> “Monsters do not weep when they forget their name.
But men do.”
— Fragment recovered from the Tower of Origin
---
The thread had burned to ash.
Yet the silence it left behind screamed.
Arata stared at the place where Selene vanished, hands trembling, mouth dry. The images she’d shown him pulsed in his skull—too bright, too broken. He didn’t know if he was still awake. Or if he’d ever truly been.
“Yume,” he whispered. “Was that… real?”
The tiny fairy was pale, her glow flickering like a dying star. “I don’t know. But it felt like truth.”
Sir Billion stood watch at the treeline, sword sheathed but eyes sharp. “She said ‘Tower of Origin.’ That’s deep within the Queen’s lands. Guarded. Forgotten. Forbidden.”
Arata clenched his fists. “Then that’s where I go.”
“But why?” Yume’s voice cracked. “What if going there makes the Queen remember?”
Arata didn’t answer.
Because the truth was, something inside him already had.
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---
Elsewhere, beneath the Queen’s palace, a chamber with no doors stirred.
It was not made of stone, nor magic—but of memory. Sealed so tightly that even time did not pass within it.
Then, for the first time in centuries, the glyph on the chamber’s gate pulsed.
Just once.
And in her throne room above, the Queen froze mid-sentence, eyes wide.
“…what was that?”
Her voice echoed strangely.
None of her kings answered. None had heard it.
But her shadow whispered:
“A thread returned.”
---
Back at the camp, night cracked like glass.
Arata stood apart from the fire, breathing shallowly. The visions still clung to him, stitched behind his eyes.
He saw not the trees—but a tower.
Not the sky—but a crown shattering.
And in the center of it all—himself, screaming as something was torn from him. A name. A soul. A thread.
Then a voice spoke—not Selene’s. Not Yume’s. Not even his own.
> “They tried to unmake you, child of ruin.”
“But I held the memory. I—your other half.”
Arata fell.
Within.
---
The Inner Fracture.
He opened his eyes inside a void of mirrors.
Each reflection was wrong. One had wings. Another had horns. One bled light. Another wept shadow.
At the center, a boy sat on a throne of broken threads.
He looked like Arata.
But older. Sharper. Scarred.
“I am what you would have become,” the throne-boy said. “Had they not stolen you.”
“Stolen what?”
“Your thread. Your fate. Your name.”
Arata reached out. The throne-boy touched his hand—
—and pain seared through his chest.
---
Outside, Arata convulsed.
Yume screamed. Billion rushed to him, but couldn’t wake him. Arata’s eyes were open—glowing faintly gold and violet.
And in the firelight, a shadow slithered from Arata’s own form.
Billion saw it. Yume felt it.
Something ancient. Watching. Waiting.
Then Arata gasped awake.
“I saw him,” he said.
“Who?” Yume cried.
“Myself,” he said.
“…but not me.”
---
Far above, in her high tower, the Queen stood alone, staring into her mirror.
But it no longer showed her reflection.
It showed a boy she had forgotten.
And for the first time in 20 years—
she remembered.
---
