Chapter 13
Memory does not return all at once.
It creeps.
It leaks through cracks in reality, seeps into dreams, settles in places history thought were sealed.
It began with a nightmare.
A god lesser, half-forgotten, sustained only by routine worship woke screaming. Not from pain. From absence. From the sudden understanding that something had once stood above him… and spared him.
He could not remember the name.
Only the feeling.
Fear without image.
In the demon realms, ancient seals pulsed once then stilled. Demons who had survived eras beyond counting stirred uneasily, instincts screaming at them to kneel before nothing at all.
Immortals paused mid-cultivation, hands trembling.
Somewhere, a system errored.
> [WARNING: Historical Anomaly Detected]
[ERROR: SUBJECT DOES NOT EXIST]
[CORRECTION FAILED]
And yet
On the Black Shores, Dino was fixing a roof tile.
It refused to sit properly.
"…Annoying," he muttered.
Luna watched from below, arms crossed, amused. "You could rewrite its existence."
"Yes."
"Then why aren't you?"
"Because it deserves a chance."
She laughed quietly.
Above them, nothing changed.
Below the surface of reality, everything did.
A scholar in a divine archive hesitated over a blank page that should not exist. A demon lord forgot why his throne felt too small. A hero awoke knowing, inexplicably, that his sword would never be enough.
A shadow moved through collective memory.
Not a name.
Not a legend.
A gap.
"Do you feel that?" Luna asked.
Dino nodded. "They're remembering the shape of fear."
"Will they come?"
"Eventually."
She tilted her head. "And if they do?"
He climbed down from the roof, dusted his hands, and stood beside her.
"Then they'll see I haven't changed," he said.
"And that doesn't worry you?"
"No."
He looked at her.
"Because I'm not alone anymore."
Far away, a council convened without understanding why. Prophecies rewrote themselves mid-sentence. A god reached for a weapon and stopped uncertain whether drawing it would invite annihilation.
Fear returned.
But so did hesitation.
On the Black Shores, the sea rolled gently.
Luna leaned against Dino's shoulder.
"Let them remember slowly," she said.
He wrapped an arm around her without thinking.
"They will," he replied. "The universe always does."
For now, though, eternity was quiet.
And Dino chose to remain in that quiet
Even as the world began to whisper his shadow back into existence.
End of Chapter 13