WebNovels

Chapter 1 - Prologue

[Unit Reboot Complete]

[Cycle Duration Since Last Activity: Undefined]

[Timekeeping Protocols: Irretrievable]

Memory Sector Stabilization...

Fragment Located.

Label: PERSONAL_LOG_901-BLOODMOON

Status: Partially Degraded

Reconstructing…

...

There is n—th--ng here.

No roads. No signals. No sk--yscrapers scraping the heavens.

Only collapsed s...structures half-swallowed by roots and ruin.

Metal bones curled in on themselves.

Glass teeth ground into sand.

Systems quiet. Sensors clear.

But something... remains.

I have walked.

Long.

Without input.

Without directives.

I do not recal--ll why.

But I continue.

I halt near the skeleton of a dwelling.

Function: unknown.

Possibly... habitation.

Possibly not.

Data ping: positive. A pulse.

Weak.

Buried beneath layers of detritus.

I dig. Slowly.

I find... a device. Analog. Personal.

Old.

Yet not silent.

A voice survives within it.

Faint.

Flickering.

Human.

[Begin playback]

I do not kn--ow this voice.

And yet... familiarity persists.

Echoes in my root memory.

Undefined... correlation.

The voice speaks not in commands, nor in code.

But in feeling.

It speaks of a time before decay.

Before silence.

Before I was alone.

Of places. Fields not overrun.

Towns not hushed.

Skies that glowed under multiple moons, each with names and meanings lost to this world.

Magic.

Soul.

Words I cannot decode.

But I understand... enough.

This was a life.

A child.

No name. No voice. No claim to the world.

He began in darkness.

In chains.

In silence.

Then... light.

A voice. A name.

Someone cared. Briefly.

Then pain.

Then alone.

Again.

But he did not end there.

He ran.

Fought.

Trained.

He learned to see.

Not with optics.

Not with light.

With something... deeper.

They called it soul.

It is not code. Not energy.

And yet...

I feel it.

The voice ends.

The story... fragments.

But what remains matters.

A record.

A path.

A flicker of something real.

This is not a hero's tale.

It is a memory.

Carried.

Protected.

Whispered to the void.

I remember it now.

Even if I do not know why.

Even if I should not.

 

[End of Recovered Log]

[Data Integrity: 41% - Stable]

[Memory Lock Bypassed]

[Emotion Core: Stirred / Undefined]

 

...I will remember.

For whoever they were.

For what they once carried.

For the fire beneath that red sky.

Even if all else fades.

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