The world did not stop when Joe fell. It turned slower.
Falling had become a routine by now. Each time he expected to land harder — to feel bone snap or breath leave him entirely. But this fall was different.
There was light.
Not harsh or blinding, but pale, as if the stars themselves had decided to follow him down. The air was filled with particles that shimmered like ash and snow combined, and they clung to his coat, his skin, his lashes.
He landed with a soft thud on ground that shifted like sand but held like stone. Around him stretched a vast canyon of broken stairs, floating doors, and fragmented memory. It was a realm stitched together from a hundred lives, all unraveling in slow motion. It smelled faintly of old smoke, lavender, and wet paper.
"Where... is this?" Joe whispered.
"This is you," the Warden said, appearing beside him. "The fractured echoes. The lost thoughts. The stolen truths."
Joe looked around. Some of the doors were open, revealing blurred images behind them: a child crying at a kitchen table; a teenager alone at a hospital bedside; a girl with Joe's eyes, screaming his name across a burning field.
He took a step forward. The memory flinched.
"I have to walk through these, don't I?"
"You must see what you've hidden. Accept what you've buried. Until you do, your power will remain hollow."
Joe's fists clenched. He didn't want to remember. There were things in the past that were better left in darkness. But he had come too far to run now.
He stepped toward the first door.
It opened without sound.
He was six. The kitchen smelled of burned rice. His mother sat on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees, tears smudging her eyeliner. His father wasn't there — not yet. Not until the shouting started.
Young Joe reached for her. She flinched.
The memory broke.
Joe stumbled back, breath ragged. The pain wasn't physical. It was worse — like grief that never healed. Like guilt soaked into the foundation of his bones.
"Why show me this?" he asked.
The Warden didn't answer. It didn't need to.
Door after door, Joe moved forward. Through glimpses of abandonment. Through lies told in fear. Through guilt and rage and dreams that had rotted before they were born.
One door showed him watching his sister disappear into the fire. He had run.
Another showed her looking back — and smiling. Forgiving him. Her voice echoed softly, words from a time before the flames: "It's okay to be scared. Just don't stay that way."
He fell to his knees.
"It wasn't my fault," he whispered. "It wasn't... but I still carry it."
The seal on his hand pulsed.
The fourth eye opened.
Light blazed through the canyon. The floating stairs stopped shifting. The doors realigned. From far away, something howled — not in rage, but in hunger. A primal, soul-deep hunger.
The Warden looked up.
"You've awakened something."
"What now?"
"Now you fight."
The creature that came for him was made of memory — long limbs stitched from forgotten names, eyes formed of broken dreams. It moved without sound, but every step echoed with the weight of pain Joe had never let go of.
He dodged left, then rolled. Its claws slashed the stone and sent fragments spiraling. Each swipe cut deeper than it should have — not into flesh, but into feeling. Every graze stirred some hidden wound.
Joe rose and focused.
The fourth eye on his seal opened wide.
He felt it: clarity. Not strength. Not speed. Understanding.
He saw the creature's movement before it made it. The arc of its strike. The hesitation in its form. He didn't react — he anticipated.
He struck.
His fist connected. The creature howled.
The battlefield shifted again. Now they stood on a bridge of light surrounded by shadow. Below them: nothing. Above: everything he had yet to become.
The Warden spoke from the edge: "This beast is formed by the part of you that wishes to forget. To kill it is to remember. Entirely."
Joe gritted his teeth. He didn't want to know all of it. He didn't want to drown in grief.
But if he didn't... he'd never climb out.
The creature lunged. Joe met it head-on.
Each blow he landed unlocked another buried thought. He remembered his sister's laugh. Her fear. Her pride in him. He remembered holding her hand when the world ended. Remembered letting go. Remembered the silence after.
Tears ran down his cheeks. He didn't wipe them away.
He screamed — not in fear, but fury — and drove his fist through the creature's core.
It shattered.
Memory poured from the remains like starlight.
And then silence.
Joe stood in the center of the bridge, shaking. The Warden approached.
"You have faced what many die avoiding."
Joe looked down at his hand.
Five eyes were open.
"I still feel broken," he said.
"Good. That means you're honest."
Joe laughed once — raw and brief.
"So what's next?"
The Warden turned.
"The soul is made of chapters. You've finished one. Another begins."
Joe followed, the bridge forming beneath his feet.
As he walked, the mist began to part. In the distance, he could make out something new — a city suspended in the sky, golden towers wrapped in chains. Lights blinked like stars and shadows coiled around its base.
He didn't know what waited there.
But he would not walk into it blind.
He would carry the truth.
He would carry the pain.
And he would make both his weapon.
Behind him, the bridge dissolved into mist, erasing his path.
Before him, the city loomed like a god's forgotten crown.
And beneath his skin, the seal pulsed once more — steady, measured, patient.
A new door had opened.
End of Chapter 4.