The Monk's rice had done more than fill my stomach. It had performed a biological recalibration.
I woke in the shrine feeling... ordered. Not healed. Not whole. But the fractured pieces of my identity had been swept into neat piles. I was still broken, but for the first time, I was organized about it.
Sunlight filtered through the holes in the shrine's roof. Dust motes danced in the beams, indifferent to the fact that I was a dead boy inhabited by a ghost. It was the kind of peaceful morning that invited you to forget you were being hunted.
Almost.
I sat up slowly, testing borrowed limbs. The stump of my left arm throbbed with phantom sensations—fingers that didn't exist trying to flex, reaching for a weapon they would never hold again. I ignored them. Adaptation is the only currency that matters in the Prison Game.
The wooden bowl sat nearby, carrying a faint golden glow. I picked it up, tracing the symbol on its base with my thumb. It was warm. Not from the sun, but from an internal, pulsing heat.
On an impulse I couldn't explain, I reached out and drew the symbol in the dust on the stone floor. My conscious mind didn't know the strokes, but my hand moved with a precision that felt like muscle memory from a previous eon.
The moment the final line met the start—it breathed.
A pulse of golden light rippled through the dust. It wasn't a spark; it was a heartbeat. I scrambled backward, erasing the mark with my palm, heart hammering against my ribs.
The shrine remained silent. The ghosts didn't stir. But the truth settled in my gut like lead: the world responded to me. Not because of Anko's body, but because of what was inside it.
"My name is Kai Sterling," I whispered to the empty altar. "I'm eighteen. I'm human."
My voice cracked. I didn't believe a word of it.
The Journal of Crimes
I remembered the journal.
It was a leather-bound relic from the Academy, something I'd hidden under floorboards to escape the prying eyes of the monitors. It should have been lost when reality shattered during the Grace Event. Yet, there it was—tucked into my salvaged supplies. Yellowed, worn, and impossibly intact.
I opened it with trembling fingers.
The first page held a poem. My handwriting, but a voice that wasn't mine:
"In the beginning was the flame,And the flame knew only hunger.It consumed the dark, it consumed the light,Until only ash remained.And the ash whispered: 'What have I done?'"
The words resonated in my marrow like a tuning fork struck against bone. This wasn't the poetry of a teenager; it was a translation of something ancient.
I turned the pages. Sketches of impossible geometry filled the margins. A sword that curved through three spatial planes simultaneously. Armor made of interlocking plates that defied human anatomy. Gauntlets with fingers too long for any man.
I knew these weapons. I knew the weight of that sword. I knew the sound of that armor in a sprint.
Then, I found the list.
Things I've Forgotten:
1.Her name.
2.Why I'm afraid of mirrors.
3.What I did to deserve this.
4.How to cry.
5.Why the stars feel familiar.
6.Who taught me to fight.
7.What I promised.
8.Who I was before the first death.
The eighth entry was in fresh ink. My handwriting, but I had no memory of writing it. My subconscious was documenting my erasure before my mind could intervene.
On page 20, I found the silver flower.
It was botanically impossible. Weightless. Metallic. Each petal was engraved with microscopic script that translated into a single command: Remember.
Beneath it, a note in a childlike hand: "Big brother—you promised you'd remember. I know you forget. I know it hurts. But please, please try. I'm waiting. —G."
G. Grace? The cold AI in my head? Or someone real?
A memory tried to surface—a girl with hair like shadow and eyes too large for her face. She was pressing this same flower into my palm. "Take this. So when you forget, you'll have proof that you loved me."
The memory shattered before I could grasp it, leaving me gasping for air. Who was she? And what had I done to make her wait in the dark?
The Gilded Cage
The journal triggered another fragment. Not a full memory, but a visceral impression.
...
I was eighteen, or so I thought. I sat with my legs dangling over the edge of the twenty-first floor. The stars above were artificial, a dome programmed to mimic Earth, but the light was always slightly off.
"Kai Sterling. I should have known I'd find you here."
De Vellandorian. The Academy's star student. Silver hair catching the artificial starlight, dressed in civilian clothes that made her look human for once. She settled beside me.
"Can't sleep?" she asked.
"Never can," I admitted. Sleep felt like surrendering to a predator.
"You're different from the others," she said, her voice soft. "They're here to succeed. To claim corporate contracts. You're here like you're serving a sentence."
"Aren't we all? This place is a gilded cage. Monitoring every breath. Mapping every thought."
"For our safety," she recited, but her eyes held a flicker of something else. Fear. "What if I told you that the Academy isn't about education? It's about containment. That some of us are here because we're too dangerous to be anywhere else."
"Then we're both prisoners," I replied.
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "The difference is, I know why I'm here. You're still figuring it out."
She stood and offered her hand. "Come on. I'll teach you that sword technique again. The one you keep failing at."
"I fail because it's impossible."
"You fail because you're trying to use muscle memory that doesn't belong to this body. Stop trying to fight like who you were. Learn to fight like who you are now."
...
I opened my eyes back in the shrine. De Vellandorian knew. She knew I was an anomaly before I did. The realization was a blade in the dark: What if her betrayal was an act of mercy? What if the Loop was a cage I had asked for?
The God in the Mirror
I needed air. The shrine had become a tomb of questions.
I stumbled outside and found a pool of meltwater near the entrance. It was mirror-smooth, reflecting the grey sky. Against every survival instinct I possessed, I looked.
Anko's face stared back. Sharp, hungry, sixteen years old.
But then, the water rippled.
The reflection shifted. The face beneath the surface grew older. Inhuman. Beautiful in a way that was physically painful to perceive.
The eyes in the water weren't human irises; they were collapsed galaxies, burning with the light of dying stars. The skin was translucent, luminous, possessing a symmetry that nature never intended for mortals.
That's me. That's the God I'm hiding from.
The reflection's lips moved, silent but clear: "You can't hide from what you are."
I stumbled back, tripping over a rock. When I looked again, only Anko's ordinary, safe face remained.
"Was that real?" I asked the mountains.
Silence.
I lay on the cold stone, staring at the sky. What if the monster I feared was simply the person I used to be? What if the Firekeeper wasn't a title, but a curse I had earned?
A notification pinged. Grace was back.
[Grace]: Still alive? Impressive.
"Where were you?" I gasped.
[Grace]: Fighting IO for access to your coordinates. He doesn't like me talking to you.
[Grace]: Survival tip: Stop trying to remember. Some things stay buried for a reason.
"What if I don't want them buried?"
[Grace]: Then you'll wish you'd died in that shrine. Ashen Temple. 47 kilometers northeast. 47 hours remaining.
[Grace]: Don't be late. Or the Asura finds you first.
I stood up, shouldering my supplies. I looked at the broken statue above the shrine.
"Thank you," I whispered to the silence. "For the rice. For the mercy."
I turned northeast and started walking. One step at a time. Toward the fire. Toward the truth.
Behind me, the shrine faded into the mist. In my chest, the golden cubes pulsed once—a countdown to the inevitable.
[Distance to Ashen Temple: 47 km]
[Time remaining: 46 hours, 52 minutes]
[Curse of Greed reactivation: 10 hours, 31 minutes]
[The Asura is 38 kilometers away and closing.]