*The Fall Through Memory***
Where the Past Bleeds Into the Present"**
Darkness wasn't empty.
It was *alive.*
Aru, Kairo, and Solace plummeted through the collapsing shaft as the tower screamed from every direction. Shards of metal spun past them like dying stars. Threads of gold—fragments of memories—whipped across their bodies, burning like cold fire.
Aru reached desperately toward the fading spot where Lyria had fallen.
His voice cracked through the void.
"LYRIAAAAA—!!"
The echo spiraled downward, breaking apart like glass.
No answer came back.
Kairo twisted mid-fall, grabbing Aru's arm before he drifted too far.
"BRO—stop reaching! You're gonna flip us—!"
Solace was falling upside-down, trying to stabilize himself with burst-shields that flickered in and out like glitching wings.
"The core is breaking apart!" Solace shouted.
"We need to orient—HOLD ON!"
But orientation was impossible.
Gravity twisted violently.
The air bent sideways.
The space around them warped like reality was remembering and forgetting itself at the same time.
Aru's vision split—
One eye saw the collapsing tower.
The other saw a memory:
Lyria's hand pulling him through moonlit gardens.
Her laugh echoing like chimes.
Her breath warm against his neck as she whispered—
**"Run."**
Aru clenched his head with both hands.
"No—no, not now—!"
The memory crackled like static, layering itself over the falling present like two films projected on top of each other.
He saw Kairo beside him—
—and at the same time saw a younger Kairo drumming on stolen paint buckets in Greyline City.
He saw Solace falling—
—and saw Solace kneeling before the Aural Crown during his tribunal.
Past.
Present.
Past.
Present.
He couldn't separate them.
A throat-deep groan tore from him. "Make it STOP!"
Kairo's face tightened.
"Bro. Aru. LISTEN—look at me!"
He grabbed both sides of Aru's face mid-freefall.
"You're here. With us. In the now. Breathe—!"
But the ribbons of memory attacked again, wrapping around Aru's wrists, ankles, chest—
—and **pulled.**
Aru screamed as the glowing threads yanked him sideways, tearing him out of Kairo's grip and dragging him toward a widening crack in the air.
A memory gate.
A raw, unstable tear between timelines.
Solace swore violently.
"NO—Aru! Fight it! Those gates are unstable, they'll rip you apart!"
Aru's body convulsed as the threads dragged him across shifting images—
His younger self crying.
The laboratory lights.
Lyria's hands stained with ink from forbidden notes.
A crown of wires forced around his skull.
He choked on a breath.
"Why… am I seeing this? Why now—?"
Kairo kicked off a floating slab of debris, propelling himself toward Aru with insane, reckless force.
"Because you REMEMBERED, idiot!" he yelled.
"And remembering awakens everything that was chained!"
He slammed into Aru, grabbing him—but the memory threads tightened, pulling them both toward the tear.
Aru felt the pressure inside his skull build—
The voices of the Aural Crown whispering:
**"Instrument."
"Property."
"Subject Aru."
"Return."**
Aru roared—
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
The memory gate flared white.
Solace finally stabilized himself using a kinetic shield and shot downward like a human spear.
He extended his hand—
eyes blazing with a force Aru had never seen in him.
"ARU!! TAKE MY HAND!"
Aru tried.
Their fingers brushed—
But the memory gate widened, dragging Aru and Kairo closer to its blinding center.
The woman in white's—
Lyria's—
last word echoed in his skull.
**Survive.**
Aru clenched his jaw.
Something inside him snapped—
not breaking, but unlocking.
His heartbeat shifted.
Not human.
Not Aural Noble.
Something older.
Something the Crown had tried to erase.
The threads binding him vibrated violently—
—and then shattered like brittle glass.
Aru lurched forward—
right into Solace's outstretched hand.
Solace grabbed his wrist with bone-crushing force.
Kairo grabbed Solace's cloak.
For one impossible moment—
they formed a chain against the pull of the past.
Solace shouted, breath tearing from his chest:
"KALEIDOS DROP—BRACE!!"
He triggered a forceburst downward.
The world blurred.
The tear snapped shut behind them like a jaw.
And the three of them were thrown violently out of the collapsing memory shaft—
straight into a blinding expanse of white light.
Then—
Impact.
A stone platform rushed up beneath them.
They hit hard, rolling across marble tiles cracked with runic symbols.
Aru coughed violently, pushing himself up.
The air here was cold.
Still.
Heavy with ancient silence.
Above them, the tower they had fallen from stood twisted—
half-existing, half-glitching—
as if reality wasn't sure if it should keep it or erase it.
Kairo groaned and sat up.
"Okay… okay… roll call… Everyone alive?"
Solace wiped blood from his lip.
"Barely. But yes."
Aru didn't answer immediately.
He stared at his trembling hands.
At the ghostly threads of memory still flickering around his fingertips.
Kairo moved closer.
"Bro…?"
Aru whispered:
"…I remember everything."
Solace stiffened.
Kairo's eyes widened.
Aru lifted his head—
and his eyes were glowing with a faint, impossible gold.
"The Aural Crown didn't experiment on me," he said.
"They CREATED me."
Wind surged around them.
The platform trembled.
Something ancient beneath the stone awakened.
Aru looked at them, expression hollow and fierce at the same time.
"I wasn't just a child they used."
Rain of shimmering memory fragments drifted around him like falling stars.
"I was their **weapon.**"