oved with him. His footprints pressed into streets that in his waking life had crumbled to dust. His shadow slipped along stalls brimming with fruit and color. His reflection trembled in the communal well's clear water.
Voices rose around him, bright and ordinary: a woman haggling over cloth; children chasing a rolling hoop; men laughing near a cooking fire. Faces swam at the edges of his sight—Rob, Magy, others he had left buried in older chapters of his life—each one blurred into the soft strangeness of dreams.
A smile crossed his face before he noticed it, drawn by a joy that belonged to another time.
"Is this what it was like?" he asked the air, his voice low. "Did I forget this warmth? If all that remains are echoes… am I still myself?"
For a while he simply wandered, letting the unbroken life of the village wash over him.
He felt lighter, his steps cleaner. The strength carved in battles now read as grace and certainty in the casual way he moved. The world felt safe enough that his awareness turned sharp, not from fear but clarity—seeing through both a child's open gaze and a survivor's measured eye.
He stopped in the square where, in the desert world, the Seed had waited. Here only a copper plaque caught the light, framed by the laughter of playing children.
The Echoframe spoke at last.
Not from his wrist, but from somewhere inside his mind.
Seed of Dream. User is now within a memory-based soul simulation anchored to a pivotal moment before catastrophe.
All events here leave the physical world untouched, but cut deep into spirit and memory. Survival, loss, emotion, wisdom—these may be met and altered in accordance with will and awareness.
Exit comes only with a full cycle or when the lesson is understood.
Beneath the explanation, a question formed in him, clear and precise rather than afraid:
What danger waits here?
The dream brightened. Shadows pooled thicker at the square's edge.
And Noctis walked forward.
He woke to sunlight—warm, gold, filtered through a ceiling of woven palm fronds. For an instant, panic flared: this was not his body. Limbs felt different; lighter, untouched by long years of violence. His heartbeat twitched in his chest, steady yet foreign, tuned to a life he did not remember living.
Memories settled around him in loose fragments. A name rose when someone called from outside: Ashan.
Yet under that, his own mind held. The void, the cold paths, the desert and forest—those burned clearer than these soft, borrowed days.
He checked his hands. Slimmer, darkened by sun, nails dusted with red sand. His clothes hung in faded blues and browns. When he clenched his fist, strength shimmered just beneath the skin—his real power, still there, humming like a second, secret pulse.
"Ashan! You'll be late for water!"
A girl's voice—sister. Fragments followed: her laughter dancing over the dunes, games under moonlight, promises traded beneath old stones. The memories felt sideways to him, warm but not wholly his.
He stood and stepped out.
The village pulsed with everyday life. Children chased each other through doorways, kicking red sand into the air. Men hefted baskets of dates; women sharpened knives, hung fish to dry. Calls, songs, and bargaining tangled together into a familiar noise.
A tall woman beckoned, silver in her hair, smile broad.
"Ashan, help your mother. Your father's waiting by the well."
He felt the weight of her expectation and obeyed, awkward at first, lifting a small basket and letting the ghost of Ashan's habits guide his steps to the square.
By the well stood a man—broad-shouldered, sun-brown, eyes bright with pride and affection.
Father.
When the man clapped a hand to his shoulder, warmth cut through two layers of memory: the old hunger to prove himself and the newer, heavier ache of everything Noctis had already lost.
"Good. You're here," the man said. "Remember how to test the rope? Show your cousin—it's her first time."
Noctis hesitated, then moved as if he had always known how. Fingers checked knots, body remembering what the mind did not. His sister and cousin laughed at his brief clumsiness, but it held no cruelty.
For an hour, life unfolded in simple threads.
A story at the fire about sandstorms. A whispered plan for an upcoming festival. A child's hand grabbing his, demanding a race. His mother's song over the bread, old and soothing.
He answered when spoken to, voice even. Little by little, borrowed memories and his true self knit together into a stillness that almost felt like peace.
When his gaze drifted toward the horizon, the girl nudged him.
"Still dreaming, Ashan?"
"Maybe," he said. "Sometimes dreams feel more real than anything."
She laughed, clear and light.
"Not today. Today you're here."
Beneath that faded sky, he allowed himself, briefly, to accept it.
The village's pace quickened over the following days. Banners bloomed across narrow streets, woven lanterns turned in the wind, and laughter lingered past sunset.
For Ashan—with Noctis just beneath the surface—life became a braid of rituals and small expectations, bright enough to hide the darker undercurrents.
He drank tea with his father, learning that the festival honored the coming of the White Sun—a day when monsters and ghosts supposedly held less power, and the living could dance without fear. His sister spun tales of parades, dancers, and sweets promised house to house.
He roamed the markets with friends.
Magari, all quick jokes and crooked teeth, dared him to balance a water jar on his head. Sefa offered to braid his hair and debated which festival dish was worthy of obsession. The noise around them rolled easy and thick.
Yet Noctis did not relax.
Once, in a far corner of the square, a shadow flowed up a wall—wrong in shape, gone before anyone else looked. Another time, a child's chalk drawing shifted overnight, its monster sprouting extra eyes. People saw, shrugged, and went back to stringing lanterns.
"Did you see that shadow?" he asked his cousin.
"Things slip through sometimes," she said, brow furrowing only for a moment. "Happens every year. The festival scares them. And if they come, someone always saves us."
Her certainty rang hollow.
He nodded but kept watch.
As the White Sun drew near, the world itself began to stutter. Conversations looped. Faces flickered between delight and fatigue. More than once, words left his mouth and vanished before reaching any ear.
This dream was not only a shelter. It was a blindfold.
Something here numbed thought, softened fears, and smoothed over the cracks in reality. Only Noctis remained fully awake—and even that felt less certain each day.
On the evening before the festival, the village glowed. The air grew heavy with incense, spiced bread, and marigold smoke. Noctis lounged beneath a palm with his friends, listening to Magari's embellished stories of legendary monster hunters.
Shadows lengthened. Lanterns bloomed across roofs.
The sense of wrongness sharpened.
He slipped away from the cluster of laughter to the edge of the square, tasting metal at the back of his throat. A hum coiled behind his ribs—the call of power that lay under Ashan's skin like a coiled wire.
He opened his hand, let both lives overlay for a moment. Skills learned in the void burned now, restless and caged.
Memories of combat surged: blades, resonance, the endless calculus of survival.
He chose, at last, to answer them.
In the dark, he called to the resonance as he once had in forests and ruins.
Light flickered across his fingers, pale and gold. Steam curled from his skin.
The air rang with a quiet, cutting note.
The world held its breath.
Tomorrow would be the festival.
Tonight, Noctis allowed himself to remember fully who—and what—he had become.