Nicholas's consciousness fractures.
The world beneath his feet shatters like glass under pressure—and with it, his very perception. Reality recedes, splinters, turns inside out. There is no ship. No crew. No Platform.
Only heat.
Living. Pulsing. All-consuming.
He doesn't fall down—he falls inward.
From within, he bursts. Rivers of lava surge across cracked earth; the sky burns with a menacing orange glow, like the dawn of the world's last day.
The air—dense as molten lead—compresses his chest, claws at his skin, as if it's trying to enter him.
He doesn't breathe. He wrestles with the atmosphere itself, which wants to swallow him whole.
Beneath his feet: a planet. And Nicholas feels it breathe.
Heavy. Predatory.
As though he's standing on the chest of a titan just awakened from a thousand-year slumber.
The heat burns through everything. It scorches his name, his purpose, his shell.
But Nicholas does not retreat.
I know where I am.
And I know who is coming.
A crack. A rupture.
A whirlwind of fire. Behind him—him.
A voice—not a voice.
A thunder of catastrophe. A roar that crumbles mountains and darkens light.
"I appointed you head of Platform security," says the god.
These are not words. They are a volcanic eruption in the shape of speech.
Nicholas turns slowly.
Without fear. Without bowing.
Not like a servant—but like someone who remembers he once had a will.
Before him stands Kairus.
God of devouring will.
His body seems forged from lava and metal. Behind him—wings of fire, gleaming like molten rings of a black hole.
On his shoulders—an enormous sword, etched with runes that pulse like the hearts of dead stars.
Kairus's eyes don't look. They penetrate.
"Show me your memory," he demands.
"Why are you closed to me? Where are your recollections?"
The fire around them sways with his wrath. The flame breathes like a beast.
But Nicholas does not move.
I am not alone. I am not hollow. I am not afraid.
"I believe in you, mighty Kairus," he says.
His voice—steady, heavy, like molten metal plunged into icy water.
"All my memories are stored in Term."
Kairus steps back.
In his blazing figure—a flicker of surprise.
"Why can't I see where you are?" His voice grows heavier, darker.
Suspicion rising.
The god is no longer all-seeing.
Nicholas stares directly at him.
Don't blink. Don't flinch. Not a millimeter.
Any weakness—and he vanishes. Or worse.
"I don't know the answer," he says plainly.
"But if you can't find me—it means someone else did."
The world collapses.
Like ash in the wind. Instantly.
Reality vanishes, and Nicholas is cut from it—
like a broken link in a chain.
A drop. A transition.
Void.
He finds himself elsewhere.
**
A timeless plain.
Dead. Ashen. Endless.
The sand—faded like dust from worn-out memories—stretches to the horizon.
The sky—starless, washed out, as if the universe itself has grown tired of existing.
The Desert of Forgetting.
Here, silence rings.
Here, time does not flow.
Here, nothing lives. Or almost nothing.
Nicholas dissolves.
Skin, thoughts, memory—all crumbling into gray dust.
Is this death? Or release?
But he is not alone.
Atop a sand dune, a boy hovers.
Legs crossed. Eyes closed.
He floats just above the surface, like a thought not yet shaped into language.
He looks young.
But he radiates the feeling of an age that will never end.
He is not a child. He is the voice of something that existed before the gods. Or instead of them.
"Why am I here?" asks Nicholas.
The voice—not a voice.
A thought. A resonance within the void.
The boy does not move.
But his presence is like the core of a black hole:
invisible, inescapable, all-devouring.
"Because you tried to remember," he answers.
The voice—clear, translucent, like light that has never known shadow.
"All memories now reside in me.
I am the Keeper. I am Term."
The words drive into Nicholas like nails into the mind.
He contracts—not from pain, but from understanding.
"I know what you did to the Platform," says Term.
"I know who helped you. I know that Kairus is now blind to you.
He cannot follow your steps."
Nicholas's heart beats hollowly, like a hammer in an empty temple.
Everything he hid—now lives here.
In this place.
With this... non-god.
"But you need not fear," adds Term.
His voice—neither comfort nor threat. Simply—truth.
"Here, Kairus is powerless.
The Desert of Forgetting is his boundary.
You are under protection.
As long as you do not try to forget what you did—you are safe."
Nicholas looks into the void.
It no longer frightens him.
But now he knows:
Behind him stands more than one god.
And the game he has entered
began long before him.
And will not end—for everyone.
**
Nicholas is slowly returning.
As if surfacing from a thick, viscous darkness that refuses to let him go.
His consciousness gathers itself piece by piece, like shards of a shattered mirror.
Sounds come first—dull, muffled, as if heard underwater.
He gasps suddenly. Reflexively. Scalding air floods his throat, tasting of smoke, heat, and metal. A panel beams white light directly into his face.
The floor beneath his feet trembles—like the heartbeat of a ship thrown out of rhythm.
He's here. Back. Onboard.
But part of him… is still there.
In the ashen eyes of Kairus. In the dead, timeless void. In the desert, where a silent boy sits, still as knowledge itself.
Nearby—Captain Hirota.
A sharp silhouette lit by the glow of warning lamps.
His gaze is piercing, startled. He looks at Nicholas like he could tear the truth out of him.
"What the hell happened to you?" he asks—quiet, but firm.
His voice isn't angry. It's laced with worry, hidden behind discipline.
"You… disappeared. Just for a few seconds. I saw it. You were standing there like a corpse. Like there was nothing left inside you."
Nicholas reaches for the back of his head.
As if searching—did the divine flame leave a mark on his soul?
Inside, there's a bitter aftertaste. Like heartburn after resurrection.
The words of Kairus echo in his head like a nuclear thunderclap. Deep. Irreversible.
"Yeah… It happened," his voice is hollow.
He stares through the ship's walls, as if the answer lies beyond them.
"A god called me. Kairus."
"But… he doesn't know everything anymore."
"Not yet."
Hirota freezes. Blinks.
His face looks like a command stuck halfway to the comms.
"I'm sorry… who called you?"
He takes a step closer. His shadow falls on the floor like a border between worlds.
"Are you serious right now? That sounds like… madness."
Nicholas turns to him.
His eyes—clear. Steady. No panic. No persuasion.
Only knowledge. And it weighs too much.
"It's a long story," his voice firms.
"But if you really want to understand what's happening…"
"I'm ready to tell it."
Silence fills the bridge.
Thick. Viscous.
As if the ship itself is holding its breath.
Everyone—from saboteurs to technicians—lifts their gaze from the terminals.
All eyes on him.
The android who is no longer just a shadow.
Nicholas inhales.
His voice—clear. Focused.
But each word is an effort. As if he's carving them from stone.
"The gods can't agree," he says.
"Each lives by their own commandments.
Kairus is the god of control, will, dominion over thought.
But he's not alone.
The boy in the desert is another.
He holds what the gods have lost.
We are conduits to them.
Bearers of will.
Victims. Instruments.
We live inside their game—
and we don't even know
which rules have already been broken."
A pause.
The air thickens like the calm before a storm.
Someone holds their breath without meaning to.
"If they don't reach compromise…"
"Everything will vanish."
"Earth. Cities. Stations."
"Even memory."
"Their war isn't carnage."
"It's a collision of meaning."
"And we are the field. The matter."
Hirota says nothing.
But his expression changes.
Skepticism melts like ice under the sun.
In his eyes—a question no one dares ask.
"You… believe all this?"
The voice is soft. It comes from one of the saboteurs.
It trembles. Not from fear—but from the realization that the world is fracturing.
Nicholas turns.
His eyes—deep, inhuman.
No fanaticism. No doubt.
Only one thing: knowledge.
And that makes him dangerous.
"I don't believe," he answers.
"I know.
I was there.
I heard them.
Felt my mind crack beneath their gaze.
They are powerful…
but not all-powerful."
"They need us.
Because without us—they are blind.
Without us—they are powerless."
He steps forward.
His words drop lower, quieter, deeper—
almost like a prayer. Or a threat.
Silence.
Hirota looks at him.
And in that gaze—there's no captain.
Only a man at the edge of an abyss.
All his logic, his hierarchy, his chain of command—
have fractured.
He knows:
One step—and everything changes.
One order—and it all begins.
Or ends.
He says nothing.
Slowly backs away.
His footsteps heavy—
like walking through sinking sand.
He passes them all—
and exits.
His steps echo in the corridor,
like the heartbeat of a dying machine.
Nicholas remains.
Still.
He knows:
The choice has already been made.
Even if no one's said it out loud yet.