Chapter 13: Lingering Memories
The academy's dormitory lounge was quiet, save for the faint hum of the lightstrips running along the ceiling. Redmond sat in one of the steel-backed chairs, visor dim against the pale glow. Outside, Aurelius's citylights gleamed through the window, a sky full of steel stars.
He should have been sleeping. Tomorrow was another test, another re-examination, another spectacle of whispers.
But his mind wandered, as it always did when silence stretched too long. Backward. To the day when everything had changed.
The day before his ninth birthday.
The day before he stopped being just Redmond.
He remembered the laughter first.
Raynar, his twin brother, had tackled him into the garden grass that morning, their clothes stained with dew as the two rolled and wrestled.
"Ha! Got you again!" Raynar pinned him and grinned wide, strands of brown hair falling into his eyes.
"You cheated," Redmond muttered, wriggling uselessly.
"Cheated?" Raynar snorted. "It's called skill, brother." He let go and jumped up, hands raised like a champion. "Tomorrow, we're nine. We'll awaken. And when I get my talent, it's gonna be the strongest in the family! You'll see."
Redmond dusted off his clothes, pretending not to care. "Strong doesn't mean best."
"Yeah, yeah," Raynar said, waving him off, "keep saying that after I'm lifting tanks or firing beams across the sky."
Their mother's voice called from the terrace. Gentle, musical, with a warmth that always seemed to soften the air itself.
"Raynar, Redmond—don't wear yourselves out before the ceremony!"
They looked up. She was standing there with her long hair tied in a simple braid, still beautiful even in the plain white dress she wore when she wanted no attendants around. She smiled, carrying a tray of fruit cakes dusted with sweet powder.
Raynar lit up instantly. "Mother! You made them early?"
She set the tray down on the garden table and laughed softly. "Consider it practice for tomorrow's feast. Your father allowed me one indulgence."
They ran over, and for a while, the world was only crumbs, frosting, and the warmth of their mother's laughter.
Later that night, while Raynar dozed on the couch, their mother sat with Redmond by the fire. She brushed his hair back with careful fingers.
"You're quiet tonight," she said gently.
"I'm just thinking."
"About tomorrow?"
He nodded, visorless eyes reflecting the flame. "What if nothing happens?"
Her smile softened. "Redmond… something always happens. Awakening is not about becoming someone else. It's about uncovering what was already within you."
He hesitated. "…And if what's inside me is… wrong?"
Her hand paused for just a second. Then she leaned down, pressing her forehead lightly against his.
"Listen to me. There is no 'wrong' when it comes to the origin. Only fear… and discovery."
He blinked at her. She rarely spoke of herself. But that night, she did.
"When I was a girl," she began, "my awakening nearly tore me apart. My talent was… strange. I could pull things to me, push them away. At first, it was chaos—I couldn't walk without shattering glass, couldn't touch without breaking plates."
Her fingers lifted, and the faintest shimmer of energy swirled in her palm. A pebble from the hearth floor floated into the air, circling her hand slowly before settling back down.
"But over time," she continued, "I learned it was more than push or pull. It was balance. Attraction and repulsion. Gravity itself, if you wish to call it that. The world called it unstable. I called it mine."
Redmond's small voice was almost a whisper. "…Were you afraid?"
"Terrified." She kissed his hair. "But fear means you're standing before something greater than yourself. That's how you know it's worth mastering."
Her words sank into him. Warm. Steady. Anchors in the unknown.
Then came the shrine.
The Triarchal Shrine of Resonance towered like a cathedral of crystal, its three pillars representing the great entities who once guided the three races. The entire family came—the King himself, priests, attendants.
But for Redmond, the chamber felt too vast, too heavy.
The resonance pillars hummed as his turn began.
Raynar had squeezed his shoulder. "Don't worry. You'll shine. You always do."
Their father's eyes were unreadable. Authority cloaked in flesh. "Step forward."
Redmond obeyed.
The pillars flared, bathing him in cascading light. His heartbeat thundered. His mother's words echoed in his head.
Fear means you are standing before something greater than yourself…
Then it happened.
A ripple, faint at first. Space bent around his hand. The air shimmered, curving unnaturally, until a tiny black sphere spun in his palm.
The priests gasped. Raynar's eyes went wide with awe.
"You see that?!" he shouted. "That's my brother!"
For a moment—just one—Redmond felt proud. Maybe even… happy.
But then the sphere pulsed. Flickered.
And collapsed inward.
Into him.
Pain.
Every nerve set on fire. His chest tearing open, though no wound showed. The wormhole expanded inside, a tunnel boring through his body into somewhere else—a place that should not have touched this world.
Energy poured out. Endless. Merciless.
The shrine cracked. Pillars screamed as their harmonics shattered.
Raynar cried out, reaching for him. "Red!"
His mother lunged forward, arms outstretched, tears already in her eyes. "Stay with me, my son! Stay with me!" Her gravity field flickered, trying desperately to compress the raging distortion, but the flow was too much. Her talent bent, warped, as if space itself mocked her control.
"Make it stop!" Redmond screamed. "Please—make it stop!"
His father's voice cut sharp, thunderous: "Control it! You are Red'Lux—control it!"
But he couldn't. He was eight. Just a boy. The dimension inside him roared, tearing to be free.
The explosion came like the birth of a star.
Light so bright it seared sight away. Energy waves slammed the chamber, hurling priests and shattering crystal. The containment dome groaned, absorbing what it could. Without it, the capital itself might have been reduced to rubble.
Redmond remembered only fragments after that—his mother's arms shielding him, her voice trembling against his ear:
"You are not wrong, Redmond. You are mine. And I will hold you… even if the stars themselves fall."
Then blackness claimed him.
Back in the academy lounge, Redmond's hand had clenched the armrest so tightly the alloy creaked.
The stabilizer mask hissed faintly, venting a small correction surge. His pulse slowed.
He exhaled. "…That day."
He never told anyone how much he remembered. To the world, it was a shrine accident. To the family, it was a secret wound. To himself, it was a reminder carved deeper than scars.
His mother's warmth. His brother's joy. His father's command. The explosion that ended them all.
Raynar survived, yes. But the boy who laughed in gardens never did.
Redmond leaned back, visor glinting in the silence.
"Tomorrow, another test," he murmured. "Another chance to watch them all stare."
He let his hand hover over the mask for a moment, remembering her touch. Remembering her voice.
"Fear means you are standing before something greater than yourself…"
A bitter smile tugged at his lips.
"Then I must be standing before the universe."
The stabilizer pulsed once, dimly, like a heartbeat.
And Redmond closed his eyes—not to sleep, but to bury the memories again before they consumed him whole.