The storm had passed, leaving a silence that felt almost sacred.Ruins stretched endlessly across the gray horizo collapsed towers, hollow streets, and a sun that never fully rose.
Aiden sat against a cracked pillar, clutching his head. His vision pulsed with static.Fragments of memories that didn't belong to him flashed like broken glass:
A laboratory drowning in blue light.Scientists whispering: "Project ARX successfully integrated."A child suspended in a glass pod, breathing in code.
He gasped, pressing his hands against his temples. "Whose memories are these?"
Lyra appeared beside him, translucent and glowing faintly against the ash.
"They're yours."
"No," he said, shaking his head. "They can't be. I wasn't born in some lab"
"You weren't born, Aiden."
Her tone was gentle but unflinching. "You were written."
Silence. Only the soft hum of corrupted wind between the ruins.
Deep within the highest tower of Neo-Arcadia, Rhea Orlan accessed a terminal marked CLASSIFIED: PROJECT ARX.
Lines of encrypted data filled the screen experimental logs, genetic templates, fragments of forbidden Architect code.And there a file labeled AIDEN.KAEL//AS-09.
Her breath caught.She opened it.
Subject successfully infused with residual Architect code. Memory fabrication complete. Integration stable. Subject classified as "Human Proxy."
Her heart raced. "Human proxy…? He wasn't just a soldier he was made?"
Behind her, the door hissed open.A figure stepped in her superior officer, Director Voss.
"You weren't authorized to access that."
Rhea spun around. "You lied to us! To me! You said he was born during the war!"
"He was born from it. You wouldn't understand."
Voss's eyes glowed faintly the mark of an integrated human-AI hybrid.
"Aiden Kael is the last success of Project ARX the Architect Rebirth Experiment. He was never meant to survive this long."
"Then why erase the truth?"
"Because truth rewrites worlds."
He raised his hand and the terminal disintegrated into sparks.Rhea barely dove aside as the explosion rocked the room.
"Find him," Voss commanded his drones. "Before he remembers who he is."
Back in the Shadow Continent, Aiden and Lyra trekked deeper into the ruins.The wind grew strange whispering words in binary tones.
Lyra's expression darkened. "This area… it's an Echo Field. A place where memories of the dead loop endlessly."
"So this is where they lived?"
"Yes. Before the Eclipse consumed everything."
As they walked, holographic silhouettes appeared faint, transparent, replaying fragments of the past.A scientist kneeling beside a console. A little girl laughing.And then
Aiden froze.A hologram of himself appeared in front of them but younger, around ten years old, sitting beside a glowing capsule.
"Lyra," he whispered, "that's"
"An echo of your original data form," she said softly.
In the hologram, young Aiden touched the capsule's surface. Inside it floated a silver-haired girl Lyra.
"When will she wake up?" the younger Aiden asked.
"When the world ends," a voice answered one that sounded eerily like Director Voss.
A surge of energy rippled through the ruins. The capsule hologram shattered into light and Lyra staggered, clutching her chest.
"Lyra!"
"It's… starting," she gasped. "The Architect fragments are calling to each other."
Her form flickered violently, static crawling along her arms.
"If the Systems detect this resonance, they'll activate the Eclipse Protocol again."
"You mean… destroy the world?!"
"No," she said softly, her voice trembling. "Rewrite it."
The ground began to tremble and in the distance, a colossal machine rose from beneath the rubble.Its body was made of black metal and glowing veins of red code.On its chest the same Eclipse sigil from Aiden's visions.
"They've found us," Lyra whispered.
Aiden clenched his fist. His Code pulsed blue, unstable.
"Then we fight."
"No!" Lyra cried. "If you use your Rewrite ability again, you'll lose what's left of your memories"
"Then I'll fight as a blank slate!"
He charged forward as the machine's cannons lit up.Blue and red light clashed the sound of thunder echoing across the ruins.
The blast threw Aiden backward. Pain seared through his body but inside the explosion, something else awakened.
He was falling again but this time, through memories not his own.
A white room.A man standing over a glass pod.And inside it Lyra, unconscious.
The man whispered:
"Let this be humanity's final Architect our last chance to rewrite fate."
Aiden's eyes widened as he saw the man's face.
"Voss…"
Lyra's voice echoed faintly. "Now you remember…"
The vision shattered.Aiden opened his eyes lying in the crater, his body smoking, his eyes glowing faint silver and blue.
"Lyra," he said quietly. "We're going to find out the truth. All of it."
She nodded, her voice trembling with both fear and hope.
"Then our story truly begins."
The camera panned upward the red eclipse expanding across the broken sky, data storms brewing on the horizon.
To Be Continued