Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Veric stays there looking at his own hand while I walk away.

His fingers open and close slowly, almost cautiously, as if a sharp movement might expose the whole thing as some kind of illusion. He turns the wrist, touches the forearm, presses the skin near the elbow, and finally brings the hand up to the rebuilt shoulder. The arm answers with the ease of something that was never torn off.

When he lifts his eyes to Rhayne, his expression collapses.

She's still kneeling near the Goddess, one hand braced on the floor while she recovers from the offering. The remaining earring shines alone in her other ear.

Veric goes to her.

He doesn't run, but there's urgency in the way he crosses the space. When he gets there, he pulls Rhayne into a hug before she can react.

"Thank you."

The word comes out muffled against her hair.

Rhayne goes rigid immediately.

Her arms come up on reflex and stop before they touch him. Her hands hang a few inches behind Veric's back, restless, looking for a position that won't make contact.

"Veric…"

"I know."

He holds the hug a moment longer.

"I know. Just stay there. You don't have to touch me."

Rhayne turns her face away, red.

Veric laughs through his nose, though his eyes are still full.

"Thank you, Rhayne. Seriously. I don't even know what to say."

She looks at the floor.

"Just… don't get hurt again."

"All right. But does a thank-you work? It's so little."

"You already said it."

"I'm going to say it again! Infinite times!"

Rhayne looks like she wants to disappear inside her own cloak. Even so, there's a small smile trying to happen at the corner of her mouth.

I keep walking.

That's good.

Much better than anything I had planned for Veric.

My original plan started taking shape the moment Zhang confirmed there was nothing left to reattach. If the Goddess couldn't or wouldn't give the arm back directly, I would sacrifice Kraken.

The idea has bothered me from the start.

Kraken isn't an ordinary sword I could sell and replace with another of equivalent Rank. It's a Conscious Relic that chose me, reads my intent, and executes movements my own body gives up on. There's something alive inside that weapon, something that has already started fitting into the way I fight. Handing it over would have weight.

And I knew exactly what I'd ask for in return. Not an arm. An invitation.

An arm can only be paid for with something that carries the value of a reason to live, the way Rhayne's did. My plan was different.

In the other life, after losing a limb, I found a Rank S healer of a Unique class who specialized in homunculus reconstruction. The man could produce bone, muscle, tendon, and skin with frightening precision, though he was never able to restore the original nervous system. The new limb was controlled through OXI. After months of adaptation it worked well, but there was always a strange distance between thought and movement, a fraction of awareness that never fully went away.

I intended to buy Veric access to that man.

Now I don't have to.

Rhayne got something no healer I know could reproduce. Veric's arm came back whole, nerves included, with old scars and even the calluses on his hand. When he closed his fingers around Undertow a few moments ago, there was no hesitation in the movement.

It's the best possible outcome.

It also wrecked everything else I'd arranged.

I look at Rhayne.

She finally manages to convince Veric to let go. He keeps talking quietly near her, repeating his thanks in different forms while Rhayne holds her hands tucked against her body so she doesn't risk draining him.

She spent her petition.

And Kraken isn't strong enough currency anymore for what I have to do now.

Freya's offering might have been.

Her necklace carried years of pain, abandonment, love, resentment, and a connection she kept even after she knew exactly what Dean represented. The Goddess recognized that weight without hesitating.

But Freya already made her request.

This is my problem now.

I stop in front of the statue.

The small offering basin is empty again, clean as if Rhayne's earring and Shard had never existed. The white light from the ceiling passes through the Goddess's six arms and falls across the stone, while the figure stays motionless in that serene posture.

I go over the rule again in my head.

Reliquary.

The system never said item.

I've known that since the moment I started understanding what Memory of Lightwaves really does.

I look down at my hands.

"I'm going to miss this…"

The words come out so low I don't know whether anyone heard.

Before kneeling, I open the Party HUD.

Her name is there.

Lola ♥

The line pulses underneath it.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

I look at it.

Every day that's the best and the worst thing I can find in my system.

The heart is still beating. Lola is alive somewhere, caught inside a problem I still can't reach, but alive. I can wake up, open that screen, and confirm that the world hasn't taken her right to exist away from her yet.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

I close my eyes for a moment.

Then I shut the HUD.

I already know what the reliquary will be.

I step up to the basin and kneel on one leg.

I don't take anything out of my inventory.

When I raise my empty hand, I notice the hall has gone quieter behind me. Zhang was probably the first to notice. Freya understood right after. Rhayne and Veric stopped talking.

I don't look at them.

I run my fingertips along the rim of the basin.

What is an Echo Fragment, really?

I have incomplete answers.

I know fragments can carry the memories of dead Divers. I know something of the person stays in there, preserved in energy in a way Ocean's Law recognizes and we barely understand. After coming back to life, I started to suspect that memory and identity are far less abstract than human beings like to believe.

Maybe a soul is a much more physical system than our religions would accept.

Energy. Information. Some magnetic principle or its equivalent that records experiences and lets them survive the body.

A flash drive made of flesh while you're alive.

A fragment after you die.

Down here, we're batteries and storage units feeding something too big for us to see whole.

Memory of Lightwaves proved my own recollections could be treated the same way.

They can be accessed.

They can be used.

They can be consumed.

If a memory can become fuel, then it can become an offering.

I press my fingers against the stone.

"My name is Dryden Sands."

My voice echoes through the hall.

I breathe slowly.

"I offer you my reliquary in exchange for your providence. Let the toll of my anguish be paid."

I close my eyes.

At first, nothing happens.

Then I feel heat at my fingertips.

The light starts there.

I can't see it, but I feel it advance through my skin, climbing my hand to the wrist before something pulls inside me.

It doesn't hurt.

Not yet.

The memory comes whole.

Lost Ark.

The bazaar is alive around me.

Blue lanterns hang over the main street, throwing reflections against pale stone walls and colored fabrics. The smell of grilled meat mixes with spices I never learned to name. Divers pass between the stalls, sellers shout prices, and some stringed instrument plays further down the street, almost swallowed by the conversations.

Lola is sitting on a bench with Rhayne.

She has a skewer in each hand.

I remember the way she ate back then, focused on the food with the seriousness of someone carrying out a life-or-death mission. There's grease at the corner of her mouth and a strand of hair stuck near her cheek.

Rhayne says something.

I don't immediately remember what.

Lola laughs.

That laugh opens her whole face.

I watch longer than I need to.

She's fourteen. Sometimes she seems older, carrying habits no child should have to develop. In that moment, sitting in a bazaar with food in her hands and Rhayne beside her, she looks exactly the age she is.

That's when I see the ring.

The small jeweler's was across the street.

The metal catches the lantern light and changes color with the angle. Blue, green, violet at the edges. It looks enough like something I once bought for Lili in a life that no longer exists that I'm across the street before I can think too hard about it.

The seller asks for an amount of chitin and fangs I don't have on me.

So I offer the second Lunaria Fruit.

I'd been saving that fruit for a quiet night that probably would never come.

The woman accepts fast.

The ring comes into my hand.

I remember opening my fingers and looking at the shine shifting across my palm. Then I raised my eyes to the other side of the street.

Rhayne was smiling.

So was Lola.

The two of them sitting together, sharing something I hadn't heard because I was too far away.

And some part of me thought that piece of metal made sense.

I go back.

Lola's cheeks are still full when I crouch in front of her.

I open my hand.

She freezes.

The food stops between her teeth and her eyes drop straight to the ring.

"Slow down. Swallow first, then tell me what you think."

Lola chews twice with ridiculous concentration, drinks some water, and wipes her mouth on her sleeve.

Then she leans in.

Her eyes travel over the metal.

"It looks like Rhayne's eyes."

Rhayne, beside her, lowers her gaze slightly.

Lola turns her head.

"But without the storm."

I laugh.

That detail I remember well.

"Go on. Take it. I said you needed a present."

She brings her fingers closer slowly and lifts the ring out of my hand.

"It's pretty…"

I expected her to put it on her finger.

Instead, Lola finds a thin silver chain in one of her pockets, runs the metal through the ring, and closes the necklace behind her neck.

The pendant drops against her collarbone.

The blue lanterns hit the metal and spread small bands of color across her clothes.

Lola runs her fingers over the ring and smiles.

A simple smile.

No skill.

No sarcasm.

No system.

Just happiness.

The memory keeps going.

The three of us walk through the bazaar.

Lola goes a few steps ahead for part of the way, touching the pendant now and then to confirm it's still there. She stops at a stall, comes back when she notices we've fallen behind, then bolts toward something else that catches her attention.

Rhayne walks beside me.

Her shoulder bumps mine occasionally when the street narrows, and not once does she pull away quickly.

I remembered that day.

But only now, about to lose it, do I realize how much of it I'd kept.

The way Rhayne watched Lola when she wasn't looking.

The sound of the girl's sandals against the stone.

The blue light reflected in both their eyes.

The smell of warm bread from a stall we passed without buying anything.

My own body sore after everything that had happened before, and strangely relaxed on that walk.

At some point Lola comes back and takes hold of my sleeve while we cross a fuller part of the street.

She doesn't ask permission.

She doesn't need to.

I keep walking.

Rhayne stays on the other side.

For a few minutes we're just three people crossing a market.

Not a Returnee carrying a dead timeline.

Not a girl who drains life through touch.

Not a child trapped in a world that should never have taken her in.

Just us.

And that's where it happened.

No system message.

No achievement.

No warning.

I felt at home.

The realization didn't come as a thought at the time. I didn't stop in the middle of the bazaar and understand some great truth about my life. I just walked with the two of them and let that feeling exist without examining it.

Now I recognize it.

It was the first time since I came back that belonging somewhere didn't feel like a reminder of what I'd lost.

The bazaar starts getting further away.

The memory moves ahead to the moment I turned to look for lodging.

"Come on, you two. We need to find somewhere to sleep."

I start to walk off.

The voice comes from behind.

"Uncle…"

I stop.

I turn.

Lola has her hand closed around the ring hanging at her neck.

"Yeah?"

She looks at me.

"Thank you."

Something happened to my face that night.

I remember that.

A door I'd kept shut for too long simply gave way, and a smile escaped before I could stop it.

I went back to her and messed up her hair.

I couldn't answer.

I didn't need to.

That's when the fire appears.

There's no heat in it.

It starts at the edges of the memory.

First it consumes the buildings furthest out in the bazaar. The walls lose definition and come apart into white light, moving slowly through the stalls. Nameless people disappear mid-stride. Lanterns go out one by one.

My jaw clenches.

I know what's happening.

I chose this.

Even so, when part of the street disappears, I realize I can no longer remember exactly what was in that stretch.

The fire reaches a food stall.

The smell goes.

I try to hold on to it.

I can't.

The music further off disappears next.

I know there was music.

I can't hear which anymore.

My breathing gets heavier.

The memory keeps being eaten from the edges while Rhayne, Lola, and I stay at the center.

The fire reaches my own body inside the stream.

Part of the walk disappears.

Then Rhayne's face starts losing its outline.

I feel a tear escape from a closed eye.

I don't open it.

My jaw aches from how hard I'm clenching it.

I'm not watching someone die.

Maybe that's why it hurts in such a specific way.

Lola is still alive.

Rhayne is a few yards from me.

Nothing in that memory was a goodbye at the moment it happened.

I'm the one turning it into a goodbye now.

The light advances.

Rhayne disappears.

I try to remember her smile from the walk.

For a few seconds I can.

Then I only know that she smiled.

I can't rebuild the face anymore.

My chest clamps down.

My breath comes out broken.

The memory of Lola starts shrinking around her body. First the feet, then part of the legs, the arm I touched, the hair I messed up.

I try to hold on to her voice.

Uncle…

It's still there.

Thank you.

I keep repeating it in my head.

Thank you.

Thank—

The phrase is gone.

I know she said something important to me.

I don't remember the words anymore.

The next tear runs down my face.

The light reaches Lola's chest.

The chain and the ring are left.

The metal is still throwing blue, green, and violet while everything else disappears around it.

I know I gave that to her.

I know it meant something.

For an instant I can still remember why.

Then the fire touches the edge of the ring.

The colors go out.

The last fragment disappears.

And the space where the memory existed is empty.

My body tips to one side.

My hand leaves the basin and I have to brace my forearm on the floor to keep from going down completely. Air comes in fast, almost painful, while my head reaches for something that isn't there anymore.

I hear movement behind me.

Zhang Xi comes closer.

"Dryden—"

I raise a hand before she can touch my shoulder.

"I'm fine."

It comes out rough.

I catch the irony late.

Freya asked me the same thing not long ago.

Back then I chose not to lie.

Now I don't have the energy to build a better answer.

I stay kneeling a few more seconds until my breathing settles. There's sadness inside me, heavy and concrete, but its source has become hard to reach. I know I just handed over something important. I know Lola and Rhayne were part of it.

The details are dead.

The Goddess's voice finally fills the hall.

"Your reliquary carries great weight."

I close my eyes again.

"Your offering is accepted."

The light grows in front of me.

"The toll of your anguish has been paid in full."

I open my eyes.

Inside the basin, a Reentry Pearl starts forming.

Nobody speaks.

The pale surface thickens until the small sphere is complete.

Then another light appears beside it.

Freya takes a step forward.

Rhayne lifts her head.

The second Reentry Pearl takes shape next to the first.

Two.

I reach out and collect both.

The system doesn't need to explain.

I asked for two.

One for me.

One for Rhayne.

I look at the small spheres in my palm. Two simple things, almost nothing next to the hole I can feel where the memory used to be.

Maybe Kraken would have paid for one.

Maybe not.

It doesn't matter now.

I close my fingers.

I stand up slowly.

My legs answer, though my body still feels several pounds heavier. When I turn around, everyone is looking at me.

Veric has stopped beside Rhayne.

Freya has her arms crossed, but there's nothing casual about the posture.

Zhang Xi watches me in silence.

Rhayne is the only one who seems to understand a part of what just happened that I can no longer access myself.

Her eyes are wet.

I walk over to her.

Every step brings that uncomfortable sensation of having left something somewhere and knowing that going back to look for it wouldn't help.

I stop in front of Rhayne.

I open my hand.

Both Pearls are there.

I take one and hold it out to her.

Rhayne doesn't take it right away.

Her eyes drop to the sphere and then come back to my face.

She saw it.

All of it.

The memory still exists in her now.

Maybe she remembers the bazaar, the ring, the way Lola smiled, and things I can no longer name. From her expression, I understand there's a cruelty in that which I'll only ever grasp by half.

"Dryden…"

I shake my head.

I don't want to hear it.

Or maybe I don't know what she could say that I'd be able to take right now.

Rhayne finally opens her hand.

I set the Pearl on her palm.

Her fingers close around the sphere carefully.

I look at her for a few seconds.

I'm tired.

Sad.

And there's an absence inside me that hurts even without having a shape.

But Lola is still alive.

Rhayne has the Pearl.

Veric has both arms.

Zhang and Freya got what they came for too.

For now, that has to be enough.

I let the air out slowly.

"Let's go home."