"There's a difference between bravery and stupidity."
"I'm aware."
"Are you? Because charging straight at a problem isn't always the answer."
"It's worked so far."
"So far. But the Shore has a way of punishing patterns. You need unpredictability, not just strength."
A long silence. Then, reluctant: "And you're offering to teach me unpredictability?"
"Someone has to keep you alive long enough to burn down whatever you're planning to burn down."
Nephis shot up in bed, breathing faster than she should be. The dream—no, the memory?—was already fading, but the emotion lingered.
Exasperation. Fondness. Something achingly bittersweet beneath the criticism.
Someone had stood beside her on the Forgotten Shore. Someone who'd predicted her moves, covered her weaknesses, survived alongside her through impossible odds. Someone who'd kept her alive not through strength, but through the kind of cautious cunning that complemented her direct approach perfectly.
Someone who'd been right about her patterns. About her predictability. About the danger of always charging forward.
She pressed her hand against her chest, trying to hold onto the fragment before it dissolved completely. But like always, it slipped away, leaving only the certainty that someone had once known her well enough to challenge her—and she'd trusted them enough to listen.
The questions followed her into the day, unanswered. Yet another mystery she was stuck with.
On the other side of the globe, far away away from territories of the great clans, something similar took place. Nephis wasn't the only one who had realized these strange fractures in their memories.
3 old friends had decided to meet up after a while.
Effie had outdone herself with the cooking—which wasn't saying much, given her relaxed standards, but the food was hot, plentiful, and that's what mattered. She carried dishes to the table with her usual comfortable efficiency, that absolutely content expression on her face that made her seem like the most satisfied person in the world.
"Dig in before it gets cold!~" she said before plopping down on her chair with the kind of grace that only came with being a saint. Raised by Wolves certainly was rather carefree these days.
To the left side of the experienced hunter, sat one of the most beautiful seer the world had ever seen. Cassie. She smiled,her blindness not stopping from her expression lighting up. "It smells wonderful. Thank you for cooking as always."
"No problem. I was hungry anyway," Effie started serving herself rather generous portions. Feeding herself was always the priority, and after three years surviving the Dark City's streets alone, she'd never take a full belly for granted.
Kai reached for the dishes, his careful nature making him assess the spread before taking his share. It was an old habit—making sure everyone had enough, being considerate in the small ways that his decent nature demanded.
Before he paused.
Taking a moment to inspect the table,he... inquired hesitantly.
"Effie," he said slowly, his voice carrying that tone he used when something didn't quite add up. "This is... a lot of food."
"I was hungry," Effie repeated, but even as she said it, she was looking at the table with a slight frown creasing her usually relaxed expression.
It wasn't just a lot of food. It was food for four people. Maybe more. Generous portions arranged across multiple dishes, enough variety that it suggested she'd been trying to accommodate different preferences, different appetites.
And one of the dishes—a simple but hearty stew, thick with protein and carbohydrates—was clearly meant for someone who needed to put on weight. The kind of meal you'd prepare for someone too thin, someone who'd been starving themselves or simply couldn't keep weight on their frame.
Effie genuinely looked confused, staring at the feast she'd prepared like she couldn't quite understand her own actions. Strange.
"I don't..." Effie trailed off, that cheerful exterior cracking just enough to show the battle-scarred warrior underneath. Despite her carefree demeanor, she was extremely intelligent. Cool-headed. She'd survived three years alone through observation and adaptation, not through luck.
And right now, she was observing her own behavior with growing unease. This certainly wasn't the first time.
"I keep doing this," she admitted, setting down her fork with more force than necessary. "Making too much food. Setting up training equipment for more people than show up. Making comments like I'm expecting someone to respond who isn't there."
Her laid-back demeanor was fracturing, showing the version of herself that had endured heartbreak and sorrow, that knew every decision was frightening and heavy and difficult even when she hid it behind cheerfulness.
"It's like my body knows something my mind doesn't," Effie continued, staring at the stew meant for someone who wasn't there. "Like I'm preparing for someone who... who should be here. Who needs to eat more, needs to bulk up, needs—"
Pauses. Where did that come from?
She immediately stopped, because finishing that sentence meant acknowledging something that terrified her more than she wanted to admit.
Kai's ability confirmed everything she said as truth. No exaggeration. Just genuine confusion from someone who prided herself on being an open book, on understanding herself and her motivations.
"I've been having similar problems," Kai admitted, because if anyone would understand, it would be these two. His oldest friends. People he'd survived impossible odds with.
He'd been proud of overcoming stage fright and social anxiety, of navigating unpalatable situations with grace and elegance. But lately, his social instincts—usually so reliable—kept misfiring in specific ways.
"When I tell stories," Kai said carefully, "I keep leaving pauses. Not for dramatic effect—I know how to do that. These are different. Like I'm waiting for someone to interject. To add a detail, make a joke, finish a thought I've started."
"And in meetings," Kai continued, his collected demeanor slipping slightly, "I keep asking questions to someone who isn't there. My mouth opens, I turn slightly to the side, and then—nothing. Just me, looking like an idiot who forgot what he was going to say."
The sanctuary's warmth suddenly felt stifling. The three of them sat around too much food, prepared for a fourth person who wasn't there and had apparently never been there.
Cassie had been quiet through all of this, her blind eyes fixed on nothing, but her expression growing more troubled with each confession.
"Cassie?" Effie prompted gently, her concern for her friend overriding her own unease. "You've been awfully quiet."
Cassie's hands were folded in her lap, but Kai noticed they were trembling slightly. The oracle's face, usually serene despite the burden of foresight, carried a weight that made Kai's careful alertness spike into actual worry.
"My visions are broken," Cassie said finally, each word deliberate and heavy.
Effie and Kai exchanged glances. Cassie never said her visions were broken. Incomplete, sometimes. Unclear, occasionally. But broken?
"Not broken like they're wrong," Cassie clarified, seeming to sense their concern despite her blindness. "Broken like... fractured. Shattered. Like I'm trying to see through a mirror that's been smashed and poorly reassembled."
She turned her gaze toward the table, toward the too-much food, towards where the smell was coming from, towards the space between them that felt somehow occupied despite being empty.
"The threads of fate," Cassie continued, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. "I've always seen them as connections. Lines between people, between choices, between moments. They weave together, branch apart, create the tapestry of possible futures."
Her hands tightened in her lap.
"But now... they're off. Tipped wrong. Like someone took scissors to the tapestry and cut out entire sections, then tried to tie the remaining threads together as if nothing was missing. The pattern still exists, but it's wrong. Asymmetrical. Unbalanced."
Who could be crazy enough to do that, huh? Surely not someone like Song of the Fallen, right?
"There are threads that lead nowhere," Cassie said, and for the first time since Kai had known her, she sounded frightened. "Connections that reach out from all of us—from you, from Effie, from Nephis, from so many others—and they just... end. In void. In absence. Like they're trying to connect to something that should be there but isn't."
She raised one trembling hand, gesturing vaguely at the space across from her.
"And sometimes, in my visions, I see shadows of futures that can't exist. Outcomes that branch from decisions no one remembers making. Moments where the group dynamics shift in ways that only make sense if there's someone else present. Someone who affects the pattern, who changes the weave, who's essential to how everything fits together."
Cassie's eyes were wet now, tears dripping down her face.
"I see futuresss where we are whole," she whispered. "Where the pattern makes sense, where the threads connect properly, where the tapestry isn't torn and poorly mended. But I can't see who makes us whole. I can only see the absence, the void, the place where someone should be. Like a missing piece."
The sanctuary was silent except for the sound of Cassie's quiet crying.
Effie stared at the extra food she'd prepared, at the stew meant for someone too thin, and her usual contentment—her fundamental satisfaction with life—looked shaken to its core.
Kai felt his careful composure crack completely, because his ability was confirming something impossible: the greatest deception wasn't something anyone had said or done.
It was something everyone had forgotten. Someone everyone had forgotten.
"So we're all feeling it," Effie said finally, her voice lacking its usual cheerfulness. "The gaps. The sense that someone's missing even though no one should be there."
"Not no one," Kai corrected quietly, his ability screaming truth at him. "Someone. Someone specific. Someone who..."
He couldn't finish. Didn't know how to finish. Because how do you describe someone you can't remember? How do you even mourn a person whose name you don't know?
Cassie wiped her tears with shaking hands. "The threads reach for them. All of our threads. Yours, mine, Effie's, Nephis's. We're all connected to this absence. This void. This person who should exist but doesn't."
"Someone who's skinny." Effie added, looking at the stew with something like grief. What a waste of food!
"Someone always honest, never lying to me." Kai said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Someone who's essential to the pattern," Cassie finished. "Someone without whom we're all just... fractured. Incomplete. Broken."
The three of them sat in the sanctuary they'd built together, surrounded by too much food, speaking around an absence they couldn't name, feeling the weight of someone who wasn't there but should have been.
Someone who'd been there. Who'd sat at this table, eaten this food, been part of their group in ways so fundamental that removing them had left wounds that wouldn't heal.
The grim silent is soon interrupted when the sanctuary's door opened without warning, and all three of them turned sharply—old instincts from the Dark City dying hard.
Nephis was standing in doorway, her silver armor gleaming even in the warm light of the sanctuary. Her white hair was slightly disheveled, as if she'd flown here in haste, and her gray eyes swept across the scene with the kind of assessment that had kept her alive through impossible odds.
She took in the too-much food. The three troubled faces. The palpable tension in the air, immediately catching on.
"I felt it too," Nephis said simply, stepping inside and closing the door behind her., choosing not to elaborate.
Effie let out a sigh of relief before exclaiming,"Of course you did. Pull up a chair, oh Changing Star! We were just having a lovely crisis about our possibly fictional memories."
Nephis did not smile at the attempt at humor. She moved to the table with her characteristic directness, but instead of sitting, she stood there, one hand pressed against her chest in a gesture that looked almost unconscious.
"It's not fictional," Nephis said, her voice carrying absolute certainty. "Someone is missing. Someone vital. I've been investigating for months, and every piece of evidence points to the same impossible conclusion."
She pulled out a worn piece of paper from her armor and placed it on the table between them.
"Take a look. Essence of combat is murder. You kill or get killed." Nephis explained. "I clearly remember discussing about this way back on the forgotten shore. "But I don't remember developing it alone. I remember teaching it. Discussing it. Refining it overtime."
Cassie turned toward the paper with eerie precision,where she suspected it would be, as if she could see the weight it carried.
"With whom?" She asked after a pause.
"I don't know." The admission came after a long moment. For the first time in her life, she felt unsure. She was Changing Star—direct, powerful, someone who always had answers. Uncertainty didn't suit her. "I've searched every database I can access. Torn through records. Questioned everyone who knew me on the Forgotten Shore. And there's nothing. No documentation. No evidence. Just... gaps."
She finally sat, her armor scraping slightly against the chair. For a moment, she looked less like a Saint and more like someone exhausted by carrying an impossible burden.
"I had a house...after I became a Master." Nephis continued. "Two bedrooms, both used. Training equipment for two different fighting styles. A kitchen organized for two people's preferences. I lived there for nearly two years."
"Alone?" Kai asked, though his ability was already telling him the answer.
"According to every official record, yes. According to my lease, my utility bills, my registration—I lived alone." Nephis's hand curled into a fist on the table. "But the house tells a different story. Someone lived there with me. Someone who trained with me, ate with me, existed in that space alongside me."
"Someone who needs to eat more," Effie said quietly, gesturing at the stew she'd prepared. Pouts.
.
.
.
.
.
Gobbles it up herself.
"The threads reach for them," Cassie said, her voice still shaky from earlier tears. "From all of us. We're all connected to this absence. This void shaped like a person."
Nephis nodded slowly, and when she spoke again, her voice carried the weight of someone who'd been alone with this knowledge for too long.
"I keep having fragments," she admitted. "Conversations I can't remember. Advice I don't remember receiving. Moments where someone challenged my approach, forced me to think differently, taught me things I needed to survive."
She looked at each of them in turn—Effie, Kai, Cassie. Her cohort. Her friends.
"And the worst part," Nephis continued, her voice dropping low, "is that I think... I think they were there from the very beginning. The Forgotten Shore. The Dark City. Everything that forged us into who we are now."
"They were part of the cohort," Kai said, his ability confirming it as truth the moment he spoke the words.
"Yes." Nephis's hand pressed against her chest again, over where her philosophy paper rested against her heart. "Someone who stood beside us. Who survived alongside us. Who was essential enough that removing them left holes in everything—our memories, our instincts, our understanding of our own past."
"So what do we do?" Effie asked, her voice lacking its usual laid-back tone. "How do we find someone we can't remember? How do we prove they existed when every record says otherwise?"
Nephis was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her words carried the determination that had carried her through so many impossible trials.
"We look for the fractures." she said. "The places where reality doesn't quite fit together. The gaps in our memories. The instincts that assume someone who isn't there. We document everything. Compare our experiences. Find the pattern."
"Someone erased them," Nephis continued, her voice hardening with something like anger. "Someone or something with enough power to rewrite reality, to edit memories, to remove a person from existence so thoroughly that even we forgot them. It must be the spell. There's no other answer.."
"But they didn't erase everything," Cassie said softly, understanding dawning in her expression. "They couldn't erase the shape they left behind. The connections. The threads that still reach for them even when we can't remember who they reach toward."
The blind seer does, however, pauses for a moment, questioning to herself if she was successful or not. Such a consequence for almost everyone would make sense. She doesn't share her thoughts though, chosing to keep them to herself.
Nephis looked at each of them, and for the first time since entering the sanctuary, something like relief crossed her face. She'd been alone with this knowledge, this wrongness, this impossible quest.
But now she wasn't alone anymore.
"Then we start documenting," Nephis said, her voice taking on the commanding tone that had led them through nightmares.
"Every fragment. Every gap. Every moment where our instincts assume someone who isn't there. We compare timelines, look for consistencies, build a profile of someone from the absence they left behind."
She pulled out more papers from her armor—notes she'd been keeping, observations she'd documented, evidence of her solitary investigation.
"Someone existed," Nephis said with absolute conviction. "Someone who mattered enough that reality itself couldn't fully erase them. Someone who left marks too deep to be completely removed."
"Someone who's probably skinny and needs to eat more. A doofus, most likely!~" Effie added, looking at her stew with something between amusement and sorrow.
"Someone honest in both worlds" Kai said quietly.
"Someone essential to the world" Cassie finished.
The four of them sat around the table in the sanctuary, having realized something was indeed wrong. They weren't simply hallucinating.
The conversation had wound down into quieter territory—each of them retreating into their own thoughts, processing the weight of what they'd acknowledged. Before Nephis came to a realization.
Rain.
A student of hers? Yes...She's certainly someone who's pretty close enough with them provide some context.
"There's someone else," Nephis said abruptly, breaking the contemplative silence.
The others looked up, waiting for her to continue.
"Someone who might remember," Nephis continued, her voice taking on that focused intensity that meant she'd found a thread to pull. "Or at least, someone whose memories might have gaps that align with ours."
"Who?" Kai asked, his attention fully engaged now.
"Rain." The name felt significant on Nephis's tongue, though she couldn't quite articulate why. "My student. From the Song Clan."
Effie's eyebrows rose. "You took a student? Since when do you have the patience for teaching?"
It was a fair question. Nephis had never been the mentoring type—too focused on her own goals, too direct in her approach to waste time on others who couldn't keep up.
"I don't know," Nephis admitted, still confused. "Perhaps it was a favor? Only time will tell..."
Cassie leaned forward slightly, rather curious now. "When did you start training her?"
"Shortly after I ascended to Master. Maybe a few months after." Nephis frowned, trying to pin down specifics that kept sliding away from her mental grasp. "I remember the training sessions clearly. Remember teaching her how to move, how to think like a fighter, how to understand combat as it truly is."
Because someone had convinced her it mattered. Someone whose opinion she valued enough to act against her own nature.
Someone who wasn't there anymore.
Nephis stood abruptly, decision crystallizing with the sudden clarity that had always characterized her approach to problems. Once she identified a course of action, she pursued it with single-minded determination.
"I need to talk to Rain," she said, already mentally planning the journey. "If someone convinced me to take a student, they might have interacted with her. Might have left impressions, suggestions, comments that Rain would remember even if I don't."
"You think she'll have memories you don't?" Effie asked, skeptical but not dismissive.
"I think she might have gaps that align with mine." Nephis began gathering her papers, organizing them with swift efficiency. "If this person was present during the early training sessions, if they offered input or guidance or even just watched—Rain would have noticed. Would have wondered who they were, why they mattered to me."
"And if she has gaps too," Kai said, understanding dawning in his expression, "if her memories have the same missing pieces—"
"Then we have more evidence," Nephis finished. "More proof that someone existed and was systematically erased. More data points to build a profile from absence."
Having made her decision, Nephis moved before pausing slightly at the door,looking back at the three of them .
"Document everything," she said, echoing her earlier instruction. "Every fragment, every gap, every moment where you feel something is missing. When I return, we'll compare notes. Build a more complete picture."
"A picture of someone from their absence," Cassie said softly. "A portrait painted in negative space."
"Yes." Nephis's gray eyes burned with determination. "And when we have enough pieces, when we understand who was taken from us—"
She didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to. They all understood what came next.
Finding out who was missing was step one.
Step two would be figuring out how to bring them back.
No matter what it took.
No matter what power they had to challenge.
Nephis left the sanctuary, silver armor gleaming as she headed toward the Song Clan estate where her student waited. Where answers might hide in the gaps of a young woman's memories, in the spaces where someone should have been but wasn't.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
On the other side of world, a certain treacherous shadow, hidden within his sister, suddenly looked up, frowning as a strange sense of foreboding over took it. Something...big is about to take place. Even if it didn't have the Weaver's mask, it could somehow see it.
Fractures. Lots of fractures. The world isn't ready for what's coming next.