Soft morning light filtered through the window, spilling gently across Vale's resting face. It crept over the edge of the bed, stretched across the sheets, and finally settled against his closed eyelids, warm and persistent. His body stirred faintly in response, still weighed down by sleep, caught somewhere between dreaming and waking.
'Is it morning already…?' He thought, dulled by fatigue.
His eyes began to open.
At first, his vision was nothing but blurred streaks of gold and white, the light fracturing as his focus struggled to return. He lifted a hand instinctively to shield his eyes, but the moment his gaze fixed on it, something felt wrong.
His hand was small. Far too small. The fingers were short and rounded, the skin smooth and unmarked, the proportions unfamiliar in a way that sent a jolt of unease through him. It didn't feel like his hand.
For a moment, his mind simply refused to process it.
'What…?'
Confusion surged in all at once. He tried to speak, to demand an explanation, to ground himself in something, but his throat tightened, his lungs seized, and instead of words, a cry tore free.
High-pitched, fragile and helpless.
The sound of an infant.
Panic hit instantly. 'No, no, that's not right. What is this?' His body moved, but without control. His limbs responded in erratic, uncoordinated motions, his voice locked into instinctive cries he couldn't suppress. He was aware, fully aware, but trapped inside a body that refused to obey him.
Then the realization came.
'Is this… a memory?'
He clung to the thought. It had to be. Nothing else made sense.
Still crying, he forced his eyes to shift, scanning what little of the room he could perceive. His perspective was low, tilted, he was lying down, unable to lift his head properly. Everything felt too large, too distant, as if the world itself had expanded beyond his reach.
Then he heard it.
Footsteps.
Faint at first, echoing from somewhere beyond the door. His cries faltered, replaced by a sudden, focused stillness. His head shifted slightly, straining toward the sound despite the limitations of his body. His heart began to race.
A voice followed.
Soft and gentle. Warm in a way that seemed to reach straight through him.
His eyes widened.
'That voice… is that… my mother?'
The thought struck him like a shock, something instinctive stirring deep within him. His heartbeat quickened, anticipation and disbelief tangling together in his chest.
Then the door swung open.
A woman stumbled halfway through, catching herself before she could fall. She straightened with a quick breath, brushing stray strands of hair from her face as she stepped inside.
Vale's crying stopped.
He stared at her.
Her hair burned a vivid orange, catching the light like flame. Her eyes were bright emerald, painted with warmth and motion, and her features, soft, almost luminous, carried a quiet, effortless beauty. She wore a simple summer dress that moved gently as she walked, the fabric shifting with each step.
She was beautiful.
But more than that, she felt… familiar.
"Oh, come on, Xav," she said, her voice laced with playful exasperation as she approached. "You made me rush all the way here, and now you stop crying?"
She smiled, and the room seemed to soften around it.
Vale's small hand lifted instinctively, reaching toward her.
'Xav?'
The name echoed through his mind.
'Was that… my name?'
Unease crept in his mind. He had always assumed, guessed, that his name was Vale. It was what others had called him, what he had accepted without question. But this… this felt different.
Before he could grasp it fully, she stepped closer, her expression bright with affection. "Do you want to come with mommy and daddy, little devil?" she asked, her grin widening playfully.
Then she paused.
Her gaze shifted toward the doorway, something in her expression tightening ever so slightly.
Vale followed her line of sight as best he could.
A figure stood there.
Tall and broad.
Long black hair framed his face, wild and heavy like a lion's mane. Dark armor covered his body, not worn so much as fitted, as though it belonged to him in a way that went beyond function. In his hand, he held half an apple, taking a slow bite as if nothing in the world required urgency.
Vale's breath caught.
He knew him.
'Leo Lionheart.'
Shade's original form.
The man's gaze lingered on the woman first, indifferent, almost detached, then shifted downward to Vale. Something subtle flickered in his eyes.
Vale reached toward him without thinking.
"Did the little one wake up already?" the man asked, his tone calm, almost disinterested.
The woman chuckled softly, glancing back at Vale as she moved closer.
'Is Shade… my father?' The thought surfaced unbidden, tightening something in his chest.
But it didn't settle.
Because the man spoke again, and this time, his tone changed.
"...Sis, we need to talk," he said quietly. "His condition… it's getting worse."
A immediate shift followed.
Vale felt it, even without understanding it.
A flicker of relief passed through him, but it vanished just as quickly as he registered the tension in their faces.
The woman's smile faltered. Concern crept in, subtle but undeniable. Vale strained against his own body, shifting weakly as he tried to see them more clearly, to understand what they weren't saying.
"...There has to be a way to stop it," she said, her voice tight now, the warmth edged with urgency. "We can't just wait. We have to keep searching."
The words lingered in the air.
And though Vale didn't understand it yet, a quiet certainty began to take shape beneath the confusion.
She hesitated, as if weighing something reckless, something she already knew she shouldn't say. Then, with a sudden, fragile conviction that bordered on desperation, she spoke anyway.
"We need to find him. He'll know the answer. He has to."
Leo scratched the back of his head, exhaling faintly, the gesture casual but not careless. "Come on, sis… you know he's been gone for years," he said. "Even his own kids don't know where he is."
Frustration flickered across her face. Her hands shook faintly, tension sharpening her expression before she forced it back down. Vale watched in silence, his infant body still and uncomprehending, but his true awareness cutting through the moment with unsettling clarity.
'Who are they talking about? Is it… my father?'
After a moment, she exhaled slowly, steadying herself. The tension in her shoulders eased, but didn't disappear. "There still has to be something," she murmured, more to herself than to him. Then she turned back to Vale, and her smile returned, soft, warm, but thinner than before, as if carefully reconstructed.
"Should we go on a trip?" she asked gently. "Me, you, Abby… and Keal?"
The name struck him immediately.
'Keal…'
'Is that… my father's name?'
He barely had time to process it before she stepped forward and lifted him effortlessly into her arms. "Come on, Xav," she said, her voice warm, wrapping around him like something protective. "Daddy needs all the support he can get right now, okay?"
The words were gentle, reassuring, but beneath them, Vale could feel the strain, fear, urgency, all carefully buried but impossible to hide completely. The world blurred as she held him close, her warmth enveloping him in something that felt both unfamiliar and deeply known, like a memory his body recognized even if his mind did not.
And then,
His eyes snapped open.
The room returned all at once, the bed beneath him, the quiet walls, the stillness of the present pressing in from all sides. Vale lay motionless, staring up at the ceiling, his gaze distant and unfocused. The light had shifted, it was no longer soft and dreamlike but steady, grounded. And yet his mind lagged behind, caught somewhere between what he had seen and what he knew.
For a long moment, he didn't move, as if even the smallest motion might break whatever fragile thread of thought he was trying to follow.
"...Was that a memory?" he murmured at last, his voice low enough to be swallowed by the silence that followed.
The question lingered, unanswered.
He didn't sit up. His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling as his thoughts turned inward, circling, testing, searching for something solid, but finding nothing that held. If it was a memory, then the implications were impossible to ignore. That woman… his chest tightened slightly.
'Was she my mother?'
And Leo, no, Shade, before everything had changed,
'Was he my uncle?'
The name echoed again, quiet but insistent.
Xav.
It didn't feel entirely foreign. But it didn't feel like his, either.
"...Is that my real name?" he asked softly.
He had called himself Vale for as long as he could remember, but that wasn't much to build on. His identity had always been assembled from fragments, assumptions, whatever pieces he could find and make fit. Now, for the first time, something had surfaced that didn't align with any of it.
And worse,
It didn't feel like a memory.
That unsettled him more than anything else.
If this were truly his past, there should have been recognition. Familiarity. Some sense of returning. Instead, it felt distant, observed rather than lived in, like watching someone else's life through his own eyes. The disconnect left a hollow weight in his chest, something he couldn't quite define.
"I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel," he admitted under his breath.
Was it real? Or was his mind trying to fill in gaps that had never truly been his?
He didn't know, and that uncertainty gnawed at him.
Slowly, his gaze drifted to the side, settling on the clock mounted above the door. It ticked forward with quiet indifference, marking time without regard for his confusion. His eyes sharpened slightly as the number registered.
"Ten…?"
The realization hit immediately after.
He was late.
For a moment, urgency clashed with the lingering weight of the vision, pulling him in opposing directions. But reality asserted itself quickly, he couldn't remain here, trapped in speculation.
With a quiet exhale, Vale pushed himself upright. The motion felt heavier than it should have, fatigue clinging to him from the previous day. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and leaned forward, elbows resting loosely on his thighs.
And then he stopped again.
The memory, if it was one, refused to release him.
His armor still covered him, just as it had when he collapsed into sleep. The familiar weight grounded him, even as his thoughts drifted elsewhere. Beneath it, his clothes were wrinkled but intact, unchanged, unnoticed. That, at least, made sense.
Everything else didn't.
His gaze dropped to the floor, unfocused, his mind returning to the fragments, the woman's voice, Leo's presence, the tension threaded through their exchange. The mention of a condition. The urgency. The name.
'Keal.'
It lingered.
His brow furrowed as he leaned forward slightly, hands clasping together.
"What happened to my father…?" he murmured.