~February 21st, 140 AH~

~Upper Akra, the Orchard~

At the confluence of the four Tetrarch estates, and demarcating the north-south divide in the boulevard that led toward the JFB and Middle Akra beyond, stood a large crabapple tree. It’d been ‘planted’ at around the same time as Akropolis’s founding. Like everything else inside the city, it was immune to the changing of the seasons, perennially saturated with bold pink blossoms. And like every other ‘fruit tree’, it bore no actual fruit.

Asena had always found the crabapple tree inoffensive if not particularly pretty. Something to break up the scenery, offer a bit of colour and contour to an otherwise austere block of pavement and metal fencing. The artist inside her could appreciate the intended function and leave it at that.

Over the last several weeks, however, she’d become increasingly sensitive to Akropolis’s lies—its facade of normalcy. There was no going back. Not after the things she’d learned and experienced first-hand. Not after she’d seen the lone red flower that shivered somewhere amidst the planet’s haze.

Today, the sight of the florid crabapple blossoms only served to widen the chasm within her chest. She thought she might feel more: perhaps guilt, perhaps even anger. But today, she felt only the hollowness of defeat.

She was tired. Oh, so tired.

And she hated herself for it. Was this really the end? Had she given up? If so, what exactly had she given up on? What was left for her to fight for?

As if in answer, a figure emerged from the road that led out of the Athelstan Estate, strolling toward the Orchard at a leisurely pace.

Under the domed and overcast sky, Lieutenant Zelen Athelstan cut a startlingly unremarkable figure. Gone were the uniforms, the Nexa-Suits, or the metallic frame of an Eidolon, replaced by a collarless button-up shirt that hung loosely over his somewhat atrophied body. He was a little shorter than Asena remembered, perhaps due in no small part to the slight slouch in his narrow shoulders. Though he walked with the easy grace of a seasoned soldier, there was also a distinct meekness to his gait, practiced from a lifetime of striving for invisibility.

Asena had been Zelen Athelstan. Thought his thoughts, felt his feelings, killed his kills. Despite that, she felt as though she was seeing him for the first time. Yet at the same time, she felt as though she was seeing an old friend. The whispered echoes of someone else’s memories.

“Hello.” The phantom greeted her with an awkward half-wave. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

Asena shook her head. She tried to smile, and managed only a forlorn stare. Zelen, understandably, didn’t seem to know how to react. Already searching for a lifeboat, his eyes darted about the place until they settled on the crabapple tree that stood over them both.

“Feels like forever since I’ve looked at this tree,” he murmured, “but I guess that’s only because I haven’t been back here in forever. That’s one good thing about Akropolis, I suppose. No matter what I’ve been up to, no matter what’s happening out there, things inside the city never change. Like this tree.”

Asena nodded slowly, but she didn’t know why. She certainly couldn’t agree with Zelen’s sentiment—although she might have, had this conversation taken place just a few weeks ago.

“Something the matter, Asena?” Zelen asked with a muted smile. “I seem to remember you being more talkative than this.”

Do you? Do you really remember me?

“I’m fine, Zelen. I’m more worried about you. How are you feeling? After… after everything.”

Solemn Zelen. Polite Zelen. He looked away, not to avoid Asena’s gaze, but to give himself the space to think. To give her question due consideration.

“I’m… good, I think? Some things still get a bit fuzzy if I really try to focus on them, but your father says that’s to be expected. I think the important bits are all there, though… thanks to you.”

“What are they?”

“Hm?”

“What’s important to you, Zelen?”

This time, he held her gaze. For the answer was already staring him in the face.

“You, for one.”

“Me?”

“Of course. You’re my family.”

Asena drew in a sharp breath. Then she bit down on her suddenly trembling lips.

“Asena? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes… Yes, I’m fine.”

Once again, she failed to bolster her lie with a smile. Her mind rang instead with laughters that echoed from the halls of someone else’s memories. You did have a family, Zelen. And that family wasn’t me.

Even as her heart broke for her fiancé, enough of her Kurator’s academic curiosity remained to launch an entirely different train of thought. Standing before her was a living breathing case study of a ‘successfully’ [REWIRED] subject. And she couldn’t deny her own fascination with the inner workings of Zelen’s reconstructed mind. For there seemed to be a discernible rhyme and reason to how the memories—true, false, and otherwise—had fallen into place.

The pre-[REWIRE] Zelen had harboured a secret yet powerful yearning for family, companionship, and belonging, one he’d channelled toward various figures in his life, not the least of whom was Tsetseg Tenger—in both of her forms. The post-[REWIRE] Zelen lost all of these points of attachment: no Tengers, no Megha, and no Silon. Was it possible then that his mind had concocted a new companion to latch onto? That the object of this new connection was none other than Asena herself?

“—na. Asena? Did you hear me?”

“S—sorry, Zelen, say again?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I asked if you might have a chat to your father.”

“… About what?”

“About… planning for a wedding. Our wedding.”

Asena couldn’t breathe. Her next words came out in a choked whisper.

“What… why the sudden urgency?”

Zelen chuckled, as muted as his smile.

“We’ve been engaged for 12 years, Asena. The question we ought to be asking is what’s taken us so long? I already had a chance to talk to my father last night, and he thinks it’s a good idea. So… if Colonel Shiranui agrees, we could—Asena? What’s wrong?”

The phantom rushed to her side. Put a hand upon her cheek. Brushed away a tear.

His touch, burning hot, seared itself into her skin. His touch, freezing cold, made her shudder from head to toe. Wasn’t this what she always wanted? Wasn’t this the life she’d always envisioned?

But she knew.

She knew the man before her wasn’t the Zelen Athelstan she loved and so desperately tried to save. And she knew herself to be but the frosted reflection of someone else’s memories.

“I’m fine, Zelen.” She said this with a teary smile. The lie came easier now. It all suddenly fell into place. It was no different to what she’d been doing for several weeks. “You caught me by surprise is all.”

He nodded. Solemn Zelen. Earnest Zelen.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve surprised myself a bit. But… this feels right. It’s the right thing to do. I always thought the war came first. That everything else had to wait. But I realize now… I had it the other way around.”

The war. Of course. It always came back to the war. The Reiter sees into the domain of WAR.

“We’re at war because there’s something to fight for. Something to protect, to carry into the future, whatever that might look like. Will you be that for me, Asena? Someone for me to fight for. My family.”

Beside the young couple, the crabapple tree bloomed, as pink as it’d ever been and ever will be. Yet, under the domed and overcast sky, Zelen’s muted smile had a strange pall over it. A shadow cast by a tree from someone else’s memories. The same shadow now crept over the chasm within Asena’s chest.

She smiled. A false smile for a false vow.

“I will.”

~February 21st, 140 AH~

~Upper Akra, Shiranui Estate~

Asena painted, with fear in her heart and doubts on her mind. She painted as if in a trance, bringing to life strange corridors and dimly lit corners.

The room—for that was what the painting had always wanted to show—was a dense cloud of grey metal and blue smoke. The cloud parted for—centred around—a lone figure that held a blotch of black in their hands.

The blackness was a handgun, its shape clearer than ever. Its barrel pointed straight out of the canvas, as if at the painter herself. The figure that held it wore the tan fatigues of a Kurator. And the Kurator’s face—

Asena’s brush fell limply to her side. She’d finished the painting. And staring back at her was her own face. Expressionless. Eyes tinged by the grey-and-blue that surrounded her. The handgun, held rigidly in trembling hands, pointed to… what?

What was she so terrified of that her only recourse was violence? What was she so sure of that she knew violence to be the answer?

She put down the brush and picked up a pen in its stead. As she did with all of her finished paintings, she went to the back of the canvas, wrote down the date, and signed it with her name. Then she gave it a title.

Mirror.

The mirror had shown her something she couldn’t have seen on her own. It reflected deep-seated fears, hidden desires, and voiceless anger.

She knew what she must do. But to do it, she first needed an ally.

~February 21st, 140 AH~

~The Foothills~

The overcast sky, freed from the dome that covered Akropolis, gradated into the evening purple mist. Ophis stared up at it from his makeshift seat next to the scrap heap, his face lit and shadowed by the fire that warmed him and his companions.

His rucksack had emptied, and nearly all the Foothillers had gone back to their tents. All except Bateer and Sarnai Tenger, who sat watching the same changing sky.

His attention shifted toward the couple and took on an admiring gaze. The diminutive Bateer had always impressed him with his resilience in the face of overwhelming despair, but even more remarkable was Sarnai’s transformation. The woman, with head clean-shaven, dressed herself in fresh rags, free of grime and the miasma of imminent death. She was what she was: proud, headstrong, and far more talkative than Ophis could’ve guessed.

“I think I’ve just remembered something else,” she now broke the silence. “There was a boy with us. Maybe someone Bateer took in from his school. I remember he had an unusual obsession with fish cakes. I remember… he and our daughter were close. Inseparable, even.”

“Do you remember his face? Name, perhaps?”

She shook her head. “No. That’s where things get… difficult. It’s strange, isn’t it? You’d think those would be the first things you remember about someone you cared about. Their face. Their name.”

“Perhaps that’s also why those are the first things they make you forget.”

Sarnai’s face fell, along with her words. Ophis watched this with a pang of regret. He’d been told that he had a habit of souring conversations without meaning to. A habit he’d yet to break after decades of trying.

“Is it not painful for you?” he asked, his curiosity winning out over his desire for self-improvement. “All this remembering?”

She nodded.

“Then why do you persist?”

She gave him a discerning look across the crackling flames, then spoke slowly, “I think… they’re worth the pain. The memories I mean, such as they are. It hurts to know what I’ve lost. But without them… I’m nothing. I’d rather be hurt than be nothing.”

Ophis nodded, himself lost in a sea of painful memories. He, unlike these Foothillers, had never been subjected to the cruelty of losing them. And as such, he had a duty. The duty to honour the phantoms from these memories the only way he knew how.

“It’s not all doom and gloom, Mr Gaertner,” now the husband spoke up, flames dancing upon his toothy grin. “Like you say, picking up the pieces of our past has been painful, torturous even. But it’s also given us hope. If we once had a past to hang our hat on, that means we’re also capable of building a future.”

Ophis nodded again, smiling to match his companion’s grin. “And what sort of future might you envision for yourself, Bateer?”

“Well, in my previous life, I seemed to have enjoyed the sound of my own voice, especially when there were a bunch of ears listening with me. So, maybe I’ll start there. Rally the people here, get us working together. Even if… even if the city might never take us back, we could perhaps build something worthwhile out here.”

“That does sound like a worthy goal. If there’s any way I could—”

Ophis suddenly winced, and braced himself against a surge of pain.

No matter how many times he’d felt it—had welcomed it—he could never quite get used to the pain. A call from the Nexus, speaking directly through his Meridians. This time, the signals gathered and focused upon his right temple, upon the pocket he’d allocated to a certain young Kurator.

Across the flames, the Tengers tensed, alarm—and fear—writ large across both of their faces. Ophis couldn’t blame them for their sudden mistrust, not after what the couple had been through—not after all that the Nexus and its servants had taken from them.

With eyes glowing ghostly blue from the Anamnium that surged within, the serpent stood and turned toward the dome of Akropolis.

“I apologize for the abruptness, but I must take your leave,” he announced. “There’s someone calling for me. An [ALLY] that needs my help.”