Neo woke in a battlefield illusion—broken swords, shattered armor, dirt stained with dried blood. The sky above him was cracked like a broken mirror.
A dying warrior crawled toward him, eyes lifeless but still moving.
He offered Neo a beast fang.
"Take… it…" "Run… before the priest… returns…"
Neo swallowed hard, picking it up.
"…What the hell is happening here?"
The ground trembled under his boots, groaning like the world itself was remembering pain. Neo looked around. The battlefield stretched endlessly—shields half-buried, helmets crushed, charred spears sticking out of the earth like gravestones.
A cold wind whispered across his ear.
"Leave…"
Neo spun. No one there.
"Stupid mansion," he hissed. "Why am I always stuck with the creepy parts?"
As he stepped ahead, the battlefield changed—melting soundlessly like paint dripping off a canvas. The corpses around him turned to ash. The sky cracked further. A red light flickered through the fractures.
Neo staggered back as a silhouette walked toward him—a tall man in broken black armor, one arm missing. His armor dragged against the dirt with hollow metallic echoes. Neo loaded his slingshot and fired with pure reflex.
The pebble passed straight through the armored man—and then straight through Neo.
"What—!?"
Neo's breath caught. The wind felt suddenly colder… sharper.
The one-armed knight stopped right in front of him. Neo couldn't see his face—only a blurred outline beneath the shadow of his helm.
The knight bent down, pulling at a stone on the ground… and lifted a single blade of withered grass trapped beneath it. He stared at it with impossible tenderness.
Neo didn't understand—but he felt the sadness, heavy enough to choke on.
Then the world exploded.
The battlefield shattered like glass around him, swallowing him in a whirl of black shards.
Neo gasped as he hit solid ground again.
He was standing in a royal courtroom.
Tall pillars rose like silent giants. Every noble in the hall stood frozen in fear. Their faces pale. Their hands trembling.
A door slammed open with a violent bang.
A king walked in.
His robes were soaked in blood. His sword dragged behind him, clattering against the marble.
Neo slowly backed away.
The king's breath was uneven… broken. His crown hung crookedly. He walked past the nobles—none dared to move.
Halfway to the throne, the king dropped his sword. The steel rang louder than thunder.
He climbed the steps with shaking legs, sat on the throne, and whispered with cracked, tear-filled eyes:
"I have eradicated my foe… and now… the world may kneel before our god…"
The hall shuddered.
Neo's weapon slipped from his hand.
A sudden, crushing pain filled his chest—an emotion that wasn't his. Grief. Rage. Betrayal. Endless despair.
Neo dropped to his knees without understanding why.
"Whose memories are these…?"
The world flickered. The courtroom walls darkened, peeling away to reveal shadowed tendrils. The king's face stretched unnaturally, becoming hollow. His crown melted into bone.
Neo couldn't breathe.
Everything swallowed him again.
Silence.
He blinked and found himself sitting at a small dining table.
A plate of simple food lay in front of him—warm, steaming, almost glowing with homeliness.
A man and a woman sat across from him.
The man wore worn gardener clothes. Dirt smudged his hands. His eyes were kind, tired, and filled with patient love.
The woman laughed, stirring a pot on the counter. "Eat it while it's warm! You always make me call twice, young man."
Neo stared at them.
His throat dried up.
The man leaned forward. "Son… why don't you eat?"
Neo's hands shook.
Son?
He looked down at his reflection in the spoon.
It wasn't his face.
It wasn't Neo.
It was the priest's son.
Neo's breath caught. His heart hammered loudly. The warmth in the room felt suffocating.
But… it was beautiful.
A mother's laugh. A father's gentle eyes. The smell of cooked food. The sense of someone waiting for you.
Neo's chest tightened painfully.
He lifted the spoon with trembling fingers.
If this was an illusion… it was the best one he had ever been trapped in.
But joy never lasted.
A sudden knock thundered on the door.
The woman froze.
The kind gardener's eyes widened with dread.
Neo felt his heartbeat crash.
The door burst open.
Armored soldiers stormed in, dragging the woman out by her hair. The father lunged forward, screaming, begging, bleeding.
Neo jumped to help—
—but his hand passed through everything.
"No—NO—STOP!"
A rich young woman walked in behind the soldiers, face twisted in rage and humiliation.
"That man," she shouted, pointing at the gardener, "forced himself on me!"
Neo felt the lie burn through the air.
The soldiers didn't care.
Orders boomed from outside.
"Burn the house."
Neo screamed as flames roared to life, swallowing the mother. The father's screams echoed through the burning room as he clung to the tiny boy's hand—Neo's hand—begging the guards to spare them.
The heat was unbearable. The crying was real. The pain… was too human to be memory.
The father collapsed. The child burned. The home crumbled into ash.
The world swallowed everything again.
Neo fell onto cold stone, gasping, shaking violently.
Echoes of fire clung to his hearing.
A heavy shadow formed in front of him.
The priest stood there.
The dead priest.
His head bent at that unnatural angle. His voice a broken whisper.
"I searched… everywhere… For my son…"
Neo's blood froze.
The priest looked at him—not as an enemy, but as a desperate father still lost in memories of fire.
Neo clutched the beast fang.
He finally understood.
The priest wasn't born a monster.
He was made into one.
The illusions melted away. The battlefield, the courtroom, the home—they all dissolved into a suffocating darkness.
Neo stood alone with the priest's shadow looming over him.
"Why… are you showing me this…?" Neo whispered.
The priest's hollow voice answered:
"So you know… What Deus… Took from me…"
The chamber trembled violently.
Neo staggered, bracing himself.
Somewhere far away, he heard AJ shouting his name faintly through another corridor.
Neo clenched his fist.
"Just hang on, bro… I'm coming."
The last thing he saw before the darkness rushed over him was the priest's misted silhouette…
reaching out for a son he never found.