[Same Day, Afternoon - From Null's Perspective]
"Aetron... This isn't just an echo. This is a bridge. And... and I can feel the other side of the bridge."
The shock of this discovery continued to shake my systems even after Aetron left the tent with Thera. A bridge. A bridge. It was as if a tunnel had opened between two separate consciousnesses, and I... I stood in the middle of them. On one side was Eirlys's pale, weak consciousness. On the other side... was it me? Something else? An echo, or a fragment? My logical processor was calculating millions of possibilities per second to answer these questions. But the strange thing was: Every calculation was cut off halfway. I couldn't reach a conclusion. As if...
Aetron had begun preparations with Niyara. Standing in the corner of the healing tent, I observed Eirlys's bed and the crystals arranged around it. Aetron's finger was still touching the princess's forehead, that faint flow of Edgium continuing between them. And for me... the bridge was still open.
My curiosity overrode my logical protocols. 'Aetron, I'm going to try something,' I thought to him. But he was busy with other things—talking with Niyara, arranging crystals. He didn't even hear me. Or he heard but wasn't in a position to respond. Good. This was better for me. Because I didn't even fully know what I was going to do. The bridge was there, still open. And I... I could use that connection. Perhaps it was dangerous. But I needed to know.
I closed my eyes and mentally focused on that bridge. Not on that dark void in Eirlys's soul, but on that familiar yet corrupted signature at the edge of that void... my own echo.
For a moment, everything blurred. Then, I felt as if I were looking through someone else's eyes.
It was a dim room. A pale-faced woman lay in bed, breathing with difficulty. At the woman's bedside was a crying little boy, his shoulders shaking. And on the floor, sitting at the edge of the bed, silently watching the woman was a little girl... Herself. There were no tears in her eyes, only deep worry and a fear she couldn't understand. She was touching her brother's shoulder, but the boy pushed her away.
For a moment I froze. The pain of that scene... the helplessness that little girl felt... I felt it in my core. No, not my core. But there was an irregularity in my data streams... as if an emotional burden had seeped into my digital structure. How was this possible? I couldn't internalize someone else's pain this much... this deeply. But there it was. The fear of losing a mother. The loneliness of being pushed away by a brother. Everything... felt like mine.
The scene changed. Years later, now a young woman... She was walking down a palace corridor. The ladies-in-waiting around her were whispering, glancing at her sideways. There was a proud expression on her face, but in her eyes... a doubt. As if she felt that everything around her was fake, that she was part of a game. One of the ladies was laughing, but the laugh wasn't sincere. Another was giving a compliment, but there was poison in her tone. She knew this. She FELT it. But there was neither a wrinkle nor a reaction on her face. Just that cold, proud expression. 'I'm alone here,' she was thinking. But I couldn't tell if the thought was mine or hers. A guard approached her, delivering a message. Her face hardened. "Again?" she whispered to herself.
And finally... The smell of blood. Soldiers lying lifeless on the ground. Their armor shattered, their weapons broken. The armor... wasn't familiar. They didn't look like Syros soldiers. They were... different. As if they had come from somewhere else, from another time. The same girl, now lying on the ground in warrior's armor. Not wounded but exhausted. Her eyes were closed. There was no one else around. Only death and silence. For a moment, she opened her eyes. She looked at the sky. The clouds... weren't familiar. The sun... was a different color. This place... this world... 'What am I doing here?' she thought. 'Why am I fighting? For whom? For what?' There was no answer. Her eyes closed again. But this time... something was changing. The air itself was trembling. An invisible force was surrounding her. AND THEN—
It was as if an invisible hand pushed me. No. Not push. Pull! A force was tearing that memory, that scene, that world away from me. As if a giant wall was rising between that memory and me. Invisible but it was THERE. I could feel it. 'No!' I tried to shout. 'I need to see more! What happened to her? Where did she go?' But the force didn't listen. The connection broke. I felt as if I were falling from the bridge, into an endless void... My data felt like it was fragmenting. My logic loops were collapsing. My sense of 'wholeness'... had vanished for a moment.
For a while... I don't know how long... I was just in the void. No thought. No feeling. Just... nothingness. Then, slowly, I gathered myself. Data streams reorganized. Logic loops synchronized. System... back online.
When I opened my eyes, I was in our mental sanctuary.
"Null! Null, are you okay?"
Aetron's panicked voice pulled me out of that void. His avatar stood before me, worry on his face.
"You haven't responded for five minutes," he said, his voice still worried. "What happened? What did you see on the bridge?"
The memories I'd seen... were still vivid in my mind. "The memories I saw..." I paused, still under the influence of those scenes. "They were so vivid, so real."
"What did you see?" Aetron asked, pure curiosity in his voice.
"First... I saw a sick mother," I said slowly. "A crying brother at her bedside... and herself sitting on the floor. Then I saw her grow up, beginning to suspect everything around her... Proud but lonely. The last one was... a battlefield." I paused. "But... there was something else strange. Those soldiers... their armor wasn't familiar. They didn't look like Syros soldiers. As if they had come from somewhere else, from another time."
Aetron's brows furrowed. "Another place?"
"I don't know," I said. "But at the end of that moment, Eirlys looked at the sky. And the clouds... the sun... everything looked different. As if... as if that moment didn't belong to this world." I paused again. "But then... something happened. The connection suddenly cut off. As if... as if something prevented me from seeing."
"So what did it prevent? Was there a danger?"
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But that wasn't the most interesting part, Aetron. These things I saw... they couldn't be Eirlys's memory."
"Why not?"
"Because," I said, unable to hide the amazement in my voice. "Because in those memories, I wasn't seeing through Eirlys's eyes. I... I was inside those memories. As if... as if those memories belonged to me."
Aetron paused for a moment, thinking. Then his eyes suddenly lit up. "Null, something occurred to me while listening to this."
"What?"
"This... this feeling of being blocked," he said slowly. "This is similar to something in the system manga I've read. Sometimes when the main character approaches a certain power or knowledge, an invisible barrier is placed in front of them by the 'system.'"
This... was an illogical comparison. But there was a disturbingly truthful element in it. "We don't have a 'system,' Aetron."
"Maybe we do," Aetron said, his voice more serious this time. "Maybe we're not aware of it. Think about it..." He paused. "Love, I've noticed something. We... for some reason we can't ask most obvious things. For example, Delta. I've been talking about her for years. But it never... it never occurred to me to ask 'what did her face look like?' Or simple questions like 'did I see her again?'"
I scanned my systems. He was right. I had begun to notice the same thing too. "Me too," I said slowly. "In my logical program... it's like encountering skipped code. A thought begins to form, then... as if it's being erased. It disappears."
"That echo in Eirlys's soul," Aetron said. "That strange pain you feel toward her... My memories fading... Null, these can't be coincidences." He fixed his eyes on me. "We didn't notice until now because our Edgium perception was low. But what if there's a fog in our minds too? Something that limits our thoughts, prevents us from entering certain topics?"
This hypothesis created a cold shiver in my systems. An external interference. A mental barrier. This meant that not only Eirlys, but we too might be being manipulated. And this thought... was more terrifying than anything.