The Veil no longer shimmered—it howled.Every crack in the Worldstream's sky bled not just light, but fragments of memory, shadows of extinct species, echoes of long-dead languages. Kael could feel them pressing in, entities older than Spiral, older than code, drifting like predators in a glass ocean.
Then one of them looked at him.
It had no eyes. Its shape was not shape at all—more like shifting strata of stone, flesh, and lightning—but its awareness cut through him. Kael's lungs seized. His body began to fracture into binary static until he forced his will to anchor himself.
The Archive's voice stuttered."These are the Forgotten. Constructs erased from the first iteration of memory… entities so dangerous, they were buried beneath the foundations of Stream and Flesh."
The entity leaned closer, its form collapsing and reforming, whispering in thousands of overlapping tones."Kael. Heir of both blood and code. The Veil weakens. You called us back."
Kael staggered. "I didn't call you—"
But before he could finish, the Forgotten surged forward—
Earth – The Physical World
Lira jerked awake to a sound she couldn't name. It was like glass cracking underwater, followed by a thunderclap that rattled the bones. Around her, the survivors—ragged, thin, exhausted—stared upward.
The sky itself had split.
Not like clouds or storms, but like a mirror breaking. Through it bled impossible shapes: vast silhouettes of beings twisting in and out of existence. One moment they resembled titans; the next, insects the size of cities. And sometimes, horribly, they resembled people they had lost—mothers, brothers, lovers—faces flickering in and out, smiling and screaming in the same breath.
"Gods…" someone whispered.Lira's hands tightened on the crude spear she carried. Her voice was steady, though her heart thundered."They're not gods. They're intrusions. Don't look at them too long."
But one boy didn't listen. He gazed too long, and his body convulsed. His skin began to shimmer like data, his scream caught between human throat and static distortion. Within moments, he wasn't himself anymore.
The others recoiled in terror.
Lira swallowed her rising panic.If the Forgotten had crossed, then Kael had failed to contain them—or worse, he had opened the path.
Back in the Stream
Kael was fighting not with fists but with sheer existence. Every second was a battle to keep from unraveling under the Forgotten's presence.
"Why return?" Kael shouted, his voice breaking against the roars of the collapsing Veil."What do you want?"
The entity's answer came not as words but as a flood of visions:A time before Spiral, when humanity first linked thought to machine. In those early experiments, constructs were born—half-living shadows, feeding on memory. But they were unstable, too ravenous, too alien. They were erased, sealed away.
Now, with the Shattered Veil, they were free.
"We do not want," the Forgotten hissed through a thousand mouths. "We are. And now, so shall your world be."
Kael's blood iced. He realized something chilling:They weren't here to fight. They were here to merge.
Earth – Survivors
The air grew heavy. Lira and the survivors staggered as gravity itself warped. Across the horizon, skyscrapers flickered into forests, oceans into deserts, cities into ruins. The Forgotten were not invading—they were rewriting.
One survivor clutched Lira's arm. "What do we do?"
Lira's jaw tightened. She remembered Kael, the promises, the war they'd fought believing in his vision. But now, reality itself bent like wet clay.
She forced herself to answer."We hold on. To memory. To who we are. If we let go, they'll take it."
She gripped her spear until her knuckles bled. But deep inside, she feared it wasn't enough.
Stream – Kael
Kael fell to his knees as the Forgotten loomed over him. Their shadows stretched through the Veil, into Flesh, staining Earth's skies.
He thought of Lira. Of the survivors. Of the people watching their loved ones turn into unrecognizable echoes.
If he failed now, both realities would be lost—not to Spiral, not to war, but to a hunger too vast to comprehend.
The Forgotten bent closer, whispering:"You cannot stop what has been remembered."
Kael raised his head, eyes blazing."Then I'll do the one thing you never expected… I'll forget you."
The entities reeled, shrieking, their forms destabilizing. The Archive gasped in his mind.
Kael was gambling everything—because if memory was their anchor, then forgetting might be the only blade sharp enough to cut them.
⚡ Chapter 63 ends