I woke with a jolt, my lungs dragging in air like I'd been drowning.
The floor beneath me was soft—polished marble, smooth and cold against my skin. I blinked rapidly, disoriented, staring up at a ceiling that looked too clean, too perfect. A chandelier glittered above me, scattering light across walls lined with gold trim and velvet curtains.
A hotel? No—this was something else. A mansion, maybe. Luxurious, modern, elegant.
I sat up slowly, my hands trembling. My chest—my chest wasn't torn open. No blood. No hole. My shirt was clean. My heart was beating.
For a second, I almost laughed. "A… a dream. Just… just a nightmare again."
My voice cracked in relief.
Then I noticed the paper lying on the floor beside me.
A note, handwritten, the ink smeared as if rushed.
Too painful.
That was all it said.
The words bled into me like poison. And then—
Her face.
Sophia's face, pale and bloodstained. Her white eyes boring into mine as her hand ripped through my chest. Her sobs. Her screams. Her words.
"This time… I wish you could be free."
"NO—!" The scream tore out of my throat before I realized it.
I staggered back, clutching my chest. My breaths came in ragged, broken gasps. The chandelier above blurred as tears filled my eyes.
Then the memories hit.
All at once.
The wet crunch of my ribs shattering.
The sound of blood bubbling in my throat.
The helplessness in my screams as my sister—the one person I swore I'd protect—crushed my heart like rotten fruit.
"S-Stop—stopstopstopstop—!" My voice cracked into a sob as I clutched my head. My nails dug into my scalp until skin split, until warm blood trickled down my forehead.
The room spun. My body convulsed. I fell to the floor on my hands and knees, gagging as bile rose in my throat. I vomited, choking, the acidic stench filling the air. It burned my throat, but the taste didn't matter.
Nothing mattered.
I could feel it again. Her hand inside my chest. Her sobs in my ears.
"No more—no more—please—"
I slammed my forehead against the marble. Once. Twice. Again. Again. The sharp crack of skull against stone echoed through the room. Blood splattered in tiny arcs as my skin split wider.
It didn't stop the memories.
Her voice kept playing.
Worthless.
Monster.
You shouldn't have existed.
Each word drove deeper than bone.
My screams grew hoarse, turning raw until my throat tore. "WHY?! WHY, SOPHIA?! WHY?!"
I curled into myself, shaking, clawing at my chest as if I could dig the memory out, rip it free. My nails left long, red streaks down my skin.
But it was still there.
The sensation.
The pain.
The betrayal.
And worst of all—the love.
I loved her. More than myself. And it was her hands that ended me.
I vomited again, empty heaves wracking my body. Tears mixed with blood and saliva, dripping onto the marble floor until the perfect surface was stained with filth.
I didn't know where I was. I didn't know why I was alive.
All I knew was the truth.
I had died.
I had felt it.
And it was too painful to bear.
The note beside me stared back like a curse.
Too painful.
My scream that followed didn't sound human.
A cold rectangle of light bled into my vision, slicing through the swim of pain.
{TEXT: INITIALIZING SYNCHRONIZATION.}
It was clinical. No flourish. No music. Just a voice in print, dead and steady. My skull throbbed where I'd banged it on the marble. Blood ticked warm from my hair and mixed with the bile in my mouth.
[TEXT: ACTIVATING ECLIPSE VAULT — SECURE MEMORY HANDLER.]
A pressure like ice pressed behind my eyes. Something reached into my head and touched the raw, bright thing that was the memory — the feel of her hand inside my chest, the smell of hot iron, the look in Sophia's white eyes. Fingers of sensation pulled at it, gentle and surgical, then harder. Film burned away. Details shredded like paper in a wind.
I could feel pieces ripping out: the crunch of ribs, the exact angle of her blade — gone. The horror collapsed inward until only one shard remained: Sophia's face, wet with tears and blood, whispering that terrible wish.
[TEXT: MEMORY PURGE — TARGET: TRAUMATIC SEQUENCE.
STATUS: COMPLETION 100%.]
A new line appeared, blunt as a command.
[TEXT: WELCOME TO CYCLE 01.]
The letters echoed in my head like a bell. I wanted to scream, to claw the sound out, but my lungs were heavy and the room tilted. The vault's purge left a raw hole where something had been; the hole ached like a burned-out tooth. Pain hit again, sudden and white—an aftershock from nerves being forced to reset. My limbs spasmed, not like a player's avatar but like a body betrayed by its own wiring: jerks, shallow convulsions, fingers twitching at odd angles.
I tasted metal. I tasted myself. For a moment I only had that single image — her voice, her white eyes — and the new emptiness where the rest should be.
Then the world narrowed to the cold marble under my cheek and the wet warmth pooling around me. I tried to move, to speak, to remember why everything hurt so much; the answers slid away. The last thing I registered was the sterile text fading from my sight.
Black closed over me. My body went limp. The convulsions slowed. I fell, and for the first time since the scream, I slept — not like a relief, but like an exile.