Ikai made his way through a narrow crack in the catacombs, where loose sand gave way to rough stone, and the low ceiling forced him to crouch and crawl. Blood oozed from his wounded fingers, and his knees were covered in a layer of dust.
"Where am I crawling? Everything I see is just a trace of what has already passed. It's a fragment, a remnant, an echo of something that is gone. And what about me? What if I, too, am just a shadow, a frozen fragment of the past, forgotten amidst the ruins?"
For a moment, he considered stopping. And then, a ray of light appeared ahead.
It was vague, as if muted on all sides.
As if it were breaking through the thickness of the skin.
He knelt down, scooped up a handful of sand, and discovered it – a fragment.
Almost transparent, like glass. But strange, distorted.
It looked like a lens, but in the very center, something barely perceptible pulsed. A dull shade of life, as if someone were deeply asleep inside.
Ikai Liu brought the artifact to his eye, and everything changed. The narrow passage in the lens disappeared, and the catacombs vanished, but only in the lens. The skeletons on the floor were covered with flesh. Not living flesh, but rotting flesh, as if regressing back in time, in decay.
The sand beneath his feet thickened and darkened. It became something viscous, like blood.
And the sun...
It no longer shone. There was a huge eye in the sky, with a deep-set pupil that slowly narrowed as Ikai looked at it.
He pulled back the lens, his heart racing.
"What the...?"
But it was too late.
Hostility flared inside his chest. The star inside him vibrated as if rejecting the find. The burning under his skin became almost physical.
She wasn't satisfied with what he saw.
With how he saw it.
"You don't want me to know? What exactly?"
Ikai looked through the lens again, trembling. The burning intensified—but this time... the star accepted.
"Click"
A mechanism seemed to turn inside his chest.
And suddenly, a signal appeared from within, faint but clear.
[Object accepted.]
[Fragment integrated.]
At a sensory level, almost as if it were a fleeting thought, he saw something unfold before him, both elusive and profound.
It was as if the boundaries of perception had shifted, allowing him to see a truth beyond the reach of ordinary vision:
A cage. Not a physical room, but an emptiness within the glowing tapestry of his star, an empty space carved into the very fabric of its radiance.
It was empty, yet it pulsed with invisible energy, like a source of potential waiting to be filled.
And within this hollow lay a fragment, not just any fragment, but a key. Its facets shimmered faintly, as if imbued with the memory of a long-lost light.
He fit perfectly into the space, as if he had been created for this purpose, and his presence was natural and inevitable.
Inventory? Storage? No... these words were too crude, too limited, to capture the essence of what he was feeling. It wasn't about objects or possessions, but something much deeper. Memory? Yes, but not just a memory - it was a feeling. A resonance that echoed deep within his soul, leaving an indelible imprint.
Now, Ikai Liu felt the weight of the artifact's connection to guilt. But it wasn't his fault; it was someone else's.
The shard bore the shadow of remorse, as if it had absorbed the pain of a repentant heart. It was not a thing he had taken with him; it was a burden he had inherited, a sorrow that clung to him like an unwelcome passenger.
And yet the star did not reject him. Its light, usually so bright and unwavering, now shimmered with a softer glow—dim, almost hesitant, as if it, too, was grappling with the complexity of what had been presented to it.
But in that quiet, uncertain glow, there was acceptance. The star recognized the shard for what it was – not a threat, but a part of something greater. And in that moment, it welcomed it, its light enveloping the shard in a silent embrace.
"You're alive, and it's strange that my chest has a taste. You don't want to be everything."
"And if I bring you garbage, you'll burn me."
"And if it's a memory… if it's guilt… if it's something that wants to be forgiven…"
"You'll eat it. And leave it in me."
[The first cell is open].
[Object: Sandglass.]
[Type: Echo-perceptive fragment.]
[Property: Revealing the hidden.]
[Emotional response: Guilt.]
"Now that's interesting. For now, keep this thing, star. I'll keep crawling."
Every breath burned his throat with dust, rough and merciless, but the burning had long since become a familiar constant, woven into the fabric of his existence.
The salt in the sand burned the open wounds on his skin like stars etched deep into his memory, and the delicious taste of the air reminded him of everything he had lost and everything he had become.
Ikai... Ikai Liu...
The name echoed in his mind like a mantle he had draped over himself, even though it had never fit.
He had almost become accustomed to it. I almost believed that this was his true essence, that he was just a fragment, a vagabond, an empty shell with the embers of a long-extinguished flame still burning within.
But then he heard it. A voice, soft as a sigh, trembling on the edge of existence.
"Min Jae…"
Someone whispered, barely audible, like a ghost caught in the wind.
He froze, every muscle frozen in place. The whisper was thin, almost childlike, but it resonated with him in a deep, primal, unmistakable way.
It wasn't just a name; it was a key turning in the lock of his past, a thread pulling at the tangled web of his memories. The star in his chest, that strange, flickering light he had learned to ignore, suddenly pulsed with a fierce, unwanted life.
For a moment, the world around him blurred. The dust, the heat, the weight of the nameless years, all of it faded away as that single name echoed through his soul.
"Min Jae"
It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a memory. It was a truth that he had buried so deeply that he had convinced himself that it no longer existed.
And yet, there it was, calling out to him.
"Min Jae…"
The voice whispered, softer, more gentle, as if someone was reaching through thick layers of dust and the vast expanse of time to find him.
He carried a weight that he could not ignore, a resonance that seemed to permeate the very fabric of his being.
"Min Jae, you must not…"
He murmured again, this time with a hint of warning – perhaps a plea or an order.
Ikai Liu turned slowly, his movements cautious, as if he expected the very air to turn against him.
The catacombs he crawled through were silent and empty, stretching endlessly in both directions.
Behind him, the dim light barely illuminated the rough stone walls; ahead, there was only a faint flicker of dust motes dancing in the stifling air.
The wind howled softly, its voice a constant companion in this place, and the dry, brittle seaweed stubbornly clung to the rocks, as if refusing to let go of long-buried memories.
But deep down, he knew it wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't an echo, a fragment of his fractured mind playing tricks on him.
Someone knew his name. Someone was calling him.
And then he saw them.
Low stone slabs, weathered and ancient, lay half buried in the ground, their surfaces smooth from time.
On one of them, letters stood out clearly, carved deep into the stone, as if burned there by a force beyond human hands.
"MIN JAE."
His real name. A name he had almost forgotten, a name he had tried so desperately to forget. Underneath it were other words, not carved, but scratched, as if the stone were flesh yielding to a desperate plea or a final command.
"YOU SHOULDN'T…YOU SHOULDN'T BE LIKE THIS…DON'T TRY TO COME BACK."
The words were uneven, as if they had been written in a hurry or in pain.
Below them were two more lines, almost hidden by the shadow of the stone.:
"HERE, PLEASE, IT'S GOOD."
"You, the Third."
He stared at the inscriptions, and his breath caught. The air became heavier, colder, as if the stones themselves were holding their breath, waiting for his next step.
Min Jae, or was it Ikai now? He felt the weight of those words pressing down on him, each letter a chain, each sentence a cage.
But something inside him refused to be contained. Something deep, wild, and unyielding stirred in response to the whisper that called his name.