He didn't land.
He arrived.
One moment, he was falling through fractured sky. The next, he stood barefoot in a chamber without walls—lightless yet not dark. The ground beneath him was smooth as glass, and overhead hung a void filled with murmurs.
They weren't words. They were remnants—unformed thoughts, stray feelings, memories peeled raw.
Before him stood a figure cloaked in shadow. No face. No eyes. Yet it spoke directly into his bones.
"You remember now."
The boy swallowed. His voice felt strange in his throat, full of something older than language. "You're… the voice I carried."
A nod—not with a head, but with existence itself.
"I was never meant to be born. I am what was cast out—what your world refused to accept. Rage without purpose. Grief without name. You heard me, and instead of silence… you made me a home."
His hands shook. "Then the others were right. The Act was to seal me."
"No," the voice replied. "The Act was to seal us. You are not just my bearer. You are my origin."
Memories unfolded like petals soaked in ash:
A village destroyed not by violence, but by fear. A child standing in its center, untouched, eyes glowing with untold fire. Friends placing their hands on his shoulders, not to stop him—but to promise they'd carry his burden together. And then... choosing to forget. Each of them. One by one.
"I didn't want to be a monster," he whispered.
"You were never a monster," the voice said gently. "You were grief, wearing skin too small. The Act didn't erase that. It only made it quiet."
A new shape appeared before him. A door—not real, but present. Beyond it, something pulsed. Truth. Completion. Maybe ruin.
"If you open it, there is no more forgetting. No more pretending you are only a boy."
He stepped forward.
"But if you don't," the voice warned, "the storm will rage without end. And it will find someone else to call its vessel."
He reached for the handle. His reflection in the glass shimmered—not just one boy now, but four. Four selves. One Act.
He turned it.
Everything he was—every memory, every shadow, every truth—spilled into the world beyond that door.
Next: the final convergence. The four remembered. The Act undone. And whatever walks in its place. Shall we press into Chapter 8? 🌌