Chapter 7 – The City That Forgot Itself
At first, Ren thought the lights were stars fallen to earth.From the crest of the ridge, the landscape unfolded into a valley of golden haze. A sprawling settlement lay nestled between low hills — not vast like a metropolis, but not humble either. Dozens of pale towers rose in irregular clusters, each crowned by flickering orbs of light that pulsed in rhythm with the wind.
The air smelled of iron and sweet herbs. Roads cut through the grasslands like veins of dull silver, and faint sound — the hum of distant voices, the whir of unseen machinery — drifted up to meet him.
Civilization.
After days of isolation, the thought was almost unreal.
Ren stood for a while, watching the movement of tiny figures in the streets far below. They looked… human enough. His heart beat faster — hope and caution intertwining. He touched the Logbook slung at his side, the worn leather faintly warm beneath his fingers.
Fragment Two: The City of Ilyara, the book whispered faintly as he opened it.Temporal stability: 68%.Anomalies detected: residual loops, collective amnesia patterns.
Ren exhaled slowly. "Amnesia patterns," he repeated. "So even memory isn't stable here."
He started down the slope.
By the time he reached the city's gates, the sky had deepened into violet dusk. The entrance was marked not by guards, but by twin obelisks of translucent stone, each inscribed with flowing script that shimmered faintly.
Ren paused before the threshold, tracing one symbol. The stone was warm, almost pulsing like a living vein. As his fingers brushed the curve of the rune, a faint whisper brushed his mind — words too soft to parse, but familiar in rhythm.
He stepped through.
The sensation hit immediately: a subtle dissonance, as if the moment of entry had been copied and replayed half a breath later. His vision blurred, then steadied. The street beyond was alive — lanterns of hovering glass, market stalls fragrant with unknown spices, laughter echoing from narrow alleys.
But the sound… repeated. Every few seconds, the same note of laughter, the same jingle of coins. A loop, invisible but perceptible if one listened too closely.
Ren walked deeper into the city. The people moved with easy grace — men and women in robes of pale blue and ochre, children darting between them, vendors calling out in a melodious tongue. Yet when he met their eyes, something in them felt hollow.
Each smile was perfect, practiced — but their pupils didn't contract with the light.
"Are you lost, traveler?"
The voice came from behind him — warm, musical. Ren turned.
A woman stood there, tall and slender, her hair bound in silver cords that glimmered faintly. Her skin carried the same luminous undertone as the towers. She regarded him with open curiosity, her expression kind.
"I suppose I am," Ren said carefully. "I've come from beyond the Vale."
Her eyes widened, just slightly. "Beyond? That's far indeed. Few come from there now."
Ren tilted his head. "You've heard of it?"
She hesitated — just a flicker — before smiling again. "Everyone here has, though few remember why."
Something in the phrasing struck him.
He glanced around. People moved past them, faces serene, steps unhurried — yet every now and then, someone would pause mid-stride, blink slowly, and continue walking in the exact same pattern as before.
Ren's skin prickled. "Do people here… forget things often?"
The woman's gaze softened, but her smile dimmed. "Forget? No. We remember what matters. The rest…" She gestured vaguely at the sky. "It fades, as it should."
She turned as if to leave, but then stopped, eyes narrowing faintly as she studied him. "You're not like the others, are you? Your eyes— they hold too many reflections."
Ren forced a small smile. "Occupational hazard."
She chuckled lightly, the sound echoing a second too long. "Then be careful, traveler. In Ilyara, too much remembering can make you disappear."
Before he could respond, she was gone — swallowed by the crowd, leaving only the faint scent of ozone and jasmine in the air.
Ren wandered through the streets, unease growing. The city was beautiful, almost painfully so. Every structure gleamed as though carved from memory itself — fluid lines, translucent walls, gardens where trees glowed faintly from within.
But everything repeated.
At the corner of one square, a group of children played with crystal hoops. He watched them for a few minutes — until he realized their laughter followed the same rhythm each cycle, the same gestures replaying in slight variation.
He opened the Logbook. Its pages fluttered on their own, stopping at a new entry:
Observation: Temporal feedback loop confirmed. Subjective time static for local population.Cause: Memory overwrite system failure. Presence of secondary reincarnate probable.
Ren's pulse quickened. "Secondary reincarnate…"
Someone else was here — another consciousness like his, someone whose existence was breaking the city's false rhythm.
He snapped the book shut, scanning the streets again.
Somewhere within this perfect illusion, another like him was awake.
Night deepened. The city didn't sleep — lanterns brightened automatically as darkness fell, and soft music echoed from unseen sources. Ren found a small inn tucked between two marble arcades. The proprietor greeted him with mechanical warmth, eyes glassy.
He paid with a few coins he'd found in his cloak earlier — the Logbook's doing, no doubt — and retired to a room overlooking the plaza.
He didn't sleep immediately. He sat by the window, watching the streets below, and wrote in the Logbook:
If this is a fragment of a world I once touched, it's broken differently. The people are alive but caught in a rhythm that never changes. The air tastes like repetition. The light has no shadow. And yet… something watches me from behind the symmetry.
He paused, pen hovering. The city hummed quietly, an endless lullaby.
Then — movement.
Across the plaza, on a rooftop opposite his window, a figure stood silhouetted against the moonlight.
At first, he thought it a trick of reflection. But when the figure turned, Ren felt his heart stutter.
It was a man — or close to it — cloaked in dark fabric that shimmered faintly like the Logbook's ink. His face was obscured, but his posture was unmistakably aware. He was looking directly at Ren.
Ren rose, pulse pounding. Before he could move, the figure lifted one hand in silent acknowledgment — and vanished.
Not fled. Not stepped away. Simply erased, leaving a faint ripple in the air like heat distortion.
Ren exhaled sharply, gripping the windowsill. The Logbook vibrated faintly at his hip. When he opened it, new text bled onto the page:
Fragment interference detected.Resonant frequency match: 82%.Subject classification — Reincarnate Type B.
He stared.
"Type B…" he whispered. "So there really are others."
He shut the book, suddenly aware of how quiet the city had become. The laughter had stopped. The air hung still.
Then, faintly, from somewhere deep in the streets below — a voice:
"Ren."
He froze.
The sound wasn't loud, but it cut through the silence like a blade — clear, knowing, and horribly familiar.
He turned slowly toward the door.
No one stood there.
But the air shimmered faintly, and words appeared on the inside of the door in liquid ink:
Welcome back.
Ren didn't sleep that night.
He left the inn before dawn, when the city's light was soft and the streets half-empty. The people he passed greeted him politely, none seeming aware of the voice or the writing.
Still, a pattern had begun to emerge. Wherever he walked, the same moments replayed — a child dropping a fruit, an old man lighting a pipe, a woman adjusting her shawl. Each time, identical.
Except once.
At the edge of a small market, a boy selling flowers dropped one bundle — but instead of stooping to pick it up as before, he paused, looked up, and frowned directly at Ren.
Their eyes met.
For the briefest moment, the world flickered — like film skipping a frame.
The boy blinked, and the illusion returned. But the expression lingered — confusion, awareness, fear.
Ren approached slowly. "You saw it too, didn't you?"
The boy hesitated. "Saw… what?"
"The loop," Ren said softly. "The repetition."
The boy's pupils dilated. His lips trembled. "You're… you're not supposed to say that."
Ren knelt, lowering his voice. "What happens if you do?"
"They come."
"Who?"
But the boy only shook his head, eyes wide with terror. "Forget. Please, just forget." He pressed a single flower — pale blue, faintly glowing — into Ren's hand and backed away into the crowd. Within moments, he was gone.
Ren looked down at the flower. Its petals shimmered faintly, patterns forming and dissolving like breath on glass. The Logbook pulsed.
He opened it.
Signal trace identified.Fragment Anchor: "Liora."Probability of sentient interference: 94%.
Ren frowned. "Liora…" The name echoed faintly in his mind — familiar, though he couldn't place it.
The flower's glow intensified, then dimmed. Beneath it, faint letters began to form on the petals —Do you remember me?
Ren's pulse quickened.
Before he could respond, a shadow passed overhead. He looked up — and froze.
Above the square, the towers of Ilyara were shifting — their geometry warping subtly, lines bending where none had before. The air shimmered, the loops faltered, and the sound of reality bending under strain filled the streets.
People began to pause mid-step, their movements jittering. Some repeated sentences halfway. Others simply stopped, eyes vacant, as the illusion wavered.
Ren turned and ran, the Logbook flaring white-hot in his hand.
The city cracked open.
Light spilled from its foundations like blood — golden and blinding. Ren stumbled through twisting streets that folded upon themselves, echoes of his own footsteps chasing him.
He heard the voice again, clearer now:
"Ren, it's me. You shouldn't have come back."
He stopped. The world tilted. The voice came not from outside but from within the Logbook.
He opened it, and the pages unfurled into light. Letters formed midair — handwriting elegant, familiar:
If you read this, then the loop has already broken.You're close to the next fragment. But the city isn't stable enough to hold us both. Leave before it resets.
"Who are you?" Ren whispered.
You know me.You called me Liora once.
Ren's throat tightened. The name struck like a pulse of electricity through buried memory — laughter, sunlight, two voices echoing across a field, a promise whispered before the world burned.
"Liora," he breathed.
But the letters were fading.
Go east. To the Obsidian Tower. That's where the next fragment waits. I'll meet you there — if time allows.
The page went blank. The city convulsed.
He ran.
Behind him, Ilyara imploded — towers folding inward, streets melting into liquid glass. The sky fractured into reflections of itself. The people — those serene, empty-eyed citizens — froze mid-motion, then dissolved into streaks of light.
Ren crossed the last bridge as it collapsed behind him, breath ragged, every muscle screaming.
He didn't look back until he reached the far ridge.
Where the city had stood moments before, there was only a crater of silver mist — slowly closing in on itself, like a wound healing in reverse.
He fell to his knees, the Logbook clutched tight. The flower the boy had given him lay crushed in his palm, still faintly glowing.
The book opened on its own one last time that night, ink forming a single line:
Fragment Two retrieved. Anchor resonance established.
Ren closed his eyes. The image of the boy's terrified face and Liora's fading words lingered behind his eyelids.
"Liora…" he whispered into the wind. "You were here too."
He rose slowly, the city's last lights fading behind him. Ahead, on the horizon, a faint black spire rose from the plains — sharp, distant, and impossibly tall.
The Obsidian Tower.
The next fragment.
Ren tightened his grip on the Logbook and began to walk again.
The wind carried faint echoes behind him — laughter, footsteps, the murmur of a city that no longer existed.
But beneath it all, one voice remained. Soft. Familiar.
"I'll see you soon."