*The Fall Into Memoryfire***
The world became a tunnel of screaming wind.
Aru tumbled through the void, arms flailing, eyes burning from debris and raw light. The Mnemonic Tower collapsed around them in spiraling fragments—walls, staircases, broken glass, entire floors—falling at the same speed they were.
Kairo was shouting something, but the howl of gravity swallowed every sound.
Aru wasn't thinking.
He wasn't breathing.
Only one thought burned through him:
**LYRIA.**
He reached downward as if his hand could pierce the abyss and pull her back. But there was nothing—only darkness streaked with glowing threads that twisted like living auroras.
A hand slammed against his wrist.
"Aru!" Kairo's voice burst through the wind as he pulled himself closer, their bodies spinning. "BRO—WAKE UP! You gotta snap out of it or we're gonna die IN STYLE!"
Aru blinked, barely registering anything.
Solace slammed into them from the side, hooking all three together with a burst of violet tether-light from his gauntlet. "Focus! We need to stabilize or we'll hit the Memoryfire unprepared!"
The what?
Aru barely had time to question before he saw it:
Beneath them—a swirling sea of incandescent light.
Not water.
Not flame.
Something in-between.
A realm made of half-formed memories, glowing silhouettes, drifting voices.
The **Memoryfire**.
The place where forgotten thoughts went to burn.
It was rising fast.
Aru's heartbeat thundered in his ears.
"No—no, Lyria fell through this—she's down there—she's—"
Kairo gripped his shoulder with a force that bordered on painful.
"LISTEN TO ME! If you jump in blind, you're gone. Lost. Fried like an egg of destiny."
Solace yelled over him, eyes sharp:
"The Memoryfire destroys unstable minds. You must anchor yourself first—Aru, LOOK at me."
Aru didn't want to.
He wanted to dive.
Scream.
Bleed.
Fight the universe if he had to—
But Solace's voice cut through the panic like a blade:
"If Lyria survived the fall, she will only be reachable if YOU stay alive long enough to reach her."
That single sentence hit harder than the fall.
Aru inhaled sharply.
The abyss around them stabilized—just a little.
The three of them plunged into a storm of drifting memories:
A broken swing set…
A child's handwriting floating like smoke…
A music box spinning midair…
Kairo blinked. "Yo why is there a flying baby photo chasing me—HEY BACK OFF—"
But his humor didn't hide the fear in his eyes.
The Memoryfire roared beneath them.
Solace retracted the tether, twisting his gauntlet. "Brace yourselves. I'll try to create a shield to control the descent!"
He formed a shimmering geometric field around them—
—but the fall was too fast.
The field cracked instantly.
Aru felt an invisible force tug at his chest—like hands reaching inside him, pulling at memories he didn't know he still had.
A whispered voice echoed:
**—aru… come home…**
He gasped as flashes stabbed into him:
Running through a midnight garden.
Holding Lyria's hand.
Music lines burning across the sky.
Screams in a cold laboratory.
A crown of shifting light descending—
He clutched his head.
"No—NO—stop—"
Kairo grabbed him again. "DON'T LET IT IN! You take all that in now, you'll tear your brain apart!"
Solace shouted, "Impact in THREE—TWO—"
The Memoryfire surged upward like an exploding sun.
Aru screamed—
Kairo cursed—
Solace closed his eyes—
And they slammed into the glowing sea.
---
### **For a moment, there was no pain. Only silence.**
Aru floated weightlessly, surrounded by drifting shards of past and future.
Shapes formed—faces—echoes—
but every time he reached for one, it dissolved.
Then he heard it.
A whisper.
**"…Aru…"**
His lungs froze.
"LYRIA!?"
He spun violently, searching every corner of the shimmering void.
But instead of her, a shape stepped forward from the glow:
A small figure.
Barefoot.
Hair messy.
Eyes wide and terrified.
Aru's heart dropped.
It was **him**.
Aru—at maybe eight years old—
cradling something glowing against his chest.
The child looked up at him.
"Why did you forget me…?"
Aru's breath cracked.
Kairo and Solace drifted nearby, unconscious, suspended by light.
But the child took another step forward, eyes wet.
"Why did you leave me there?"
Aru tried to speak.
"I didn't… I couldn't—I had to forget to protect—"
The child's face twisted.
The glowing thing in his hands began to pulse.
And then Aru recognized it:
It wasn't an object.
It was a **heart**.
His own.
Pulsing, fractured, incomplete.
Aru staggered back.
"W-What… what is happening?"
The child clutched the heart tighter.
"The person you buried didn't die…"
Light flared violently—
"…he's waking up."
The Memoryfire around them trembled, spiraled—
—and the child's eyes turned gold.
Aru choked.
No.
Not gold.
Crowned.
A familiar, terrifying energy radiated out:
**The rhythm of the Aural Crown.**
The child whispered:
"Don't run this time."
The world exploded into white.