CHAPTER 256: THE SEARCH

The wind shifted first.

Then the stars.

Aurora tilted her head, sensing the tremor beneath dimensions. Her eyes sharpened. "Another echo."

Veylor, still cloaked in Adam’s shape, said nothing. Just turned toward the pulse like it was calling his name. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t bright. It just... tugged.

Soft. Gentle.

Like the universe whispering, "Look here."

Aurora’s hair floated slightly, caught in a breeze that didn’t exist in this part of space. "We move now."

He followed without speaking.

The two of them crossed layers of reality in silence.

They didn’t need gates. Didn’t need spells or keys or runes. Aurora’s Dominion warped the space around them like cloth in her hand. And Veylor—he moved like something already outside the rules.

The stars grew cold.

The sky turned black, then inverted—light pulsing from cracks in the darkness, like a mirror bleeding backward.

They landed in a ruined temple.

One neither of them remembered building.

The architecture bent sideways, floors spiraling up instead of forward, staircases looping into their own shadows. Time didn’t move here. It circled.

Aurora walked ahead. "This... isn’t a sealed plane. This is a forgotten one."

Veylor’s voice echoed from nowhere. "It was sealed on purpose."

She turned slightly. "By who?"

He didn’t answer.

But inside, he wondered.

Even he didn’t recognize this place. That was rare.

They passed through archways dripping with silence. Mosaics on the walls shifted as they walked—one moment showing stars, the next showing Adam.

Real Adam.

Aurora stopped in front of one.

It was him.

Smiling.

Holding something in his arms.

A child?

Or a weapon?

The image flickered before she could look closer.

She sighed. "I hate memory traps."

Veylor didn’t respond.

He couldn’t afford to slip.

Every word. Every breath. Every movement had to feel like Adam—but just tired enough to make Aurora forgive the changes.

Aurora turned back to him. "We’re close."

She pressed her palm to a wall.

Reality peeled away.

And behind it—

—a corridor made of glass.

But not clean glass. This was shattered, remade, shattered again. You could see versions of the world playing in each pane like old films stuck on loop.

They stepped inside.

Their reflections didn’t match them.

Aurora frowned at hers—it looked older. Worn. She was holding someone’s hand, but the other figure was blurred out.

Veylor looked at his.

And saw nothing.

Just a hollow shape where his face should be.

The corridor led to a pedestal.

Something floated above it.

Not glowing.

Not pulsing.

Just... wrong.

A sphere of stitched space, like someone had forced too many timelines into one orb. It spun slowly, leaking quiet.

Aurora stepped forward cautiously. "That’s not an artifact."

"No," Veylor said, his voice low. "It’s a knot."

Her fingers hovered above it. "Of what?"

He stepped beside her. "Everything we’ve forgotten."

She looked at him sharply. "So you do remember this place."

He paused for a beat.

Then nodded. "Bits."

That was enough.

She turned back to the sphere. "Can we open it?"

"We could," Veylor said. "But something inside doesn’t want us to."

Aurora narrowed her eyes.

She extended her hand slowly, invoking Dominion.

Time slowed.

The corridor froze.

Every shattered reflection halted—except the one of Veylor.

His image moved.

It turned.

Looked at him.

And smiled.

Veylor blinked.

Aurora didn’t notice. Her power wove around the knot carefully, pulling strings of memory and sealing threads of causality. She worked like a surgeon, precise and focused.

Then it cracked.

A single whisper escaped.

And it said:

"Joshua..."

Aurora’s eyes widened.

Veylor flinched.

That voice.

That wasn’t his.

It wasn’t Adam’s either.

It was—

The knot exploded.

Not outward.

Inward.

Pulling them.

Sucking them through memory.

They fell.

Through moments.

Through screams.

Through rain.

Through lightning.

Through someone’s childhood.

And landed—

—inside a memory not their own.

Aurora hit the ground hard. Dirt. Wet. Night air. The scent of burning trees.

She sat up, dizzy.

It was a battlefield.

But not like the one from their war.

This was older.

Younger.

Somewhere in between.

Figures fought in the distance—children, really—using weapons they couldn’t control, eyes glowing with power they didn’t understand.

Veylor stood behind her, watching.

"This isn’t real," she said.

"No," he agreed. "But it was."

A scream echoed across the field.

A boy.

Wearing tattered robes. Bleeding from his mouth. Clutching a broken staff. He looked no older than fourteen.

Three figures surrounded him.

Two wielded divine weapons.

One looked exactly like—

"Me?" Aurora whispered.

The boy looked up—blood in his teeth—and whispered something back.

She couldn’t hear it.

She reached out.

The memory rippled.

And stopped.

Froze.

The battlefield vanished.

They were back in the corridor.

The knot was gone.

Only dust remained.

Aurora was shaking.

"Who was that?" she asked softly.

Veylor said nothing.

But he knew.

He knew exactly who that was.

The first Joshua.

Before systems.

Before gods.

Before names.

Before the cycle began.

He kept it to himself.

Aurora turned to him, eyes hard. "This isn’t over. We’re being pulled toward something. Something neither of us remembers."

He nodded once. "Then we keep going."

She stepped back, folding the corridor behind them with a wave of her hand.

Veylor stared at the dust a little longer.

And smiled.

Because now?

He had more than just confusion.

He had a trail.

He didn’t need to fight Adam yet.

He just needed to gather the right memories, at the right time, in the right place.

And now, thanks to Aurora...

He had access.

As they stepped into the next plane, a whisper lingered behind them in the corridor:

"...don’t forget who you are..."

But neither of them turned back.

They had a mission now.

Find the source of the anomaly.

Trace the forgotten pieces.

And unlock the truth behind the reset.

But only one of them knew the truth.

And the other?

Was walking beside a lie.

The next plane wasn’t a world.

It was a feeling.

Heavy. Slow. Like breathing syrup. Every sound came late. Every step landed too soft. Colors bled into each other, like someone forgot how to separate light from shadow.

Aurora narrowed her eyes as the plane shaped itself.

A valley. Endless. Trees twisted like frozen screams. The sky—if it could be called that—was layered in broken moons, some cracked in half, others spinning too fast, casting flashes of light that didn’t match their orbit.

She stopped walking. "This isn’t from our reality."

Veylor said nothing. But his gaze wandered.

This place. He felt it. Deep. Like a bruise in the soul. Familiar and wrong. Like stepping into a dream you almost remembered.

Aurora glanced at him.

"You’ve been here before."

"No," he answered slowly. "But I think the real Adam has."

She studied him for a second too long. Then turned away.

They kept walking.

Ahead, the valley dipped into a basin. Shapes shifted below—statues maybe. Or corpses. Hard to tell from the way the fog moved, refusing to settle. The air hummed, not with energy, but thought.

And in the middle—

—a spire.

Made of bones.

But not human. Not god. Not monster.

Something else.

Veylor stopped walking.

Aurora felt it too. Her Dominion quivered. Like the plane itself didn’t want her touching it.

A presence stirred.

Not loud.

But massive.

It didn’t rise.

It remembered.

And from inside the spire came a voice.

"Back so soon... son of the silence?"

Aurora turned. "That wasn’t meant for me."

Veylor’s hand twitched.

He didn’t answer.

The voice came again.

"You wear his skin. But you’re not him."

Aurora narrowed her eyes.

The air around them shimmered.

The fog parted—

And something emerged.

Not walking.

Not floating.

Just... existing.

A woman. Hooded. Her face wrapped in bandages of thought and memory. No feet. No hands. Just presence.

"The Core stirred. I saw the ripple. So did the others," she said. "You broke recursion. You lit the match. Now you want the flood to ask permission before it drowns?"

Aurora stepped forward. "Who are you?"

The bandaged woman tilted her head. "I was the one left behind when your gods found light. I am not a who. I’m a when."

Veylor’s fingers curled behind his back.

The woman floated closer.

"You want truth. You think you can swallow it without choking."

Aurora didn’t flinch. "I’ve held prophecy in my hands."

The woman laughed.

It sounded like sand breaking in reverse.

"Then hold this."

She reached into her chest—where no body should exist—and pulled out a shard.

It glowed.

Dimly.

But familiar.

Veylor’s breath hitched.

He recognized it.

A piece of the first cycle.

Before systems.

Before Core.

Before Adam.

Before even the idea of a question.

Aurora stepped forward, but the woman pulled it back.

"Not you," she said.

She looked straight at Veylor.

"You."

He hesitated.

Aurora turned sharply. "Don’t."

But he stepped forward.

Took it.

The shard burned.

Not with heat.

With memory.

It cracked him from inside.

He didn’t scream.

But his body flickered.

For a second—just one—his disguise failed.

And Aurora saw it.

Not Adam.

Not Veylor.

Something worse.

Something hollow, stitched from the negative space left behind when Adam was born.

Aurora’s eyes widened. "You’re not—"

"I never said I was," he said calmly, face returning to Adam’s shape.

She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Her Dominion twitched.

But the bandaged woman waved her off.

"Don’t worry," she said. "You’ll still need him. For now."

Aurora didn’t lower her hand.

"What did you give him?" she asked.

The woman looked up at the broken moons.

"A direction."

The valley trembled.

The spire cracked.

Behind them, the plane started to collapse.

Not violently.

Softly.

Like it was done waiting.

The woman faded into the fog, her voice the last thing they heard:

"Go west, into the Thoughtless Sea. Find the Library That Remembers. The next piece waits there. But not for long."

And then she was gone.

The plane let them go.

Just like that, they were back.

Hovering above a quiet world.

Aurora breathed hard.

She didn’t speak.

She just turned and flew.

Fast.

No gates. No trails.

Just momentum.

Veylor followed.

But slower.

He looked at the shard in his hand.

It didn’t glow anymore.

But it pulsed.

Like it was alive.

And for the first time—

He felt watched.

Not by Aurora.

Not by the gods.

By the real Adam.

He was awake now.

And coming.

Veylor’s smile faded.

The shard pulsed again.

And he heard it.

Not a voice.

A reminder.

"...you’re not whole..."

He clenched his fist.

He didn’t need to be whole.

Not yet.

He just needed to reach the Library.

If he got there first—

He could rewrite what came next.

Because the Library didn’t just hold books.

It held roots.

Roots of reality.

And Veylor?

He knew which one belonged to Adam.

All he had to do was pull.

Hard enough.

At the right time.

And everything would unravel.

Even Adam.