Thales stood before the towering gates of the Spire as the Everspire Custodians greeted him and Hypatia.
"So… what challenges me here?" he asked plainly.
One custodian stepped forward, cloaked in deep indigo robes. His eyes gleamed with the weight of memory.
"That which challenges us all: the endless boulder rolling up and down the hill, only to fall again," the man intoned."That which presses upon the collective more than the individual. What the common man sees as mere tales of legendary heroes, bloodthirsty tyrants, innovators and leaders—we call simply: truth."
"I am Senior Khalud. Thales Miray, welcome to the Spire. Now, do I believe the Spire will call upon you to face all its burdens today? Nay."
"But to even shoulder one," Khalud continued, "you may need to embrace our more savage traditions—a trial by combat."
"Sure," Thales replied. "Which one of you? And is it to the death?"
"An astute question," Khalud smiled. "But no, we are not permitted to be that savage. It is a trial to submission only."
"And if I… accidentally kill my opponent?"
Khalud's smile deepened into a smirk.
"That will not happen. For such an outcome would not be remembered. Not in the sacred Spire. Swear this on Historia, the holy land itself."
"Fine then."
"Step forward, combatant."
A woman moved calmly through the gathered Custodians. Her presence was like a soft light refracting through ancient glass.
"What is your name?" Thales asked.
"I am Senior Aletheia. I will test you here, Thales Miray."
Her hair shimmered with starlight, and her eyes seemed to gaze through infinite timelines. Thales narrowed his eyes. Precognition kicked in—visions of anguish. Cruel ones.
He braced himself.
Suddenly, death itself surged toward him. A broadsword sliced down from behind—his arm severed instantly.
"Arrgh!" Thales growled. She attacked from the past—she's exploiting a blind spot in my precognition. I can't see backwards in time. That's… that's cheating.
But Thales had his own tricks. She lacked information. He could use that.
He stopped time.
Phasing through the battlefield, he appeared behind her, gripping the same broadsword that took his arm. His cultivation surged—temporal intangibility twisting the moment like glass under flame.
As he struck, shards of crystallized memory lashed out at his face—visions of himself as a hollow corpse.
"AHHH!" he gasped, dropping the sword, reeling from the phantom of oblivion.
Then—unexpectedly—he snatched the sword again and held it frozen in time, inches from Aletheia's throat. His phantom limb, regenerated just long enough to strike, was locked with the blade in suspended time.
Aletheia froze.
"...I submit," she said calmly.
"Interesting," she continued. "I outrank you as a cultivator… and yet you bested me. You healed your arm—but set a timer on it, didn't you? A phantom limb just long enough for the strike. You even predicted I'd lower my guard after I landed a few devastating blows."
"All from a hunch that you'd use memory-based attacks?" she asked.
"Yes," Thales nodded. "I had to show my conviction. Your role is important. But so is my goal."
Khalud's voice rang out proudly. "Well done, Thales Miray. You are indeed worthy of the Spire. I wonder—will your story be preserved here, in the Greater Eternal Archive?"
"Come. Follow me."
Thales obeyed.
"Breathe it in," Khalud said.
Thales inhaled. The air tasted of powdered memory fragments—shards of forgotten truth ground fine from the Eternal Archive.
And then the memories came.
Fire. Carnage. Screams.
He saw buildings collapse. People burned alive in temporal hellfire.
A lone figure kicked pebbles at the fourth cosmic velocity—each one a meteorite, wiping out tens of thousands.
Even Historia's mightiest cultivators fell before this being. What was it?
Then came the clash—between that thing and a presence of unfathomable cultivation. A sage, perhaps. Maybe more.
Among them, a smaller figure emerged—a radiant, grounded power. Was it a Sage? Or something else?
Strangely… Thales felt a kinship with the monster. That horrified him.
"What do you think, Thales?" Khalud asked. "Should the memory of this champion—this other—be preserved, despite the devastation it wrought? Knowing it could inspire another cycle of destruction?"
"How many innocents did it purge? How much blood did it drink?"
"...Should it stay?"
Before Thales could respond, Hypatia stepped forward.
"That sounds like Oblivion Walker rhetoric. Wisdom must stay. So long as we follow a rational path, the future generations will be better prepared."
"And you think those future generations—who would be obliterated with a breath by that monster—would be preserved?" Khalud countered.
He turned to Thales.
"Here. Try this."
He handed Thales a memory crystal.
Thales absorbed it.
"AHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Pain ripped through his soul. The collective suffering of the mnemonic faction—their despair, the trauma of their war with that being—burned through his every nerve.
"Should we remember this truth?" Khalud asked again.
Thales, face expressionless, nodded.
"Yes. Because if we forget this pain, we're doomed to repeat it. And I'll carry this weight. I won't heal. That's the nature of a mythic hero."
"The eternal quest—for the sake of all, at the sacrifice of one."
A custodian burst into the chamber, panicked.
"Senior Khalud! Memory rifts—appearing all over the Spire!"
Without hesitation, Hypatia surged her cultivation—stabilizing the rifts with fractal harmonics.
Thales moved, eyes scanning.
He saw them—wraiths. Fractured remnants. The Lost Legion.
"Forces of the Great Kaiser…" Thales muttered.
The spirits shouted:
"We will not be forgotten! We will not be oppressed—left behind in the gaps of history!"
Thales narrowed his eyes. Their movements weren't erratic. They had coordinated battle formations.
Who was leading them?
What were they after?
Liberation through erasure? Freedom by collapsing memory into chaos? Interesting.
His thoughts were interrupted.
"Miray," Aletheia said sharply, "assist us. These wretches are breaching containment. Historical manifestations are holding them off, but they're slipping through."
"Sure," Thales said. "I'll handle them."
He stopped time again and moved.
There—at the heart of the incursion—stood a man clad in cracked, angular stone armor. Silent. Solid.
The man turned and looked at Thales."Yo. You're Zagreus."
"...What's your name?" Thales asked.
"Hannibal Voidclaw."
"Why not join us?" Voidclaw said. "Let go of the unnecessary parts of your identity. Embrace your destiny—from the precipice of Oblivion."
"Are you coordinating this attack?"
"Yes," he said plainly.
"Good," Thales replied. "I'll help. We'll need to act the part, though."
"Naturally. When this is done, journey to the Forgotten Plains. This is only a distraction—we're masking the real paths for our greater assault. One year from now."
Thales nodded and blinked through time—back to where he'd come.
Now I have a choice, he thought.
What should it be?