Nothing was the same. The world I remembered was gone.
The implant, which later introduced itself as INFRA-F1RT20, though I’ve taken to calling it “Infra”, relayed every piece of information without missing a beat. It was difficult to comprehend how a chip lodged in my brain could know so much. But the weight of what it revealed to me made my stomach churn.
Everything I once knew, every fragment of memory I clung to, was history, buried beneath centuries of change. According to the data, I had been in a coma for three years, a fact confirmed by a bunch of medical mumbo jumbo that I didn’t quite understand.
But my memories were of things long past. Centuries past, in fact. When I mentioned any of it to Infra, it showed no difference in expression or tone, but I liked to think if it could show emotion it would be surprised. Doctors, for instance, the profession for people who worked in hospitals, weren’t even called doctors anymore. That term had fallen out of use four hundred and fifty years ago.
Four. Hundred. Fifty. Years.
The sheer gap in time hit me like a punch to the gut. I probably needed to have a retry at that conversation with that woman, but the deluge of information, this whirlwind of a future I woke up in, made it hard to even process the words I’d need to speak to her.
Still, beneath the swirling mess of confusion and the thick cloud of melancholy that weighed on me, another emotion began to take root.
Fascination.
According to Infra, the language which I thought I was speaking, English as it was told to me, was something entirely different. Oculat. Which simply meant “The New Language.” Apparently, I was already fluent in it, though I had no idea how that was possible.
Infra said my mind was seamlessly translating everything, but the written form of Oculat still jarred me. Reading it felt like deciphering hieroglyphs. Words like “Arimus” felt strange because they didn’t exist in English. My brain couldn’t recognize them.
None of that made sense to me either, but worrying about the smaller details weren’t my main points of concern currently.
The explanation? According to Infra, illiteracy.
“No,” I argued with it one night, “I know how to read. That’s not it.”
It didn’t budge on the point, though. I couldn’t accept it. I’d seen words before. I knew language, words, and letters. But here I was, struggling to connect the dots.
Infra explained how Oculat had emerged as one of the “New Tongues,” languages forged from the mixing of dozens of dialects on a single landmass. It was an etymologist's worse nightmare, the merging of languages to form unity. Yet, for those that saw it as a dream, it hadn’t exactly gone as planned.
"How many wars since Oculat was created?" I asked Infra.
Unity clearly wasn’t as effective as they’d hoped.
The deeper we dove into politics, economics, and philosophy, the further away I felt from understanding the world. The very concept of governance had evolved so far beyond what I knew.
The systems and hierarchies felt alien, not because they were intricate, but because they seemed to lack the basic, raw essence of humanity I remembered. Humor, passion, the simple pleasures, they seemed relics of a forgotten past, replaced with something far colder and less forgiving. It was no longer that beautiful world that I saw, it was something far worse.
Still, Infra explained everything it could, several times over, but I was left struggling to retain the flood of new knowledge. My mind felt like it was walking through quicksand, every bit of new information pulling me deeper into confusion.
Infra reassured me that it was normal, that humans needed time to adapt. But it didn’t stop the feeling of helplessness.
Even so, there was one thing I had no trouble remembering,
Magic.
Or as Infra called it, Heartiles and Nemis. Two words that stirred an unbelievable sense of fascination inside me.
Heartiles, it explained, were cores of magical energy that resided in the chest of every living being. Nemis were companions, creatures, forces, beings, connected to those Heartiles.
Everyone with a Heartile could form a bond with a Nemis, though Infra was infuriatingly vague about the details.
I wanted more. I wanted everything. The knowledge that one day, I could maybe wield fire or ride into battle on a giant dragon-like creature nearly made me forget the anxiety gnawing at the edges of my thoughts.
My search for information about myself hadn’t yielded much. Infra had only been able to tell me my name, Cyrus Carod, and that I was eighteen. Neither detail sparked any memory. Still, I took some comfort in knowing my name wasn’t something awful.
Small victories were what mattered.
I spent hours in front of the mirror, trying to piece together something from my reflection.
My buzzed black hair, my dirt-brown eyes, the hard, serious lines of my face, it all felt foreign. I looked constantly agitated, though I couldn’t say why. My body was thin, bordering on frail, but my height?
185 centimeters.
I wasn’t towering, but I certainly wasn’t small either. For reasons I couldn’t explain, that brought me an odd sense of satisfaction.
A sharp knock interrupted my thoughts.
“Come in!” I called, sitting up straighter in the hospital bed.
The door slid open, and two bald heads appeared. One belonged to the Arimus- the doctor, the other to the guard, which I guess was a position that didn’t require a new and more complex name. The two had become daily annoyances.
“You seem to be improving every day, lad,” the Arimus said, his voice edged with what might’ve been lingering irritation. I could tell he hadn’t quite forgiven me for vomiting on him that first day. Still, his smile was genuine enough, though it made my skin crawl a little.
I forced a smile of my own. “Hopefully, I’ll be out of here soon.”
“You and I both,” he chuckled.
After the routine check-up and another round of the same old questions from the guard. Do you remember who you are? Where are you from? Anything at all?
The funny thing about that last question was that, the Arimus had taken me through several tests and procedures daily, trying his best to try and jog my memory, or to try and get me to remember something, anything, but to no avail.
Today however, they finally left me with some good news.
“Well, Cyrus,” the Arimus said, closing the screen on his forearm. “Your condition has greatly improved. You’ll be out of here in three or four days. And once again, my apologies for being unable to help with your memory. But if you still have any problems, don’t hesitate to return.”
For the first time since I woke up, I offered genuine thanks.
My memories were important, but they weren’t everything. Not right now.
What mattered was the world outside. The world I had to face, with no past to anchor me but a future wide open, ready to be explored.
“Infra,” I said once they’d left, “what’s my next move?”
I blinked, taken aback by the options. They weren’t what I’d expected, but each was tempting in its own way. As I pondered the choices, another thought surfaced, one I’d been mulling over since waking up.
“Forget that for now,” I said. “Did you find anything about my family?”
I’d asked this question every day since I woke up, each time met with the same disappointing answer. Yesterday, though, Infra had said it was close to something.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
I held my breath, waiting for the response.
An uncle? Not my father or mother. Not a sibling. But an uncle?
The urge to ask a hundred different questions clawed at me, but I pushed them aside. The key to unlocking both my future and my past was dangling right in front of me. I had to reach for it.
“Yes. Tell me where he is.”
⥁
Stepping outside the hospital for the first time was a jarring, surreal experience.
The city streets were spotless, like a polished mirror stretching out before me, so clean that you could actually eat off of them. The gleam of the pavement was almost unnatural, not a single stain or blemish marring its surface. I had never seen anything so pristine. In my memories, cities were gritty, bustling places filled with chaos and dirt. Here, it felt like I had stepped into a world beyond comprehension, a civilization that had left mine in the dust centuries ago.
Towering skyscrapers dominated the skyline, piercing the heavens with sleek, metallic exteriors. Each one made of reflective glass that stretched so far upward, the tops disappeared into the low-hanging clouds. They dwarfed anything I’d ever seen. These weren’t just buildings, they were colossal monuments to human ambition, alien in their design.
Their smooth, window-clad surfaces reflected the light of endless holographic billboards, all flickering with neon-colored advertisements that demanded attention. Not in the way ads used to. No, these were more like commands, cutting straight into my thoughts as if they could bypass my free will entirely.
"Achieve perfect happiness with a single injection!" one of the billboards blared, the words morphing into a vivid image of a serene face, bathed in ethereal light. Another flashed an offer for eternal youth, showing a figure so flawless it almost seemed unnatural, their body slowly rotating in mid-air like a piece of meat on display.
Then, something caught my eye—a massive, three-dimensional hologram of a woman floating high above the crowd. She was pink, skin as smooth as silk, her proportions exaggerated to the point of absurdity. She winked at the people below, her movements fluid and disturbingly lifelike.
She whispered promises of fantasies no human could fulfill, her presence both seductive and invasive, filling the air with an eerie glow. It was surreal, wrong, and somehow accepted. People didn’t even blink as they passed under her. In another time, in another world, she would’ve been considered too vulgar to be shown in public. Here, she was part of the scenery, just another cog in the great machine of this new reality.
I, One hundred percent didn’t belong here.
As I took it all in, vehicles whizzed by, moving faster than anything I’d ever seen, their wheels, if they had any, barely touching the ground. Some hovered completely, gliding along invisible pathways. Above it all, actual ships soared through the sky.
Not airplanes, not helicopters but ships. Spacecrafts of all shapes and sizes, some as small as shuttles, others vast enough to house entire cities. The sky was alive with them, buzzing like a swarm of mechanical bees.
And then there were the people. They were everywhere, bustling, walking, going about their lives like it was all perfectly normal. Some had prosthetic limbs, sleek metallic arms and legs that moved as naturally as flesh.
A man passed by with glowing eyes, his pupils scanning his surroundings like some kind of high-tech surveillance system. Others had cyborg implants grafted into their bodies, neon lines of energy pulsing beneath their skin. I even spotted a woman with a prosthetic arm, shifting the color of her hand with a flick of her wrist, red, then blue, then a shimmering silver, like it was nothing more than an accessory.
Just ahead, a child zipped by on a hoverboard, grinning from ear to ear as he darted between pedestrians. His board hovered inches above the ground, leaving a faint trail of light in its wake. More kids played around, laughing as they wove in and out of the crowd. But what caught my attention was one of them, a small, petite boy who looked no older than eight, standing in the path I was taking. Distracted by the towering billboards, I didn’t see him in time.
I slammed right into him, bracing for impact, but to my shock, I was the one who stumbled back. I hit the ground hard, my body aching from the fall. The kid, though? He didn’t even flinch. He stood there, solid as a brick wall, barely fazed by the collision. His wide eyes blinked down at me, but there was no apology in his expression, no surprise. He looked down at me like I was the one who should’ve been paying more attention.
“What the hell…” I muttered under my breath, pulling myself up, my body sore. The kid couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, but he felt like a tank. Something in him definitely wasn’t natural, the only explanation that came to mind was that he was enhanced, like genetically modified.
People in my time would’ve marveled at the idea. Here, it seemed commonplace.
Just as I got back to my feet, a commotion erupted nearby. My head snapped toward the sound, and I saw a group of officers chasing someone down, their uniforms sleek and high-tech, helmets obscuring their faces. They moved with a fluidity that was almost robotic, their bodies gliding over the ground as they pursued a man who darted into an alleyway. One of the officers raised a hand, and a beam of energy shot out, wrapping around the fugitive like a lasso, freezing him in place. He didn’t even have time to scream before he was dragged back toward them, immobilized, a blank look on his face.
I shook my head, disbelief and awe swirling inside me. How did the world get to this point? How did it become so advanced, so far beyond anything I had ever known?
And then, my eyes caught something else—something that left me feeling even more unsettled. Amid all the neon ads and flashy promises, one advertisement stood out, flickering ominously. It wasn’t selling a product. It was selling time.
“Only five years left on your life expectancy? Extend it by thirty for just a few thousand kelts!”
I blinked, staring at the ad. What the hell kind of world was this?
My thoughts refocused as I stopped letting the world around me consume me whole. I returned to myself and took into account the important stuff. The hospital had given me a small loan, enough to buy some clothes and find a place to stay. My new screen, the one grafted to my arm, was apparently how I paid for things now. The whole process was confusing, but Infra guided me through it.
A black tracksuit, some worn-out shoes, and a cheap motel room later, I collapsed onto the lumpy bed with a sigh. The motel was, well, let’s just say Infra’s advice to save money wasn’t doing me any favors. The bathroom alone smelled like something had crawled in there to die.
“You’re sure he’s at that school?” I asked, my voice still a little shaky. I couldn’t remember the name of the place.
“Great, so then how do we do this? A call? Maybe send over a quick text to ask them if they could connect me to my uncle?” I assumed that it wouldn’t take too much effort to get into contact with him.
Infra’s words crashed through the fragile structure of my hope, flattening it with a dispassionate efficiency that only something mechanical could muster.
“So… what’s the plan then?” I asked, irritation and despair already creeping into my voice.
A low, metallic hum reverberated in my head, a sign that Infra was working through the options. It didn’t have an answer yet. Good. That made me feel a little better. At least I wasn’t the only one completely at a loss here.
“The academy?” I replied, blinking in disbelief. “The academy? The ‘pillar of society’ that you hold to such high standards? That academy?”
It had to be messing with me.
“Are you fucking with me right now, Infra!? I’m a coma patient who just woke up after three years with no memory of anything useful, except for some ancient, long-dead society! How the hell am I supposed to get into that academy!?”
I’d seen a lot of stupid things over the last few days, but this plan? This was by far the dumbest. No, this was historically stupid. It was like trying to rob a bank armed with a spoon.
I opened my mouth to snap back at Infra, but then closed it. It was ridiculous, but it kind of felt like there was some sense to it. If I could unlock my Heartile, maybe it would be enough to at least buy me some time. And magic, real magic, was more tempting than I cared to admit.
The academy would also give me something to do while I tried to uncover my past. It could give me a place to stay and maybe even secure me some sort of future. Hell, maybe I could even carve out a life for myself.
I sighed, rubbing my temples. “Fine. So how do we do this? Do I have to, like, meditate or something? Find my inner peace?” My tone dripped with sarcasm, but part of me was genuinely curious.
My eyes widened. “That sounds like it’s going to hurt…”
“Well, then let’s ta—ARGHHHH! FUCK!”
The pain was immediate and all-consuming. It felt like an invisible hand was inside my chest, pulling apart my organs, peeling back my skin layer by layer, each nerve ending set ablaze. My muscles contracted uncontrollably as though something far greater than me had seized control of my body, leaving me a prisoner inside my own skin.
I was screaming, though I couldn’t hear it over the roaring agony that filled every crevice of my mind. My hands clawed at my scalp, tearing at the hair, nails digging deep into flesh as if I could somehow pull the pain out of me. My vision blurred, black spots dancing at the edges until everything began to dim. Darkness. Blessed darkness.
<250 volts.>
Suddenly, a jolt of electricity surged through me, snapping me back into awareness, the searing pain roaring back to life, amplified. It felt like my nerves were on fire, like every cell in my body was trying to tear itself apart from the inside out. My heart pounded in my chest, erratic and violent, each beat sending shockwaves of pain throughout my limbs.
“INFRA! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?” I managed to choke out between ragged breaths, my throat already raw from screaming. I could taste blood on my tongue.
Two more hours? My mind reeled. Two more hours of this? The thought alone sent me spiraling deeper into panic, but my body was no longer listening to me. It convulsed violently, spasming as waves of pain crashed through me, each more intense than the last. It wasn’t even pain anymore, it was something else, something primal, something designed to push you past the edge of sanity.
Infra kept shocking me back to consciousness every time I blacked out, each jolt slamming me back into the agony with cruel precision. There was no escape, no relief. It was a never-ending loop of torment, and I was trapped in it.
Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my mind, I registered Infra’s voice again, though it was distant, barely cutting through the haze of suffering.
Willpower? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was it supposed to keep me alive? Keep me from dying?
Willpower didn’t feel very real right now. It felt like a cruel joke, a fairy tale told to desperate people. And yet, somehow, in the midst of all this torment, I found myself holding on to it. Clinging to it like a lifeline.