of Identity Override.
---
Adrian's voice broke through the illusion.
"Kai, don't go near her!"
He was in the hallway, banging against an invisible wall. Harper stood beside him, arms folded, eyes narrowed.
"I've seen this trick before," she muttered. "The system tailors it. Uses faces it thinks you need. But that doesn't make them real."
My fists clenched.
"I remember this," I said quietly. "I remember the accident. I was thirteen. I was supposed to visit her that day but… I didn't. I stayed late at school. And she—"
Harper stepped forward. "And that guilt? Real or not—it feeds the system."
The woman beside the bed suddenly looked up.
Her eyes weren't my mother's.
They were completely black. Empty. Reflecting nothing.
"You left me," she whispered. Her voice distorted—high, low, old, young—shifting mid-sentence like a badly tuned radio. "You said you'd come back."
I backed away.
Adrian shouted. "Kai! That's not your mom. That's your guilt wearing her skin!"
I turned to Harper.
"What do I do?" I asked.
She didn't blink. "You either accept it and risk losing who you are—or confront it and take control."
I stepped closer to the bed.
The woman's hands reached out.
"You don't love me," she hissed. "You never did."
My chest burned.
The pain wasn't physical. It was emotional memory. The kind that leaves scars deeper than any blade.
But something inside me pushed back.
No.
That wasn't the truth.
---
I took a breath and said, "I loved you more than anything. But I didn't understand how to show it."
She froze.
The illusion cracked.
Lines split across her face like shattered porcelain. The black in her eyes began to leak, like ink bleeding through paper.
"I'm not afraid to remember you," I said. "But I won't let guilt rewrite who I was."
Her face twisted.
The monitors flatlined.
The walls collapsed inward, like the memory itself was folding in on itself—unable to hold form.
---
[TRIAL COMPLETE]
Sin Level: 0.9 → 0.8
Memory Fragment Restored: "The Missed Visit"
System Note: Emotional Stability +2 | Identity Anchor Strengthened
---
The hospital faded.
I landed on cold stone.
Adrian helped me up.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," I said, voice rough. "No."
Harper crouched beside me. "You just passed a Core Memory Trial. Most people break in there. Cry, scream, beg. You kept your mind intact."
"For now," I muttered. "How long until I don't know what's real anymore?"
She looked me dead in the eyes. "That depends on how honest you are with yourself."
---
Later, we found shelter in a broken chapel.
The stained-glass windows were cracked, the altar rotten, but it was quiet. No whispers. No trials. Just space to breathe.
Harper finally opened up.
"I joined the Devil Hunters to kill something that ruined my family," she said. "We track corrupted entities. Things born of people's darkest decisions. This system? It generates them. It doesn't just punish sinners—it creates more."
Adrian leaned back against a pew. "So it's a machine that feeds itself."
Harper nodded. "And the deeper you go, the more twisted it becomes. You don't just survive—you become a piece of it."
I stared at the flickering candles.
"What happens if you reach the bottom?" I asked.
Harper paused.
"No one has."
---
[SYSTEM UPDATE]
> New Objective Unlocked: "Reach Layer 6 – The Archive of Truth"
System Tier Unlocked: Level 1 – Devil Path Initiation
Status: Kai - Eligible for Path Selection in Upcoming Trial
---
My breath caught.
"What's the Devil Path?"
Harper didn't answer right away.
She just looked at me with that same sharp, almost pitying gaze.
"It's the path where you stop asking questions like that."