The runes began to harmonize at Cyrus’s final approach.

  The chaotic dancing resolved into patterns that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.

  The memories hit Cyrus like a wave of perfume from a forgotten season—delicate, precise, and utterly disorienting. He stood, or perhaps floated, in a garden of geometric precision under twin suns that painted everything in complementary hues of amber and lavender.

  Home.

  The word materialized in his mind with unearned certainty. This was home, or had been, once upon a version of himself he could not remember being.

  Sleek structures of impossible architecture rose around him, buildings that curved in ways that should have collapsed under their own weight yet remained, defying gravity with the casual indifference of advanced technology. Pathways of luminescent material shifted beneath his feet, accommodating his steps before he knew where he would place them. Water flowed upward in decorative fountains, then split into perfect spheres that danced through the air like sentient bubbles.

  Not Yaerellis. Not even close.

  A voice called from behind him, feminine and familiar in ways that made his chest ache. “Are you going to stand there all day, contemplating the universe, or will you look at what I’ve made?”

  He turned, and there she was—????????. The name appeared fully formed in his mind as if it had always been there, but when he tried to say it, he couldn’t. He couldn’t even think it! She was tall and willowy, with eyes that held galaxies worth of patience and humor. Her hands were stained with pigments that shifted color as she moved, her artist’s tool hovering beside her in a personalized gravity field.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to return from your head,” ??????? said. She approached with the casual grace of someone who knew him as she knew herself. “The poem can wait, can’t it? Just for a little while?”

  Words formed on his lips without conscious thought. “Poetry’s just stealing fire from the gods and hoping they don’t notice.”

  She laughed, and it sounded like bells cascading through crystal chambers.

  “Then let’s be thieves together!”

  Her hand found his, warm and solid and impossibly real.

  “I’ve finished the piece I was telling you about. The one about memory and forgetting.”

  They walked together through the garden, between trees that seemed to sigh contentedly as they passed. Everywhere Cyrus looked, he saw evidence of a civilization that had transcended need. Food synthesizers hummed discreetly in alcoves. Transportation pods zipped silently overhead on invisible tracks. Citizens—humans and otherwise—conversed in plazas, their clothing and accessories purely aesthetic and lacking all practical purpose.

  “We’re lucky, you know,” ??????? said as if this was a conversation they’d been having for years. “To have found each other in all this.” Her color-stained fingers gestured at paradise. “When there’s nothing left to strive for, when anything you want is a button away, what’s left but the connections between us? Real connections.”

  Cyrus found himself nodding. “Post-scarcity economics, pre-apocalyptic ennui.”

  “Always the poet,” she said, but the squeeze she gave his hand felt like a full-body hug, and his spirits soared. “Come see what I’ve made while you wrestled with semicolons.”

  Her studio opened before them, a space of organized chaos. Sculptures of impossible geometrics hung suspended in mid-air. Canvases displaying art that shifted and changed as the viewer’s perspective altered lined the walls. In the center stood her latest creation—a structure that seemed composed of lightly liquid, constantly flowing yet never losing its form.

  “I’m calling it ‘Permanence in Flux,’” she said, her voice suddenly quieter. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s beautiful,” he heard himself say. And it was—hauntingly beautiful in ways he couldn’t articulate. The structure seemed to contain universes in its folds, galaxies spiraling through its curves. “How did you…?”

  Something was wrong. A shadow moved at the corner of his vision, something that didn’t belong in this perfect memory. The twin suns dimmed momentarily as if something had passed between them and the planet.

  ??????? didn’t seem to notice. She continued explaining her artistic process, hands moving animatedly, but her voice became distant, as if underwater. The shadow grew more distinct, taking shape at the edge of the studio.

  “???????,” he tried to say, but his voice made no sound.

  Then time accelerated. The day became night and became day again in sickening flashes. He and ??????? moved through their life together in staccato moments—conversations over meals created by molecular gastronomy machines, walks through parks where plants responded to emotional states, nights spent whispering secrets under a ceiling that displayed the universe as it truly was, unfiltered by atmosphere.

  Then everything stopped.

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  Cyrus stood in their home. The space was different now—signs of struggle evident in the overturned furniture, the broken artwork. ??????? stood with her back to him, facing the door. Her shoulders were tense in a way he’d never seen before.

  “Please,” she was saying, her voice steady despite everything. “Whatever you want, you can have it. The synthesizers can make anything.”

  A figure stood in the doorway, face obscured by shadow. Male, but Cyrus couldn’t tell much else. The figure said nothing, merely tilted his head as if ???????’s fear was a curious but addicting phenomenon to be studied.

  “???????,” Cyrus tried to say again, tried to move toward her, but he remained frozen, an observer in his own memory.

  The figure in the doorway finally spoke, his voice reasonable, almost friendly.

  “What I want can’t be synthesized.” A pause. “I want what he has.”

  The man stepped forward, and though Cyrus still couldn’t see his face clearly, he felt a surge of hatred so pure it threatened to tear his consciousness apart. The man—the killer—moved with deliberate steps towards ???????, something metallic gleaming in his hand.

  “You could have chosen anyone,” the killer said conversationally. “Anyone at all. But you chose him. I’ve been watching, you see. Watching you both. The Poet and his Muse. So perfect. Where is your gratitude? Where are your thanks? You’ve had it too good to know you owe thanks. So selfish. So undeserving.”

  ??????? backed away, looking desperately around the room—for a weapon, for escape, for anything.

  “I don’t understand, who are you?”

  The killer laughed.

  “Oh, he knows. He just doesn’t remember yet.” He raised the metallic object—a knife, primitive and anachronistic in such an advanced world. “I’m going to make sure he remembers. Every time. Forever.”

  What followed was mercifully quick yet agonizingly slow. Cyrus remained paralyzed, forced to watch as the scene played out to its inevitable conclusion. ??????? fought—brave, determined, but ultimately doomed. The killer moved with practiced efficiency that no one else on the utopian planet did—with the grace of someone versed in violence. When it was done, he knelt besides her body and whispered something Cyrus couldn’t hear.

  The killer turned, and for a split second, Cyrus thought he could see a face—but it triggered a recognition so profound it was as if the heavens opened up, trumpets blared, and a thousand bolts of lightning struck him—then the moment passed, and he couldn’t remember what he had seen.

  The memory shattered like glass, fragments spinning away into the darkness.

  “Is this all there is?” Cyrus asked the void. “A poet? A victim? Is that who I am?”

  The darkness around him pulsed, almost as if in response to his question. Then, like a sword cutting through reality itself, a blade materialized before him—black as the space between stars, with veins of gold running through it like solar flares frozen in obsidian.

  Volta. It… was a strange name for a sword, wasn’t it?

  The sword hung before him, seemingly waiting. Hesitantly, Cyrus reached out and grasped the hilt.

  Reality imploded.

  He stood upon a battlefield that stretched beyond the curve of a planet he didn’t recognize. Above him, ships the size of continents exchanged fire that could sterilize worlds. The ground beneath his feet was littered with the bodies of combatants whose forms defied easy categorization—some humanoid, others composed of energy, geometry, or concepts for which Cyrus had no reference.

  In his hand, Volta hummed with a song of ending.

  A voice emanating from the sword itself whispered in his mind. “You’ve carried me through a thousand battles, through a hundred thousand lifetimes. You’ve never surrendered, never truly fallen. Remember!”

  Around them, the battle raged. Beings of light and shadow clashed, tearing holes in the fabric of reality with each blow. Civilizations rose and fell in the time it took Cyrus to blink. Through it all, he moved—a figure of terrible purpose, Volta cleaving through enemies as if they were mist.

  “This isn’t me,” Cyrus protested, even as he watched himself fight with a skill that spoke of centuries of experience. “I don’t remember this.”

  “Of course, you don’t,” the sword replied, its voice burdened with ancient weariness. “That’s part of his game. Remembering breaks you, so you have to remember anew each time. He takes such delight in it.”

  The battlefield dissolved, replaced by the interior of a massive structure—a temple or palace of impossible dimensions. Volta still in hand, Cyrus navigated corridors that folded back on themselves in a way that violated conventional geometry. Pursuing something—or being pursued, he couldn’t tell which.

  “What am I?” Cyrus demanded answers from the sword, from his memory. “What is all this?”

  “You are a response. A counterweight. A dumb poet who was so happy it created an apocalypse.”

  “What? What?” Cyrus repeated.

  Before any answers could come, the scene shifted again. This time, they hovered in space, witnessing a conflict that dwarved the previous one. Stars themselves served as weapons, hurled between combatants of godlike stature. Galaxies crumpled like paper in the wake of their movements.

  And there was Cyrus, a speck of consciousness in a storm of cosmic force, yet somehow central to the conflict. Volta extended from his grasp, grown to impossible size, cutting through the fabric of creation itself.

  “Is this real?” Cyrus asked, his mind struggling to comprehend the scale of what he was witnessing. “Did I do these things?”

  “As real as anything,” Volta answered. “As real as your life with ???????. It's as real as your death at the hands of the enemy.”

  “Who is my enemy?” Cyrus asked, desperation overwhelming his mental voice. “If I’ve fought these battles and lived these lives, why can’t I remember who I’m fighting against?”

  The scene shifted once more. Now, they stood at what appeared to be the end of everything—a single point of light remaining in an otherwise empty cosmos. Cyrus watched as another version of himself, sword in hand, approached that light with grim determination.

  “Because names have power,” Volta said. “And his name, above all others, is dangerous to know before you’re ready.”

  “I need to know, I need to understand who I am,” Cyrus insisted.

  “You are Cyrus,” the sword said simply. “You have died countless deaths and lived countless lives. You have loved, and lost, and found love again across the breadth of existence. And always, always, you have fought.”

  “Against whom?” Cyrus demanded.

  The vision faded, flickering away, the pinpoint of light growing dimmer. His other self raised Volta for what appeared to be a final stroke, but before the blow landed, everything vanished.

  Cyrus found himself back in his body, in his own time, the phantom weight of Volta still heavy in his hand. The memories—if they were—settled into his mind, neither fully integrated nor entirely separate from his sense of self.

  He had been a poet, living peacefully in domestic bliss with an artist he loved. He’d been a warrior of cosmic scale, fighting battles that reshaped reality itself. Both felt true, but also false. Somewhere in the contradictions lay the truth of who he was, and what he was meant to do.

  The only certainy was that someone had taken everything from him before—and might try to do so again. Someone whose face he couldn’t quite remember, whose name remained frustratingly out of reach. Someone who had hounded him across lifetimes.

  Someone who was, most likely, still watching.