Erza's frustration boiled over. "Why are you smiling? What is happening? I cannot understand any of this! What is this place? Why is it empty? Why—"
Isvarn cut her off, his voice calm but firm. "Look up, my Queen."
Erza looked up.
And her breath stopped.
Above her, suspended in the white void, was a presence. It was not a crown of gold or jewels—not a physical object that could be touched or worn. It was a crown of memory, vast and terrible, hanging in the sky like a second sun. It was shaped like a giant brain, its surface folded and complex, its structure towering like a mountain range. Wheels within wheels turned inside it, spinning slowly, rhythmically, like the gears of a clock that had been ticking for centuries.
And embedded in the surface of this giant brain were seven glowing orbs. Each one was violet—the same violet as Erza's eyes, the same violet as the magic that flowed through her veins. They pulsed with a soft, steady light, like hearts beating in unison.
The Crown of Seven Sealed Memories.
It was the highest level of memory sealing magic—a spell so powerful that it could seal away the most painful memories of any being, even a god. It was forbidden magic, outlawed in every kingdom, practiced only by those who had no regard for the sanctity of the mind. To use it on a mortal was unthinkable. To use it on a human was incomprehensible.
Isvarn's eyes widened. His voice was barely a whisper. "How? How can this spell be on a human who has barely lived a Twenty years? This should not be possible. This should not exist."
Erza's eyes were horrified. She was looking at Yuuta's brain—at the seals that had been placed on his memories, at the chains that bound his past. And as she looked closer, she saw that the great wheel was shaking. It was trembling, shuddering, cracking under the pressure of something that was trying to escape.
Memory was leaking from the brain like water from a broken dam. Thin streams of violet light trickled down the surface of the giant organ, dripping into the white void below.
Isvarn's voice was grim. "If we do not seal his memories again, all the seals will break. Everything that has been hidden will be revealed. And his mind—already fragile, already human—will not survive."
Erza's mind raced. "What does that mean? Why is this happening? Who would use a god-level spell on a human? Why?"
Isvarn shook his head slowly. "I do not know. But I suspect that this mortal has secrets more horrifying than he appears."
He walked toward the giant brain, his tall frame tiny against its massive bulk. It towered above them like a mountain, like a cathedral, like a monument to something that had been forgotten. He stopped at the base of the great wheel and pointed upward.
"See the orbs, my Queen. Seven of them. Each one holds a memory—a memory so painful that it had to be sealed away. The lowest orb—the one that is leaking—contains his newest memory. The one that was trying to break through when we entered his mind."
He looked back at her.
"Once you touch a memory, you will be drawn into it. You will experience it as if you were there. You will see what he saw, feel what he felt, know what he knew."
Erza swallowed. "And then?"
Isvarn pointed higher. "The more memories we see, the higher we climb. And once we reach the top—once we have witnessed one of the Seven Memory—we can seal them again. We can save his life."
Erza looked up at the towering brain, at the seven glowing orbs, at the long journey ahead.
She took a breath.
"Then let us begin."
Erza and Isvarn stood before the leaking memory, both of them watching the violet light trickle down the surface of the great brain like tears from an open wound. The glow pulsed softly, rhythmically, as if the memory itself was alive and aware of their presence. They exchanged a glance—a silent acknowledgment of what they were about to do, a shared understanding that there was no turning back.
Then they reached out and touched the memory together.
Erza felt the suction immediately. It was like being caught in the grip of an underwater current, a force so powerful that it pulled her down before she could even think to resist. The white void vanished, replaced by an endless, suffocating darkness that pressed against her from all sides. She could not see. She could not hear. She could not breathe. The darkness was not empty—it was alive, watching, waiting.
For a long minute, she felt nothing but the sensation of falling—falling through water, through shadow, through the depths of a mind that was not her own. The darkness was absolute, complete, without any hint of light or warmth or hope. She felt like she was drowning, like the ocean had decided to swallow her whole and was not going to let her go. Her lungs burned for air that did not exist. Her hands reached out for something to hold onto, but found nothing.
Then, slowly, the darkness began to fade.
Erza looked around, her violet eyes straining to see through the lingering shadows. She called out, her voice echoing strangely in the emptiness.
"Grandpa?"
No response. No answer. Only the hollow echo of her own voice, bouncing back at her from a distance she could not measure. The sound was swallowed by the void almost as soon as it left her lips.
"Grandpa, where are you?"
Still nothing. She was alone. The memory had separated them, pulled them into different threads of Yuuta's past. She could feel the weight of his consciousness pressing against her, heavy and陌生, like standing in the shadow of something vast and unknowable. She would have to navigate this alone.
She moved forward, her footsteps silent in the void. The darkness around her began to shift, to change, to take shape. It was like watching a photograph develop in slow motion—first shadows, then outlines, then colors and textures and details that she could almost recognize. The air grew warmer. The pressure in her chest eased. The darkness pulled back like a curtain being drawn aside.
Seven small figures appeared before her.
They were children—tiny, glowing, translucent. They looked like Yuuta, each one a copy of him, but their bodies were covered in white light, and they wore no clothes. They were like spirits, like echoes, like fragments of a soul that had been broken apart and scattered across the vast emptiness of his mind. She could see their outlines, their shapes, their movements, but nothing more. No faces. No features. No expressions.
They floated around her, circling her like curious birds, like moths drawn to a flame, like something that had been waiting for her arrival for a very long time. Seven of them. Seven spirits. Seven pieces of a whole.
Erza raised her hand, and the spirits responded. One of them—the smallest, the weakest, the most eager—stepped forward. He was smaller than the others, less defined, as if he had been formed from the scraps of memory that the others had discarded. His light flickered like a candle in the wind, barely holding itself together. But there was something in his posture, something in the way he moved, that reminded her of Yuuta. The same hesitance. The same hope. The same quiet strength.
He took her hand.
His grip was warm, insubstantial, like holding onto a beam of sunlight. She could feel his presence more than she could feel his touch—a warmth that spread from his fingers up her arm and into her chest, calming her, reassuring her. The other six spirits smiled—she could feel their smiles, even though she could not see them—and then they faded, one by one, dissolving into the darkness like mist in the morning sun. Their lights dimmed and went out, leaving only the smallest behind.
The small spirit guided her forward.
With each step she took, the void beneath her feet began to change. The nothingness solidified, becoming something almost solid, almost real. She could feel the ground beneath her—cold, hard, metallic. Shapes emerged from the darkness—walls, floors, ceilings. Colors bled into the emptiness—grays and blacks and deep, bruised blues. The air grew colder, heavier, filled with the smell of rust and oil and something else—something that made her skin crawl and her stomach turn.
A room took shape around her. A corridor. Long and sterile, stretching into a distance she could not see. Bright red lights cut across the metal walls like wounds, like warning signs, like something trying to scream without a mouth. Machinery lined the hallway, humming with a low, steady vibration that she could feel in her bones, in her teeth, in the very core of her being. She did not recognize any of it. This was not her world. This was not any world she knew.
The small spirit released her hand and disappeared, its purpose fulfilled. Its light flickered once, twice, and then went out. Erza was alone.
She walked forward, her footsteps echoing on the metal floor. The sound was sharp,清脆, unnaturally loud in the silence. The corridor stretched ahead of her, endless and cold, lined with doors that she did not want to open. She passed windows that looked into rooms filled with equipment she could not name—machines that hummed and clicked and beeped with a purpose she could not guess. Tanks filled with green liquid. Screens displaying data she could not read. Tables stained with something dark.
Then she saw it.
One of the doors had a symbol on it—a symbol she recognized. The Eden Human Symbol. It was carved into the metal, faded and worn, as if it had been there for a very long time. The edges were rough, scratched, as if someone had tried to remove it and failed. Her mind raced, pulling up memories from centuries past. Reports had crossed her desk about this symbol, about the organization that used it. They had operated near the vampire lands, under the protection of rogue dragons, creating weapons designed to kill her kind.
Dragon Slayers, they had called them.
But the organization had collapsed. The project had failed. The reports had stopped coming, and Erza had moved on to other threats, other wars, other crises. She had not thought about Eden in years.
So why was it here? Why was it in Yuuta's memory? What did any of this have to do with him?
"What is this place?" she muttered, her voice frustrated, confused, afraid. The words echoed down the corridor, swallowed by the darkness ahead. "What does this have to do with Yuuta?"
The corridor did not answer. The machines hummed. The red lights glowed. And somewhere, deep in the darkness ahead, something waited for her.
Erza began walking through the memory, her footsteps echoing off the cold metal walls like the ticking of a countdown clock. She was certain now that Yuuta was not from Earth—she had known that since Sister Mary revealed the truth about his origins, about the elf queen, about the mission to raise him in this cursed world. But she had expected something else. She had expected an elf story, a tale of magic and destiny and ancient bloodlines.
She had not expected this.
She had not expected an illegal experimentation facility.
Each step she took echoed inside the hall, the sound sharp and清脆, bouncing off walls that seemed to stretch into infinity. The red lights flickered overhead, casting long shadows that danced across the floor like living things. The air grew colder, heavier, thick with the smell of antiseptic and something else—something rotting, something dying, something that had been dead for a very long time.
Then the darkness came.
It moved fast—faster than she could react, faster than she could think. One moment she was walking, and the next the lights went out, swallowed by a blackness so complete that she could not see her own hand in front of her face. It was as if someone had reached up and switched off the sun, as if the world itself had decided to stop existing.
She stood still, waiting, listening. Her heart pounded in her chest, but she did not move. She had faced worse than darkness. She had faced armies and gods and nightmare creatures. She would not be afraid of a shadow.
Slowly, the darkness began to fade.
When Erza's eyes adjusted, she was no longer in the corridor. The hallway was gone, replaced by something else—something deeper, something older, something that had been hidden beneath layers of memory and pain. The walls were still metal, still cold, but now they buzzed with faint pulses of mana, blue and green and violet, flowing through pipes and wires like blood through veins.
It did not feel like a laboratory. It felt like a prison for souls.
She was standing in a massive underground facility, vast and cavernous, its ceiling lost in shadow. Rows of laboratories stretched out before her, each one sealed behind thick metal doors. Golems stood guard—tall, silent constructs made of stone and metal, their eyes glowing with a cold, empty light. They did not move. They did not react. They simply watched.
Erza walked forward.
The doors were numbered backwards.
Lab 5. Lab 4. Lab 3. Lab 2. Lab 1.
Each room held its own nightmare.
Lab 5.
The door was closed, but Erza passed through it without effort—as if the memory itself wanted her to see, wanted her to witness, wanted her to understand. The metal dissolved around her, and she stepped inside.
The room was filled with chemicals and blood.
Glass tubes lined the walls, ten of them, each one taller than her—twelve feet at least, maybe more. They were filled with reddish fluid, thick and viscous, like the inside of a wound. And inside the tubes were nightmare creatures.
Not full-grown nightmares—not the massive, world-ending horrors that she had faced in battle. These were smaller, twisted, wrong. Their limbs were bent at angles that should not have been possible. Their eyes were open, staring at nothing, empty and dead. Their skin was pale, translucent, stretched tight over bones that had been broken and reshaped and broken again.
They were connected to something in the center of the room—a single tube, smaller than the others, but more complex. Wires and tubes ran from each of the nightmare creatures into this central chamber, pulsing with light, pumping something dark and thick into whatever was inside.
Erza looked closer.
It was a child.
A child—half nightmare creature, half human—floating in the reddish fluid, suspended by wires that pierced his skull, his spine, his chest. He was a chimera, a twisted being of torture, created by hands that had no heart. His body was covered in scars, old and new, overlapping each other like the pages of a book written in pain. His eyes were closed, but his face was not peaceful. It was empty. Hollow. As if whatever had lived there had already left.
He was not alive. He was not dead. He was simply... existing. Floating. Waiting.
Wires extended from his head, connected to machines that hummed and clicked, extracting something from him—something that Erza could not see, but could feel. It was the same cold, empty feeling that had been pressing against her since she entered this place.
She left the room.
Lab 4.
This time, the room was hot. Not warm—hot, like standing inside a furnace. The air shimmered with heat, and the walls glowed red, as if they had been heated from the outside. In the center of the room, suspended in a tank of molten magma, was a boy.
He had been burned to death. His skin was cracked and blackened, peeling away from muscles that had been cooked and hardened. His eyes were gone—melted away by the heat—but his mouth was open, frozen in a scream that would never come. Wires extended from his skull, just like the first child, extracting something from a mind that no longer existed.
He was dead. He had been dead for a long time. But someone had kept him here, suspended in the magma, preserved like a specimen in a jar.
Erza's hands clenched into fists. She was angry now—more angry than she had been in centuries. Each child she saw felt familiar, as if she were connected to them somehow. She did not know their names. She did not know their faces. But she knew their pain. She could feel it in her bones, in her blood, in the part of her that had been forged in ice and fire and the endless cruelty of her own childhood.
She left the room.
To be continued...