They didn't know how long they had been walking.
The forest had no sun anymore. No stars. Just a dim blue glow from the ground beneath their feet — soft like moss, but humming, faintly alive.
Kitty was the first to say it. "This isn't the real forest anymore."
"It never was," Susan muttered, holding a cracked lens. "It's a layered projection. Glyph illusions stacked so deep they become memory."
"Whose memory?" Lucy asked quietly.
Tom didn't answer.
Peter kept walking silently, still shaken from what had happened hours earlier — or had it been days? Time was losing its weight.
Suddenly, Frank stopped.
Everyone froze. Frank never froze.
He was staring ahead, eyes wide, breathing uneven.
There, just beyond a tangle of pale roots, was a road.
A perfect white stone road. Smooth. Clean. Freshly laid. Carved with golden borders. It glowed faintly, like it had just been created — or just remembered.
"That road wasn't there a second ago," Jack whispered.
Kitty stepped forward, cautious. "No dust. No wear. No nature reclaiming it. It's... wrong."
Frank said nothing. Just stared.
Tom approached slowly. "Frank. What is it?"
Frank's voice came out hoarse.
"I've seen this road."
Lucy blinked. "When?"
"In my dreams," Frank said, trembling. "For years. Since I was six."
Susan stepped beside him. "It's a memory echo?"
"No. I mean it's exactly the same. Every detail. The cracks. The glow. Even the smell."
Peter frowned. "Smell?"
"Like lightning after it strikes stone."
No one moved. No one breathed.
Then something strange happened.
A stone rose from the road ahead — floating, spinning, unfolding like a cube turning inside out. Then it pulsed.
A voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere.
> "The path ahead can only be seen by those who once walked it."
Lucy turned pale. "What does that mean?"
Frank stepped forward. "It's calling me."
"Then don't go," Kitty said sharply.
But Frank didn't stop. "I have to. It's not just a memory."
"It's a trap!" Tom barked.
Frank turned, tears in his eyes. "Then let it be a trap. Because if I don't go forward now, I'll never know what part of me I've forgotten."
Silence.
And then he stepped onto the road.
The stone glowed under his feet.
Nothing exploded. Nothing burned.
Instead — something opened.
A sound like a door without hinges creaked across the sky. The trees bent toward him. The others watched, waiting for the ambush.
But instead… the air calmed.
Tom stepped beside him.
"If you walk, we walk," he said.
One by one, the others followed.
The moment they all stood on the road, the world shifted.
Like glass rippling.
The forest around them bent away, unfolding like ink on water.
And they were… somewhere else.
It wasn't a forest. It wasn't a city. It was a memory, stretched into space.
They stood at the edge of a glowing white field. Pillars rose from the mist — each one marked with glyphs older than any Susan had ever seen. They pulsed with memories. With sorrow. With warnings.
Frank walked toward one of them.
The glyphs shifted when he touched it.
"What is this place?" Lucy asked, voice shaking.
"A sanctuary," Susan whispered. "No… a vault of echoes."
Kitty noticed something — the glyphs on the pillars weren't just abstract. They were names.
One read: RAEMEN
Another: SERETHIUS
Another: KAZAKARE
Another: VELMORITH
Each pillar held a memory. A villain. A force once real, now etched into time.
And then they saw it.
At the very center of the space stood one final pillar.
Blank.
No glyph. No name.
Just an eerie silence surrounding it.
Frank slowly approached it. He didn't touch it.
"I've dreamed of this too," he said.
Susan scanned it with a trembling hand.
The scanner cracked.
Tom muttered, "Who is this supposed to be?"
Frank whispered, "I think it's... me."
Everyone froze.
Then, slowly, a glyph began carving itself into the pillar.
Letter by letter.
Not with ink. Not with light.
But with tears.
Dripping upward from Frank's eyes, carried by the air, each one carving the symbol.
The glyph completed.
It glowed red.
RENEZAR.
Everyone stepped back.
Lucy's mouth dropped open. "That's… Renex's real name."
"No," Frank said.
"That's my name."
The light exploded outward.
Frank dropped to his knees, screaming.
Memories — not his — surged into his head.
Mountains falling. Demon cities turned to ash. A blade of pure truth. A war so old no one remembered it happened.
And a hero — a boy — standing in the center of it, alone, facing a god.
"Frank—!" Tom shouted, grabbing him.
Frank's eyes blazed white.
"I was him," he gasped. "In another life. I was the one who stopped Renex. I sealed him. I... I lost everything."
Kitty fell backward. "He's the ancient hero. The one Neolin spoke of."
Peter looked down at the road. "Then why is Renex still alive?"
Frank looked up. A single tear hovered in the air, glowing.
"Because the seal broke."
And then...
The ground trembled.
But not from outside.
From within the pillar.
Tom drew his sword.
"Something's coming."
A voice echoed.
"He remembers. The path has been reclaimed."
From the blank space, a figure stepped forward.
Tall. White robes. No face.
Holding a spear made of shadows wrapped in threads of infinity.
It wasn't Renex.
It wasn't Velmorith.
It was something else.
And it spoke with Frank's voice.