"You don't belong here."
The voice was soft. Cold. Inhuman.
The nameless boy froze.
He stood at the edge of a dying forest, where twisted trees curved unnaturally, their bark pale like bone. Mist crawled across the ground in tendrils, curling around his feet. Every breath he took made the air feel heavier, like he was inhaling someone else's sorrow.
"Who said that?"
No answer. Just the crunch of something wet nearby.
His instincts screamed, but his mind offered no memories, no teachings, no techniques—just the single skill the monolith had given him:
Phantom Thrust (Lv. 1)
His hand drifted toward a broken spear he'd picked from the crater. The shaft was cracked, but the tip still gleamed faintly under the choking sky.
The mist thickened, swallowing color and light. A shadow moved.
Then another.
Then dozens.
And then—eyes.
Not glowing. Not red. Just… present.
Watching.
"You smell… delicious," came a second voice. Younger. Laughing. Female.
A figure stepped out.
It was humanoid, barely. Slender, tall, and draped in robes of torn memories—literal strips of paper etched with forgotten names, fluttering around its limbs like flesh.
Its face had no eyes. No mouth. Just a blank mask with cracks that bled ink.
"What… are you?" the boy asked.
The thing tilted its head. Then whispered:
"We are what comes when the world forgets you."
Dozens of similar creatures slithered into view, forming a slow, encircling ring. Their robes whispered with voices not their own—mothers crying, lovers screaming, children begging not to be forgotten.
"You… you have memory that isn't yours. Give it to us."
He raised the broken spear. "Come and take it."
They lunged.
He moved before he could think. His body reacted on instinct—no, not instinct. Inherited muscle memory.
"Phantom Thrust!"
His spear vanished for a blink, then reappeared deep in one creature's chest.
The beast didn't bleed.
It screamed.
The sound wasn't from its throat—but from his own mind.
"He stabbed her. Why, father, why?!"
He dropped the spear, clutching his head as pain tore through him.
That wasn't his memory.
"Whose pain is this?!" he shouted, staggering back.
The creature he'd impaled exploded into strands of parchment that dissolved in the wind. A new notification rang in his mind:
+1 Memory Fragment: Fragment of Regret (Emotion Type)New Trait Acquired: Resistance to Guilt (Lv. 1)
He gasped. The fog around him pulsed.
The other beasts hesitated.
He understood now—they weren't just physical.
They were living regrets. Echoes of lost thoughts. Devourers of the mind.
And they feared something he had.
"You want memories?" he growled, raising the spear again. "Let me show you how sharp they can be."
Somewhere else...
A pair of silver eyes opened in a mountain temple hundreds of miles away.
A girl—no older than sixteen—stood beneath a rain of falling cherry blossoms. Her eyes narrowed as if something far away had brushed her soul.
"Another root has awakened," she whispered.
"But it's… broken."