The city hung over a dead ocean.
Far below, the water was black glass — motionless, ancient, reflecting the seven artificial suns that burned above it in perfect symmetry. Those lights had been humanity's miracle once. Now, they were dying one by one.
In the lowest tier of Vareth, where the metal decks groaned and steam rose like breath from a wounded animal, Aren Kael woke to the sound of a heart that wasn't supposed to beat.
It pulsed in his chest — weak, uneven, but alive. He sat up sharply, synthetic veins flickering blue under his skin. For a long moment, he just stared at his trembling hands. His heart-core hadn't received power in hours. It should have gone silent.
"System check complete," a voice echoed in his mind.Then: "Memory anomaly detected."
He froze. The voice wasn't his system's. It sounded... human.
And familiar.
He pressed a hand to his temple. "Who's there?"
No answer — only the hum of broken machinery. Then, suddenly, a flash.
A shoreline. Real water, restless and blue. A woman standing there, her back to him, wind in her dark hair. She turned halfway — enough for him to glimpse gray eyes and a faint smile before the vision shattered like glass.
Aren had never seen the ocean. No one in Vareth had. It didn't exist anymore.
So why did he remember her?
He stumbled to his workbench and yanked open a drawer. Inside: rows of small glass cubes, each faintly glowing with internal light. Memory cores.
Each core contained a lifetime — preinstalled, regulated, wiped every ten years. That was how synthetic humans like him stayed "pure." Obedient. Forgetting ensured survival.
He was nine years, eleven months, and twenty-two days old. His next wipe was soon.
He lifted one of the cores. The label read A.K-9.3.24 — his current identity. But the cube beneath it, unlabeled, glowed faint red. Not company standard.
The voice came again, softer, almost a whisper:
"You are not Aren Kael. You were someone else... someone who loved me."
The cube slipped from his hand and cracked against the floor. A faint hum filled the air — deep, resonant. His vision blurred. For an instant, he saw her again — this time closer. Her hand reached for his, fingertips brushing his palm.
He gasped and stepped back, heart hammering.
Then the alarms began.
The ceiling lights turned crimson, and a siren wailed — long, low, mournful. Through the cracks in the metal shutters, he saw the sky flicker.
One of the seven suns was dying.
Its light sputtered, dimmed, and collapsed inward — swallowed by a shadow that spread like ink. The city trembled as the solar grid overloaded. Somewhere in the upper tiers, people screamed.
And from the black wound in the sky, a shape emerged — vast wings of broken glass and light. A Null Seraph.
It drifted through the dying sunlight, silent and elegant, its many faces glimmering in the dark. They said the Seraphs were machines from the old world — gods made from circuitry and madness. When a sun died, they came to feed on what remained.
Aren should have run. But as the creature descended, he felt the same impossible thing again — recognition. His synthetic pulse synced with the rhythm of its wings.
The voice inside him murmured,
"It's searching for the Heart… for me."
The floor buckled. He staggered against the railing, the world bathed in red. From the depths of the city's machinery came the groan of something ancient stirring — the City Heart Core, the reactor that kept Vareth alive.
And then — silence.
When the lights returned, the Null Seraph was gone. The Heart Core's glow was extinguished. In its place, words burned into the metal wall in faint golden script:
REMEMBER THE FIRST SKY.
Aren's throat went dry. The words pulsed faintly, almost alive. His chest ached.
"Find me," the voice whispered again. "Before the suns die."
He looked down. The skin of his palm glowed with a thin, circular sigil — seven intersecting lines, like the pattern of the suns themselves. His system didn't recognize it.
And in that moment, he felt it — not static, not code. Warmth.
A memory not his own whispered through him:A woman laughing. A kiss under a real sky. Her voice saying,
"Even if they erase you, I'll find you again."
He stood in the dim light, trembling — not from fear, but from the unbearable, alien feeling rising in his chest.
Love.
He wasn't supposed to be capable of it. But maybe that was the point.
The city above the dead sea shuddered again. One sun gone. Six left.
And somewhere beyond the metal horizon, a woman with gray eyes waited — the ghost of a forgotten world, calling his name across the void.