"It wasn't that the world forgot how to move. It was that it remembered too precisely, and refused to change."
The voice didn't return the next day.
But the world didn't feel any quieter.
It felt... weird. Like a music box trying to play a tune just slightly out of sync with itself.
Orin and Junie didn't speak much as they left the terminal. Junie carried her sketchpad with unusual care, now keeping it wrapped in cloth and bound tight with cord. They had both agreed—whether spoken aloud or not—that whatever was happening to the city was tied to the sketches.
And to the voice.
They followed the next clue: Find the bell. The tower still remembers.
It sounded like nonsense. A metaphor, maybe.
But Junie had drawn that tower before. Several times.
From different angles. In different weather. Once burning. Once crumbling. Once entirely buried beneath roots and wire.
It wasn't a single place.
It was a memory resisting erasure.
And they were going to find it.
[01 – The Loop Begins]
The streets were quiet that morning. Too quiet.
Even for Bray Hollow.
The usual behavioural glitches were more pronounced: pedestrians started sentences and didn't finish them. Drones paused mid-air for full seconds before blinking away. A child tripped and never hit the ground—he simply blinked out of existence and reappeared three steps ahead, untouched.
The recursion net was cracking.
Time wasn't breaking.
It was slipping.
Orin noticed it first at the intersection near the old tram depot.
They passed a man walking a three-legged dog—an unusual enough sight to be memorable.
But five minutes later, they passed him again.
Same man.
Same dog.
Same limp.
Same expression.
Same exact stride.
Junie stopped walking.
"That's not a short-loop," she said.
Orin blinked. "Then what is it?"
She turned slowly, her gaze distant.
"A memory drag."
"A what?"
Junie was pale now. She pulled out her sketchpad and flipped to a page that showed a perfect circle drawn in thick, black pencil.
"A loop is when the System resets a piece of the world. A moment, a conversation. But a drag is when the memory tries to pull itself forward, but can't. It remembers what it was—and it repeats out of refusal."
Orin glanced back at the man and dog.
They were gone.
And yet, he could still hear their footsteps.
Even the echo refused to move on.
[02 – Entering the Drag]
They arrived at the centre of the Old Quarter by late afternoon—though it still felt like morning.
Time refused to register properly now. Watches glitched. Clouds hung too still. Their shadows didn't move.
The bell tower stood near the remains of an old civic plaza, overgrown with ivy and half-swallowed by cracked concrete.
Junie gasped when she saw it.
"That's it."
The bell was still intact. High above. Encased in a rusting frame of wrought iron and metal lace.
But the structure around it was wrong.
It shouldn't exist here.
Orin looked at Junie's page.
The angle matched perfectly.
He looked up again.
The plaza was distorted.
Shimmering at the edges, like heat over asphalt.
"Is this a memory?" Orin asked.
Junie stepped forward.
"No. It's a memory trying to become real again."
As they stepped past the threshold of the plaza, something shifted.
The world didn't flicker. It folded.
The moment they crossed an invisible line near the base of the tower, Orin felt the shift ripple through his spine like cold lightning.
The soundscape around them changed.
Distant birdsong stopped.
Wind reversed direction.
And above them, the bell tolled once.
Low.
Slow.
But the sound echoed unnaturally—as if striking through different layers of time.
Orin clutched his head.
He wasn't in the plaza anymore.
[03 – The Loop Within the Drag]
He stood in the same spot.
But it was morning again.
Junie was beside him.
Still. Calm.
Like nothing had changed.
The plaza stretched ahead.
The bell tower gleamed in full daylight.
Orin blinked.
Hard.
"Junie."
She turned. "Yeah?"
"What time is it?"
She checked her cracked watch.
"6:17."
He looked down at his.
"6:17."
A second passed.
Still 6:17.
Another second.
Still.
He exhaled slowly.
"We're inside the drag."
Junie's eyes widened.
And the bell tolled again.
This time, it triggered everything.
The plaza shimmered. Ghostly images appeared around them—blurs of people walking in paths they could not touch. Men in coats. A girl selling fruit at a forgotten stall. A pair of children running up tower steps, laughing in silence.
And there, among the echoes—
Was Junie.
Hair longer. Eyes brighter. Wearing a robe that shimmered with the same pattern Lira's bodysuit held.
Junie gasped.
"I know this."
"You've been here."
"No—no, I was this."
[04 – Collapse]
Junie moved toward her echo self.
Orin tried to grab her wrist.
"Wait—!"
Too late.
She stepped through the ghost.
And the loop snapped.
Reality convulsed.
The bell tolled again—but this time, in reverse.
Like a recording played backward.
The tower above them fractured.
Cracks rippled down the bell's mount.
The children vanished.
So did the ghost vendors.
Junie dropped to her knees.
Orin rushed forward—but stopped when he saw her face.
Tears streamed from her eyes, but she wasn't crying.
She was remembering.
"They called me Seira," she whispered.
Orin's heart stopped.
"What?"
Junie clutched her head.
"I—I saw her. From the inside. Not like a dream. Like a relapse. A recursion pull. I was standing on those stairs. I was waiting for someone. I wasn't drawing the tower—I was inside it."
She gasped.
"And the bell... it only rang when someone chose to forget."
[05 – The Exit That Wasn't]
They tried to leave.
But the plaza didn't let them.
Each time they crossed the threshold, they reappeared at the opposite end.
A memory trap.
Not a loop. Not quite.
Orin thought of what Kaito's voice had said:
"The tower still remembers."
He stepped to the bell's central pedestal.
There, etched in the stone, almost invisible beneath moss and debris:
KAITO WAS HERE.
SHE FORGOT. I REMEMBERED.
AND NOW I AM TRAPPED.
Orin placed his palm against the stone.
And the Diver symbol ignited on his skin.
The plaza trembled.
Junie screamed.
And the bell rang a third time.
Suddenly, all the air sucked inward.
The sky above collapsed into itself—pixels folding downward, shadows peeling away.
And the world reset—
But only for them.
They were standing just outside the plaza again.
In the alley.
As if they had never gone in.
The sun was right where it had been before.
Their watches read 6:17.
Again.
Orin turned to Junie.
"You said they called you Seira."
Junie shook.
"I—I don't remember remembering."
He placed a hand on her shoulder.
"You don't need to yet."
Then he looked toward the tower.
Even from this distance, the bell seemed to shimmer.
Watching them.
Waiting.
Junie glimpsed a version of herself named Seira—and the plaza looped to protect the secret. But if she once chose to forget… what did she sacrifice to survive?
© 2025 Ofelia B Webb. All rights reserved.
This is an original work published on WebNovel.