The Ledger Sea shook.
Not violently—
but with the unmistakable tremor of something waking.
Aiden staggered as the woven-light floor beneath him rippled like a beating organ.
Across the dim expanse, the Mnemo-Beasts—once circling in cautious patterns—
lifted their heads all at once.
Their mirror-ribs pulsed.
Their jaws opened in silent snarls.
Their bodies began to fracture into sharper, hungrier shapes.
The first Kyriel didn't move.
He simply watched them with the stillness of someone who had lived through centuries of storms.
"They scent your uncertainty," he said.
Aiden swallowed hard.
"My… uncertainty?"
"That is their food."
The beasts lunged.
Not one—
dozens.
Shards of broken memory spun around them like glass in a storm. Aiden dodged left, then right, but the beasts were too many— too fast— too precise. Each movement seemed designed to target the pieces of him that shook the most.
A laugh he couldn't place.
A lantern he didn't remember blowing out.
A name missing its end.
Every uncertainty pulled the beasts closer.
One leaped.
Aiden raised his arm out of instinct—
but the beast wasn't aiming for his body.
It snapped at something in the air beside him—
a small, glowing fragment he hadn't even realized was escaping from him.
His memory.
"NO—!"
His palm burned.
Light exploded along his wrist—
not the Key's glow—
something older.
A shape unfurled from his arm, forming from threads of silver-white memory.
Fingers.
A palm.
A ghostly limb overlaying his own—
The Memory Hand.
Its form was half-translucent, shimmering with fractured reflections, but solid where it mattered.
A Mnemo-Beast lunged again.
The Hand moved before Aiden could think, seizing the beast's jaw and tearing the stolen memory out of its throat.
The fragment shot back into Aiden's chest with a sharp breath.
He gasped, feeling it settle.
Feeling himself become more… whole.
The first Kyriel's eyes sharpened.
"Your blood remembers," he said.
"Even when your mind does not."
Another beast charged.
Aiden lifted the Memory Hand—
and it reacted, bending reality around its motion.
Not as magic.
Not as power.
As memory correcting itself.
The beast's body cracked like glass—
shattering into pieces of stolen recollections that scattered across the Ledger floor.
But three more replaced it.
Aiden stumbled.
The Hand flickered.
The first Kyriel stepped closer.
"This is the test," he said.
"Not of strength—
but of anchor."
Aiden gritted his teeth.
"What does that even mean?!"
"It means," the first Kyriel said calmly, "that memory decides if you rise."
Another beast lunged—
and the Ledger Sea itself rippled in response, like a heartbeat growing faster.
Aiden lifted the Memory Hand again—
but this time its glow sputtered.
He felt something tear inside him—
not physically,
but like a page being ripped from a book he hadn't finished reading.
A memory fragment drifted upward—
A woman's voice, soft.
A humming lullaby.
Warmth.
He reached for it—
"STOP."
The first Kyriel's command slammed through him.
"That memory is not yours to save."
Aiden froze, breath trembling.
"…Then whose is it?"
The first Kyriel's eyes darkened.
"Another Kyriel's.
And the Ledger keeps debts."
The Mnemo-Beasts roared—
not with voices, but with the grinding of shattered recollections—
and surged in.
Aiden braced himself.
"Why bring me here?!"
"If the Ledger only takes—why choose me at all?!"
The first Kyriel finally raised a hand of his own—
and the sea folded inward.
Reality bent.
The beasts froze mid-lunge, suspended in cracks of light.
And the first Kyriel spoke—
"Because only those who remember without knowing—
can rewrite."
Aiden felt something shift in the deep—
a pressure like a tide leaning into him.
The creatures strained against the frozen fold.
The Key at Aiden's hip pulsed like a frantic heartbeat.
The Memory Hand trembled, half-fading.
And above them—
the surface of the fold warped.
Sound tried to break through:
"Ai—…den…!"
Luffy's voice.
Barely a flicker.
Then—silence.
Cut off completely.
Aiden's chest twisted.
They were gone—
or too far—
or drowned in the folds.
The first Kyriel nodded at the emptiness above.
"Now you see.
Voices fade.
Inheritance does not."
He stepped back.
"Rise, Kyriel."
The beasts began to move again.
The Ledger Sea throbbed like a countdown.
The Memory Hand steadied itself at Aiden's side.
The test had begun in truth.
And Aiden—
cut off from every voice he cared about—
lifted the hand that wasn't entirely his.
Not yet.
But it remembered him.
And it was enough.
🌹 Chapter 20 Pacing & Structure Analysis (Webnovel Viral Beat Pattern)
Pacing Beat Function
1. Awakening of the Memory Hand (First Active Ability) → A major protagonist growth beat — Aiden gains the first form of his bloodline ability.
2. First Kyriel's Formal Trial → The lineage arc officially activates; a fan-favorite "inheritance + pressure" sequence.
3. Mnemo-Beast Outbreak (Group Battle) → Action tension + worldbuilding lore revealed in one explosive moment, maximizing reader retention.
4. Complete Disconnection From the Straw Hats → Elevates urgency; the protagonist is cut off from his companions and fully enters the "Deep Descent Arc."
💬
If you were Aiden, would you sacrifice a memory to survive—
or fight to protect every fragment?
👉 Tell me in the comments — I'm curious.
⚔️ Suspense Focus:
The Ledger isn't judging Aiden's strength—
it's weighing his identity.
And the Mnemo-Beasts don't simply attack…
they devour whatever he hasn't fully claimed.
Hook Sentence:
The hand wasn't his—
but it remembered him better than he remembered himself.