Chapter 13: The Echo of the Past
Aiden's state of self-inflicted Temporal Static was terrifying. He was rigid, his mind a deliberate blank, responding only to the immediate tactical necessities and the cold script of the Oracle. Rin, burdened by the Arbiter's limp weight, dragged them both down the newly formed East path, sweat beading on his brow from exertion and sheer, protective rage.
"Arbiter, snap out of it!" Rin hissed, his voice raw. "You can't navigate five paths while your mind is on pause! The Harpies are reforming!"
"East-East-South," Aiden's voice came out as a hollow, toneless projection, devoid of inflection or consciousness. "Next command: East. Velocity: 10 meters per second. Maintain formation integrity."
He wasn't talking to Rin; he was reciting his strategy to himself, ensuring the plan survived the sacrifice of his own conscious thought.
The Labyrinth, sensing their recovery, retaliated violently. The very air around them twisted, manifesting not six, but a swarm of a dozen Harpies, their shrieks of memory-theft tearing at the spiritual veil. They swirled around Rin, targeting the man who had just used an existential rage to repel them.
"They want your anger, Rin!" Wei shouted, unleashing a rapid volley of Qi blasts that vaporized three of the weaker phantoms. "That hatred is fueling them! Drop the hostility!"
"I can't!" Rin yelled back, parrying a direct spiritual strike with the sheer will of his Rending Gale. "If I drop the hostility, I remember why I loved him! If I remember the love, I lose the fight!"
He was trapped—his vengeance was his shield, but it was also the bait.
Suddenly, Aiden's frozen form shuddered. The Chronos shield around his head flickered, and a single, searing flash of memory breached his self-imposed mental static. It wasn't the memory he had sacrificed; it was an older, more intimate one.
A training field. Dusk. Rin's blade is too slow, too wide. Aiden steps in, guiding Rin's hands, their bodies pressed together.
"Precision, Blade," Aiden whispers in his ear. "Not force. You must feint with a high cut to force the enemy to raise his guard, then drop your center and execute the Whirlwind Low-Slice on the exposed lower mana flow."
The tactical memory was instantly transferred to Rin through the absolute bond of the fate tether. Rin didn't consciously recall the moment, but his body remembered the move.
The Harpies, sensing the momentary crack in Rin's spiritual defense, lunged as one, focusing on his exposed left flank.
Rin reacted not with vengeance, but with instinct. He executed the exact sequence from the memory: a high, sweeping feint with the Rending Gale, forcing the Harpies to rise to meet the threat, followed by a sudden, devastating Whirlwind Low-Slice that atomized the Harpies' ethereal forms beneath their spiritual center.
The Harpies vanished, leaving behind only the cold silence of the Labyrinth.
Rin's heart hammered against his ribs. He had just executed a maneuver taught to him by the man he hated, one that was only necessary because Aiden was a master strategist.
He looked down at Aiden, whose rigid form was beginning to collapse. The Temporal Static was wearing off, replaced by the profound agony of forcing his own brain to stop.
"Aiden, what was that?" Rin demanded, shaking the strategist's shoulder. "Did you break the Static? Did you send me a plan?"
Aiden's eyes slowly cleared, the blue returning, but his face was slick with sweat. He looked utterly bewildered, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion.
"I… I don't know," Aiden whispered, his voice thin and raw. "I… felt a surge of kinetic familiarity. The data stream was corrupted. What happened? Did you follow the sequence?"
Aiden's strategic mind instantly scanned the data. He truly didn't remember sending the tactical thought; the sacrifice of Rin's final moment had created a psychic blind spot. The only part of the past that could reach Rin now was the tactical bond, the part that defied his intentional emotional severance.
Rin stared at the honest confusion in Aiden's eyes. He lost the memory of sending the instruction, but my body still executed his will. The realization was a new kind of terror. They weren't just tethered by a Goddess; they were one unit of fighting instinct and strategy, a perfect weapon forged in a past that one desperately remembered and the other desperately tried to forget.
"We followed the sequence, Arbiter," Rin said, his voice flat. He helped Aiden to his feet, pulling the wounded strategist against his side. "The next path is South in thirty seconds. Get ready to use your Oracle. I won't risk the truth fading away."
Aiden leaned heavily on Rin, accepting the support but refusing to meet his eye. The warmth of Rin's body, the strength of his arm, was the ultimate reminder of the love he had sacrificed and the hatred he now had to endure.